Comment now to protect Oak Flat

The Tonto National Forest has released a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) examining Rio Tinto’s Resolution Copper mine proposal and is asking for your comments.

The deadline for comments is November 7, 2019.  Please go to our alert to learn more and to edit a sample comment letter to send to the Forest Service.

The DEIS contains some frightening information about what this proposal would do to Oak Flat and thousands of additional acres of public land.  However, much of that data minimizes the damages and there is a large amount of information about this project that is missing.

Rio Tinto proposes a huge experimental underground block cave mine that would create a 2-mile-wide 1,000-foot-deep crater at Oak Flat, would dump a billion and a half tons of toxic mine waste into an unlined toxic tailings dump, and would and would use enough of Arizona’s precious water to supply the city of Tempe, Arizona, for 40 years.  What could possibly go wrong?

Foreign mining giants Rio Tinto and BHP have formed a subsidiary called Resolution Copper that is planning to build a large underground copper mined under Oak Flat Campground.  Oak Flat is sacred to Native Americans and is a recreational and ecological haven.  The proposal would not only destroy Oak Flat, but thousands of additional acres of public and would decimate water sources over a wide area.