Protest the auction of 160 acres of State Trust Land requested by Hudbay Minerals.

APRIL 29TH AUCTION PROTEST

Protest the auction of 160 acres of State Trust Land requested by Hudbay Minerals. Hudbay wants to use this land as a dump for its toxic mine waste called tailings.

Date: Wednesday, April 29th

Time: 10 AM

Location: State Office Complex, 400 W. Congress Street, Tucson. (Please note this a change in location effective 9:30 a.m., April 26.)

Parking: Street parking and parking garages are available.

What to Bring: Water, sun protection, protest signs, and your voice!

https://scenicsantaritas.org/event

MORE INFORMATION: 

Enviros: Cancel auction of state land for Copper World mine because of 'factual errors' in notices
Tucson groups challenge planned 160-acre sale of Arizona State Trust Land to hold mine tailings pile

https://www.tucsonsentinel.com/local/report/041726_mine_auction_notices/enviros-cancel-auction-state-land-copper-world-mine-factual-errors-notices/

Rally for the Santa Ritas: 2:00pm to 4:00pm Saturday, May 3rd at the Tucson Federal Building

Join concerned residents from around the region for a Rally for the Santa Ritas on Saturday, May 3, 2025, from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM at the Tucson Federal Building, 300 W Congress St.  This critical event will bring together residents, environmental advocates, and regional leaders in a powerful demonstration of opposition to the proposed Copper World mining project and the broader threats posed by the unchecked power of the mining industry in Arizona.

Key attendees and speakers include the following:

• Adelita Grijalva, former Pima County Supervisor
• Regina Romero, Mayor of Tucson
• Kevin Dahl, City of Tucson Councilmember
• Russ McSpadden, Center for Biological Diversity
• Rob Peters, Save the Scenic Santa Ritas     

Event organizers: Save the Scenic Santa Ritas, Center for Biological Diversity, Great Old Broads for the Wilderness, Living Desert Alliance, and the Corona de Tucson Preservation Alliance. 

Link to RSVP: https://www.scenicsantaritas.org/event-details/rally-for-the-santa-ritas

Support Historic Bill to Reform Destructive, Old U.S. Mining Law

A new bill has been introduced in Congress that would overhaul the 1872 Mining Law and at last bring the United States into the 21st century — ready to meet the demands of a clean energy economy while not repeating the mistakes of the past. Tell your elected officials to support this historic legislation, and help protect the Santa Ritas, Patagonia Mountains, and other Sky Islands from toxic hardrock mining. For 151 years, mining for copper, uranium, and other minerals has been governed by a gold-rush era law that promoted westward expansion and extraction at all costs. As a result, according to the EPA, 40% of western watersheds are now polluted. Hundreds of thousands of mines have been abandoned and left to taxpayers to clean up. And Indigenous tribes and other communities have been polluted with arsenic, mercury, and lead. This is unacceptable.  The Clean Energy Minerals Reform Act, introduced by Representative Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), offers several solutions. It would: Establish environmental standards that don’t exist under the current law and make industry clean up their abandoned mines; Ensure a fair return to taxpayers with a royalty for mining on public lands; Create space for meaningful tribal consultation and improve siting/permitting with a leasing system and public process; and Give land managers power to protect sacred and irreplaceable resources.  Urge your elected officials to support this visionary bill and protect our public lands and water for future generations. Find Sky Island Alliance's action here:  https://skyislandalliance.org/2023/06/rosemont-mine-alert/

Public Comments: Exploratory drilling in Patagonia Mountains

The San Antonio exploratory drilling project, located on the eastern side of the Patagonia Mountains and owned by junior Canadian mining company Barksdale Resources, is now listed on the Forest Service SOPA page. The scoping period is currently underway, and the Forest Service is accepting public comments through October 19, 2020.

Currently, the Forest Service lists the San Antonio project as a categorical exclusion (CE). This means the project does not need to go through an environmental assessment, as it is “a kind of action that has no significant individual or cumulative effect on the quality of the human environment.”

However, we're skeptical of this decision for many reasons, including project size, safety issues, road traffic, and wildlife impacts on known sensitive, threatened, and endangered species (including the yellow-billed cuckoo).

Patagonia Area Resource Alliance is currently working on writing organizational comments for this project, but we also need individuals to send comments in on this project. The Forest Service must count every comment, big or small—so the more we speak up on this, the better.

However, comments must include specific details to be counted. To help the public write comments, PARA will be hosting two workshops via Zoom at the end of September. These workshops will walk you through the steps and considerations needed to write comments on the San Antonio project.

Tuesday, September 29; 6 - 7 p.m. Arizona:

URL: Join Zoom Meeting > 
Meeting ID: 811 8115 7270
Passcode: 095638

Phone: +1 669 900 6833
Meeting ID: 811 8115 7270
Passcode: 095638

Saturday, October 3; 10 - 11 a.m. Arizona:

URL: Join Zoom Meeting >
Meeting ID: 828 0020 6825
Passcode: 866962

Phone: +1 669 900 6833
Meeting ID: 828 0020 6825
Passcode: 866962

Actions to Protect AZ Water this week at the AZ State Legislature

This week there are some bills that could affect our water being heard at the state legislature.

The first action requires a quick phone call. Please, take a couple minutes to call your state Representatives before it goes to a vote (which could be any day.) The rest of the bills are being heard in committee. If you have registered for the Request to Speak, you can sign in on the system on the Arizona Legislature Website.  You can weigh in on RTS anytime before or during that meeting. (See info below.)

PHONE ACTION:

There was a recent attempt to resurrect one of several bad water bills in the House. HB2609 Harquahala non-expansion area; groundwater transfer (Petersen: Cook) allows private water companies in the Harquahala Irrigation Non-expansion area (west of the Phoenix area) to withdraw water to a depth of 1,500 feet rather than 1,000 feet and transport it into an active management area. This violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the 1980 Arizona Groundwater Code and sets a terrible precedent for bypassing statewide groundwater management by importing water from areas outside the Active Management Areas. Speaker of the House, Rusty Bowers, is leading the effort to jam this through over the objections of La Paz County and any who are concerned about further privatizing water. Please call your representatives and ask them to oppose HB2609. If they say they are opposing it, thank them.

To find out who your Rep is, find your district: 

https://azredistricting.org/districtlocator/

Use that district to find the contact information for your Rep.

https://www.azleg.gov/MemberRoster/

REQUEST TO SPEAK ACTIONS:

If you have registered for Request to Speak, this is your opportunity to weigh in on the following bills this week.   (See directions on RTS here.) 

(To register for a Request to Speak account: http://www.cebv.us/. NOTE: It may take a day or two for someone to go to the capitol to sign you up, so do it now so you can still participate on Wednesday or Thursday.) 

Wednesday, March 20th

Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy at 2:00 PM

• HCM2003 uranium pollution; remediation (Thorpe) includes inaccurate information about uranium mining, turning it into a promotional for the mining industry. Encouraging cleanup is something we do support, but this memorial does not reference the need to get the mining companies to clean up their own messes, plus it says that there are no issues with "modern" uranium mining. (The current practice is for mines to become limited liability companies so they aren't held responsible to clean up their own toxic tailings that seep into our waterways). OPPOSE.

Thursday, March 21st
Senate Committee on Water and Agriculture at 9:00 AM

• HB2475 water use; criminal penalty; wells (Bowers) says if you take someone else's water via a well, it is no longer a misdemeanor. This includes the subsurface flows of streams and rivers. Essentially, this would keep the law making it illegal to steal someone else’s water when it is on the surface, but legal to steal it if it’s below the surface. OPPOSE.

NOTE: I've found it easiest just to do all of the Request to Speak bills while I am in the system. Just click "another request." 

TAKE ACTION! The Trump Administration wants to mine our national monuments before our day in court

Last December, President Trump flew to Utah and issued an order to strip protections from millions of acres in Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante national monuments. It was a dark day for public lands in this country. The administration is currently scrambling to take advantage of Trump’s unlawful order, developing new plans to open these lands up to coal and uranium mining before Americans can have their day in court to protect the monuments.

These lands belong to the public, not to coal and uranium companies that want to plunder their resources, leaving devastation in their wake. The Department of the Interior is taking public comments now — tell the Trump administration that these lands aren’t up for grabs.

Bears Ears and Grand Staircase are unique wonderlands. Bears Ears contains ancient cliff dwellings, kivas, and priceless petroglyphs, while Grand Staircase is home to a treasure trove of fossils—more than a dozen new dinosaur species have been discovered there since the monument was established.

Trump’s hasty plans will allow coal, oil, and gas companies to mine and drill nearly 700,000 acres of lands that rightfully should be part of Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. Under this “preferred plan,” extractive industries will destroy almost all of the lands unlawfully cut from Grand Staircase — all for the private profit of a few corporations. These lands are far more valuable to the local economy and the local job market if they remain protected.

Trump’s plan will also exclude the Bears Ears Tribes — the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Pueblo of Zuni, and Ute Indian Tribe — from truly having a voice in the management of public lands that hold their priceless heritage.

We’re in court to protect both Bears Ears and Grand Staircase, and we’re making progress. Last month a federal judge denied the Trump administration’s efforts to move our cases to Utah, and ordered the administration to give us advance notice before it allows mining activities to disturb these special places.

Help us stop this needless destruction. Weigh in now during the public comment period for Trump’s new plans for these monuments. These lands don’t belong to coal and uranium companies — they belong to all of us.

- Heidi McIntosh, EARTHJUSTICE