Published: March 12, 2024 |

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The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality proposes to approve a groundwater protection permit for the massive Copper World mining complex to regulate and require monitoring of pollutant discharges from 16 facilities.

Those facilities planned for the Santa Rita Mountains site include five open pits, with a sixth pit not expected to discharge anything due to its makeup and size. There will be two huge tailings storage and disposal areas, spanning 946 and 307 acres, respectively, with both reaching more than 250 feet high, higher than a 20-story building.

A waste rock disposal facility will cover about 725 acres and will hold rock removed from the pits that has metal concentrations too low to be economically processed. Various ponds will store or capture storm-water runoff, water reclaimed from copper sulfide processing, water that drains from the tailings and a solution left over from copper oxide processing.

At a state-run public hearing last week on ADEQ’s draft permit, the 45 commenters were split between those who took direct aim at the permit as inadequate; those who said Copper World will be vital for both the Tucson-area economy and the future “green economy”; and those who said the mine will assault the Santa Ritas’ beauty and biological diversity.

ADEQ’s draft permit covers 57 pages and requires Hudbay Minerals to “operate and maintain all permitted facilities to prevent unauthorized discharges.”

The permit is one of only two major permits that Hudbay needs to be able to build the Copper World mine. The other is an ADEQ air quality permit, which is also pending. Because the land for Copper World on the Santa Ritas’ west slope is privately owned, Hudbay doesn’t need any federal permits for it.

It will eventually need federal approval to dig an open pit and start mining on the Santa Ritas’ east slope because much of that side of the mountain is U.S. Forest Service land. Mine construction on that side of the Santa Ritas has been stalled because federal courts have refused to go along with Hudbay’s earlier proposal to dump some of its mine waste rock and tailings on national forest land there.

Tuesday’s hearing was boisterous, with many of the 200 people in the audience cheering, booing, and hissing at the most strongly worded comments from opponents and supporters.

The hearing came two weeks after an equally large crowd at a public meeting mostly grilled ADEQ officials with piercing questions on what they saw as the permit’s flaws. At that session, ADEQ officials responded to the questions, but they weren’t allowed to do so at Tuesday’s session, under the department’s rules for public hearings.

Instead, ADEQ officials told the crowd they can respond later in writing to questions posed at the hearing. Or the public can send written questions until the department’s public comment period on the permit expires April 10, and get written responses afterward.

Some of the harshest critics at Tuesday’s hearing complained the permit’s proposed monitoring plan is inadequate, that it lacks legal standards for some of the chemicals to be used at the mine, and that some of the facilities that will hold mine wastes won’t be lined to stop liquids from seeping into the aquifer.

Many pro-mine speakers said Copper World will give a huge boost to Southern Arizona’s economy and that more copper is needed as ingredients for solar panels, wind farms and electric vehicles.

“Unfortunately, most people have no idea of where materials come from for this green movement. There’s 176 pounds of copper in an electric vehicle, four times the amount of copper in a combustion engine vehicle,” said Dennis Fischer, a former geologist for Augusta Resource Corp.

“There’s 2,000 pounds of copper in a standard wind turbine. A photovoltaic solar plant contains about 5.5 tons of copper per megawatt of power generation,” added Fischer.

Augusta had sought to build the proposed Rosemont Mine on some of the same Santa Ritas land now planned for mining by Toronto-based Hudbay, before Augusta sold out to Hudbay in 2014.

Fischer noted that Arizona produces about 68 percent of all U.S.-based copper supplies, and that an estimated 38,000 to 39,000 jobs in Arizona are connected to mining in some way — “which is why we are the copper state.”

Mark Davis, a Tucsonan who represented the mining industry trade and lobbying group Amigos, said Copper World is an opportunity to add thousands of good paying jobs — “we pay above what other industries do” — with good benefits. Hudbay has said Copper World will create 400 permanent jobs and indirectly create another 3,000 jobs.

“I’ve spent most of my career in mining. The mining industry is a blessing that enabled my family to realize the American dream, the opportunity to work hard and leave a better world behind,” Davis said.

DETAILS OF PERMIT, MINE PLANS

Copper World’s mine life for its first phase is expected to be 15 years, ADEQ’s draft permit says, although a planned second phase could extend the project’s life much longer. Other details contained in the permit include:

The mine will extract about 277 million tons of copper sulfide ore over its first phase, along with about 103 million tons of copper oxide ore.

The mining company anticipates Copper World will require more than two years of production before mining can start. Closing down the mine after its life is over is anticipated to take one to two years, and monitoring and other activities at the site will continue another 30 years.

Meeting the permit’s requirements will let Hudbay comply with the two key requirements for the state’s aquifer protection program. That program was put in place by the legislature nearly 40 years ago to give groundwater its first major state-managed protections from pollution through laws and regulations.

First, the draft permit will ensure that pollutants discharged by Copper World won’t “cause or contribute” to a violation of a state aquifer water quality standard at any of 10 monitoring wells where compliance with the rules will be enforced, the state says. Or the pollution won’t further degrade an aquifer that already has water quality violations before mining begins, ADEQ says.

Second, the mine will use what ADEQ calls the best available demonstrated control technology.

That can include engineering controls, processes, operating methods, or other alternatives to reduce pollutant discharges to the greatest amount practical before they reach the aquifer or prevent them from reaching the aquifer, the agency says.

Hudbay will have to monitor for a host of contaminants in its 10 monitoring wells — some four times a year, some every other year. Among the 25 pollutants requiring quarterly monitoring are cadmium, nitrates, uranium, barium, arsenic, cyanide, lead, mercury and nickel.

Source: Tuscon.com

Hudbay is a copper-focused mining company with three long-life operations and a world-class pipeline of copper growth projects in tier-one mining-friendly jurisdictions of Canada, Peru, and the United States. Hudbay’s operating portfolio includes the Constancia mine in Cusco (Peru), the Snow Lake operations in Manitoba (Canada) and, upon completion of the arrangement with Copper Mountain Mining Corp., the Copper Mountain mine in British Columbia (Canada). Copper is the primary metal produced by the company, which is complemented by meaningful gold production. Hudbay’s growth pipeline includes the Copper World project in Arizona, the Mason project in Nevada (United States), the Llaguen project in La Libertad (Peru), and several expansion and exploration opportunities near its existing operations.

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