A Pretty Corpse

Once again, I'm going to blog on the proposed Resolution Copper Mine that wants to get started in Superior. Every time I write about it, I get read by folks in Virginia and Washington DC and sometimes in faraway countries around the world. I'm not doing this to gain readership. I'm doing it because something doesn't smell right. And it seems there's very few people that really know what is going on.

This week, some friends back in California sent me an issue of the 'High Country News'. The February 18 issue. It had a six page article on the perplexing problem of whether or not Superior, Arizona should accept the proposed mine Resolution Copper has for it. The editor and writer spoke to economists and townsfolk and miners and Indians and the copper company itself. And their conclusions? The copper mine probably isn't the best thing that could happen to Superior. Because of the short intensity of the high tech mining that is done these days, the area won't be able to sustain the Boom it needs and within a very short time, will be back to hard scrabble times. The Big Money the copper mine is promising Arizona and the US in return for the Land Swap (still before the Senate) won't be enough to sustain the local economy and the few jobs that will be available for the locals during the short term, aren't going to be there for long. So any big growth for Superior won't be sustainable.

Then the news gets worse: IF the Land Swap bill goes forward, Senator McCain made some environmental provisions for the British owned Resolution Copper (partly owned by Rio Tinto, a global mining company). The part I had heard about that gave me chills was that NOTHING would befall the copper company if worse came to worse and the Apache Leap mountain imploded under the block caving methods they mean to do at more than seven thousand feet deep under the mountain. That part just leaves me numb! But now, there's more. Under the Land Swap bill, McCain would exempt Resolution Copper from following the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). There would be no public oversight on copper smeltering or how much groundwater and Central Arizona Project water would be used. The company has said they would pump the billions of gallons from the old Magma Mine mineshaft down to the valley in Pinal County where it will be purified from other water, but again, with no NEPA public oversight, nobody will know how much good fresh water is being diverted.

I don't understand why the citizens of the US are expected to conduct their business in an orderly manner and follow all the environmental rules and regulations set down by the Feds and the State, but that some big global company can get away with not following the same rules. NO FAIR!

I think, and again, this is my opinion, but I think this Land Swap bill needs to be folded up and put away in somebody's desk. Resolution Copper will just fade away and go down to Indonesia or Mongolia to reap (rape?) what it can from those countries coffers of copper. Superior doesn't need it. It has had its mining. It still has its looks. It's going to be getting better from the good folks who are willing to work to change it for the better. But it's not going to be from another "Copper Boom".

I guess we need to tell Senator McCain and the other senators that might be inclined to vote for the Land Swap Bill that you can dress a corpse up in pretty clothes and make her look good, but... she's still a corpse. Superior doesn't need this mine. There's better days ahead of her than that road.