Rosemont Mine draws fire from Congress

NEAR THE SANTA RITA MOUNTAINS — A proposal to build a massive copper mine here is getting a political thrashing this week from U.S. Reps. Gabrielle Giffords and Raul Grijalva, two Democrats in the region who have asked federal authorities to overrule previous approvals for the project.

The two Dems, who represent Tucson and a broad swath of southeastern Arizona, sent a spirited letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack that asked him to force the U.S. Forest Service to consider a “no action” scenario for the project, essentially stopping it.

The mine would be built about 30 miles south of Tucson by Augusta Resource, a Canadian company. The mine would be mostly on private land, according to press reports, while treatment facilities for the ore and waste would sit on Forest Service lands and other public land in the northern stretches of the Santa Rita Mountains. The Arizona Game and Fish department has said the project will ruin the area for wildlife.

The Green Valley News & Sun has the full story here. To surf more Arizona headlines, use our interactive map on our Arizona News page.

Canadians to reopen Kingman mine

NEAR KINGMAN — Manganese mines that were once part of a national steel-making industry for World War I and II are being retrenched and expanded by a Canadian mining company that is positioning itself for global economic recovery.

The mines are in the searing desert about 85 miles southeast of Kingman at a place called Artillery Peak. The black ore was previously mined and stockpiled in Arizona by the Department of Defense, which sold off the ore or abandoned the piles once World War II ended and steel prices plummeted. [To read another Zonie Report story about the environmental and health impacts of that decision, click here.]

But mining executives for Vancouver-based Rocher Deboule see new potential for the mines. The company reportedly purchased the Artillery Peak claims about one year ago in anticipation of a resurgence in global demand for steel. Manganese is a key ingredient for making steel, and the company’s findings indicate that the Artillery Peak area may be one of the largest sources of manganese in the United States today.

The Kingman Daily Miner is reporting that Rocher Deboule intends to start a full-scale mining operation in three years. Mining authorities say there is at least 50 million tons of manganese available at the site. The company’s studies show there is up to 150 million tons available. The current market price is about $1.10 per pound.

Officials reverse northern Arizona logging decision

KAIBAB NATIONAL FOREST — Forest officials have momentarily backed away from logging 26,000 acres of trees here, bowing to pressure from environmental groups that insisted more studies were needed.

The project in the North Kaibab Ranger District received a green light in February when officials decided the activities would have no significant impact on the area. The Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity joined the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter in successfully appealing that decision, saying it violated national environmental policies and would threaten the local goshawk population – an “indicator” species that signals the health of the forest ecosystem overall, according to the Grand Canyon News.

The environmental groups, however, remain supportive of some logging work in the area. They approve of logging trees that are up to 12 inches in diameter instead of the 18-inch limit that was originally proposed. They also support the idea of bringing a fire regime back to the area.

The decision paves the way for a new environmental assessment of the logging project in the Kaibab National Forest, the largest continuous stretch of ponderosa pine in the United States.  To read the full story in Grand Canyon News, click here.

Tribe sues Freeport McMoRan over copper mine

NEAR CASA GRANDE — The Tohono O’odham Nation claims an international mining company released hazardous substances during its search for copper on tribal lands, destroying the area’s natural resources in the process.

The tribe’s complaint involves Cyprus Tohono Corporation, a subsidiary of Freeport McMoRan. Its members want relief for mining activities that allegedly occurred 32 miles southwest of Casa Grande on land the tribe leased to Cyprus Tohono for copper-mining purposes.

According to the complaint, mining operations have dug around the area off and on since the 1880s. In 1987, Cyprus Tohono started mining at the site, the complaint states.

The tribe claims hazardous substances such as sulfuric acid have been released, damaging the surrounding ecosystem. An investigation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is ongoing, the complaint states.

The suit was brought on the tribe’s behalf by Jonathan L. Jantzen (Office of the Attorney general, Tohono O’odham Nation) and Sue A. Klein, assistant U.S. Attorney in Phoenix under Diane Humetewa. Humetewa, a member of the Hopi tribe, was tapped by former President George W. Bush to lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona. She has promised to focus more on issues affecting American Indians during her tenure.

To download a copy of the complaint, click here.

Invasive mussels put Lake Powell at risk

Wen Baldwin, a National Park Service volunteer, checks quagga mussel growth on debris in Lake Mead. The mussels were first spotted in the lake in early 2007. (John Collins Rudolf / TZR)

LAKE POWELL — Can Lake Powell repel the invasion of the dreaded quagga mussel?

The answer from federal biologists, tasked with preventing the spread of the highly destructive European bivalve, is a qualified yes.

“I think what they’re doing at Lake Powell is about as best a job as we can do, given the resources we have,” says David Britton, assistant invasive species coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Southwest. “I can’t say it’s 100 percent protected. But I think they have a good shot.”

But others are not so sure. Among them are environmental and sport-fishing advocates, who fear that the quagga mussel could radically alter Lake Powell’s ecology, and decimate the fish populations that draw thousands of boaters to the lake each year.

The mussels, which reproduce with staggering speed, filter nutrients from the water and are credited with doing massive damage to the health of the Great Lakes after their arrival in the 1980s. The mussels are believed to have traveled from Europe in the ballast water of an oceanic freighter.

“Someone needs to step up and provide coordinated leadership to keep mussels out of Lake Powell and the Salt River system,” says Paul Ostapuk, senior board member of Friends of Lake Powell, a non-profit advocacy group. “It’s been a piece-meal effort thus far.”

Activists like Ostapuk have good reason for concern. Lake Powell is at high risk of becoming the next victim for the quagga mussel, which has spread rapidly throughout the West by hitching rides on unsuspecting recreational boats.

The mussels, which were first detected in Lake Mead in early 2007, have since infested Lake Havasu, Lake Mohave and Lake Pleasant, as well as dozens of other water bodies throughout the Southwest. A colony was recently uncovered in a water filtration plant as far south as Yuma.

Lake Powell, where an estimated 100,000 boats from around the country launch every year, has already had several close calls with the mussels. Just this month, authorities intercepted a boat from Lake Pleasant that was found to be harboring live mussels and prevented it from launching. Because its owner intended to park it at a slip in Bullforg marina, a pre-launch inspection was required. That’s when lake authorities noticed the mussels.

It was only one of several contaminated boats that have attempted to enter the lake over the past two years.

A key element of the effort to protect Lake Powell is an “honor system,” by which boaters fill out a form stating that their craft has not been exposed to known areas of contamination. The plan generated scorn from some when originally introduced, but appears to have worked so far.

“I told them two years ago it wouldn’t work,” says Len Cook, a city councilman in Page, Ariz., which sits at the southern tip of the lake. “I might have been wrong. Maybe people have more honesty than I thought.”

But even those who comply with the honor code may be endangering the lake. The form available for download on the National Park Service website lists Utah as one of several “mussel free states,” and suggests that boaters coming from Utah waters are free to launch in the lake without decontamination.

Both quagga and zebra mussels, however, have been discovered in Utah in recent months. The Red Fleet Reservoir, near the Utah-Colorado border, is infested with quagga mussels. Electric Lake, south of Provo, has a fast-reproducing population of zebra mussels. Both lakes are popular with boaters and anglers.

A website created by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources says that veligers – the microscopic larval form of the mussels – have also been detected at as many as five additional lakes and reservoirs, where further testing is underway. [After The Zonie Report notified the National Park Service that Utah boats posed a quagga mussel risk to Arizona lakes, agency officials updated the self-certification form on their website.]

The chance that a mussel-infested boat slips by inspectors at Lake Powell is only increased by the lack of vigilance at other contaminated water bodies, says Pete Klocki.
Klocki, who created a website, KeepLakePowellMusselFree.com, to help raise awareness, runs a fishing-lure business and keeps a houseboat moored on Lake Powell.

“Without a serious inspection program to intercept trailered boats traveling between infested and non-infested waterways, the spread of quagga and zebra mussels to all Arizona waterways is essentially assured,” says Klocki, who responded to questions by email. “It is simply a matter of time.”

Activists like Klocki want more effort made to intercept contaminated boats before they reach Lake Powell. A bill, introduced by State Rep. Nancy McClain, R-Bullhead City, would empower the Arizona Department of Game and Fish to establish checkpoints at water bodies throughout the state to prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species like the quagga mussel. But funding for such a program, in an era of massive budget deficits, may prove elusive.

“The Game and Fish Department, which would be the logical agency to implement and manage an inspection program, is a very small agency with limited resources. It is funded almost entirely by sport fishing and hunting license revenue,” Klocki says. “Without federal assistance on a significant scale, there simply is no way Arizona Game and Fish could possibly undertake such a responsibility.”

It is not just citizen activists who are looking for more aggressive federal action on the quagga mussel.

Page Vice Mayor John Cook, who formerly served as regional director for the National Park Services Rocky Mountain region, wants the federal government to step up and play a more active role. Cook authored a Page City Council resolution along just those lines.

“I would like to see this addressed at a higher level,” Cook says. “It deserves federal coordination. It is larger than a unit-by-unit geographical problem.”

Cook suggests that the U.S. Department of the Interior take the lead coordinating the state and federal response to the quagga mussel. After all, he says, Interior officials oversee the Bureau of Reclamation, which is responsible for the maintenance of dams, power plants and other water infrastructure throughout the West. A number of those projects, like Hoover Dam on Lake Mead, are already struggling to contain the damage from the quagga mussel.

“The biggest damages are to [Bureau of] Reclamation facilities,” he says.

Lake Powell, of course, is only one of thousands of lakes and rivers in danger of invasion by quagga and zebra mussels. Yet Powell could pose a unique threat were it to become infested.

“People will drive a thousand miles to go boating on Lake Powell,” says Britton, of U.S. Fish and Wildlife. “That puts pretty much all our water bodies in the U.S. in jeopardy.”

Of particular risk are waterways in the Pacific Northwest, which are heavily dammed and could prove an attractive breeding ground for the mussels were they to become established. Given the quagga mussels’ impact on fish populations, the damage to the region’s salmon fisheries could be substantial.

“If Lake Powell gets infested, it’s one more step closer to the Pacific Northwest or the Columbia River basin,” Britton says.

One need go no further than Lake Havasu on the Colorado River to see the possible impact the mussels could have in the Northwest. Only two years after their introduction, the quagga mussel is being blamed for a fall-off in the quality of the lake’s striped bass population and related fishing scene.

“The striper fishing is awful this year,” says Mark Brown, fisheries specialist for Arizona Game and Fish. “I’ve heard a lot of anecdotal stuff – especially from the striper fishermen. They’re just having a horrible time.”

Brown cautioned that no scientific data was yet available to show the mussels were responsible for the decline in fishing. But he has his suspicions.

“There’s nothing we can hang our hat on,” he says. “I think it’s likely. You’ve got to expect that there will be some effect.”

Edgar Sandez works at Black Meadow Landing, which provides boats and guides for fishing on Lake Havasu. Winter visitors to the lake have complained of the decline in fishing quality, he says.

“There’s no more fish,” he says. “It’s not like last year.”

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.

TEP rekindles debate over Rosemont mine

GREEN VALLEY — If a controversial mining project in the Santa Rita Mountains comes to pass, it will likely bring 100-foot-tall power lines to this southern Arizona enclave.

That was the gist of a recent public meeting hosted by Tucson Electric Power, a regional utility that would string power lines out to a major copper mine project if it is approved, according to press reports.

The Green Valley News & Sun has the full story here.

About 50 people reportedly showed up for the meeting. TEP are seeking public comment on a project that would install transmission lines across 30 miles of desert south of Tucson to the mine site about 11 miles east of Green Valley, according to the report.

The story suggests that residents were more concerned about the implications of the power-line project – that it signals likely approval for the mining project – than the power-line construction itself.

In Prescott, a water war escalates

PRESCOTT — During Arizona’s most recent real estate boom, unbridled growth in the Prescott and Chino Valley region forced cities, towns, developers and utility companies to take stock of their cut of the region’s water supply.

Today, the simmering debate centers on the Big Chino, a massive underground aquifer that supplies up to 86 percent of the upper Verde River’s flows, according to a 2005 report from the Arizona Department of Water Quality.

The upper Verde River, near White Bridge. The Big Chino aquifer supplies up to 86 percent of the upper Verde River's flows. (Courtesy: U.S. Forest Service)

Salt River Project, an extremely large and politically influential user downstream of that water source, is playing defense. In January, its lawyers asked Prescott city officials to turn over myriad public records that detail their plans for a pipeline project that would tap the Big Chino.

Now Prescott city officials are asking a Yavapai County judge to intervene. A recent court filing shows they are concerned that turning records over to SRP would jeopardize their chance of ever building the pipeline – or keeping the project’s cost from skyrocketing.

The case is another case study for Arizona’s public records law, and the results could affect development in one of the state’s hottest housing markets.

If Prescott wins, it could gain some legal cover for a major project that would support future development. If SRP wins, they will have detailed knowledge of Prescott’s plans for the Big Chino and the documents to mount a legal case to thwart them, if necessary.

On Dec. 29, SRP lawyers sent a public records request to Prescott. They sent another request on Jan. 2. They sought contracts, deeds, easements and other paperwork related to the city’s acquisition of land, water rights and right-of-way near the Big Chino, among other things.

Under Arizona’s public records law, Prescott officials can refuse inspection of public records if issues of confidentiality, privacy or the city’s best interests are compelling enough to override the public’s right to know. But the burden of proving whether such an issue exists lies with the keeper of the records.

Court records show that Prescott officials want to cooperate without spoiling the pipeline project. The project drawings are 90 percent complete, according to the city’s court filing. The city claims that releasing them early could set a precedent allowing property owners that they are trying to buy land from to raise their prices. As a result, the city would like to withhold these records from SRP until the drawings are finished.

Prescott’s lawyers claim some of the City Council’s discussions about the pipeline were done in private and are protected by an executive privilege. The city recently turned 10 boxes of files over to SRP, but now its lawyers are asking a judge to screen public records before they are released to the utility company.

Prescott is being represented by senior assistant City Attorney Matthew P. Podracky. SRP is being represented by John B. Weldon of Salmon, Lewis & Weldon in Phoenix.

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.

A legal battle set in stone

NEAR THE GRAND CANYON — In the eternal debate of man versus nature, hundreds of biologists are turning up the volume by suing federal authorities over the management of two Arizona icons: the Grand Canyon-Parashant and Vermilion Cliffs national monuments.

Both sites were set aside in 2000 by former President Bill Clinton, who was so overcome by thousands of acres of sandstone rock formations, windswept mesas and vibrant flora and fauna near the Arizona-Utah border that he invoked his presidential authority and named them national monuments for protection.

“This remote area of open, undeveloped spaces and engaging scenery is located on the edge of one of the most beautiful places on earth, the Grand Canyon,” Clinton wrote in his proclamation.

“Full of natural splendor and a sense of solitude,” he later added, “this area remains remote and unspoiled, qualities that are essential to the protection of the scientific and historic resources it contains.”

Now imagine motorized vehicles romping along more than 1,600 miles of new access roads, and you can see why the issue ended up in court.

The case comes from the Wilderness Society, Arizona Wilderness Coalition, Sierra Club, Grand Canyon Wildlands Council and National Trust for Historic Preservation. Combined, the different groups date back to 1935 and include hundreds of members in Arizona and the U.S. The national preservation trust was chartered by Congress.

Together, they are accusing officials with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management of adopting management plans that ignore scientific research and allow motorized vehicles too much access to the monuments. They are asking U.S. District Court Judge Paul Rosenblatt to set aside the BLM’s plan and force the agency to close all primitive roads and trails to motorized traffic inside the monuments.

It’s not the first time both sides have fought over this issue in public. In April 2002, less than two years after Clinton created the monuments, officials for the BLM and National Park Service announced they would create new management plans for those areas.

The first area, Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument, covers more than 1 million acres north of the canyon, Arizona’s No. 1 tourist destination. It includes several fossilized remains, rock art images and ancient quarries, villages, watchtowers, burial sites and caves that indicate human use dating back 11,000 years, according to the court complaint. Flora and fauna include the giant Mojave Yucca cacti, a “trophy-quality” mule deer population, wild turkey, desert tortoise, California condor and more.

The other area, Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, is much smaller but no less breathtaking in its scope. Its 293,000 acres – roughly the size of the City of Phoenix – includes 20 species of raptors, desert bighorn sheep, pronghorn antelope, mountain lion, California condors and evidence of Spanish, Mexican and Mormon expeditions. Paria Plateau, a multi-hued geological wonder, towers 3,000 feet above it all.

In his presidential proclamation, Clinton called both locations a “geological wonder.”

In November 2005, federal officials released a draft of the plan they intended to use to manage both areas. The preservationist groups were heavily involved at the time, and they ended up filing formal protests once the plan was adopted in January 2008. Now they are suing the agencies.

They claim the new plan misinterprets the definition of “roads” and “trails,” allowing motorized traffic and cattle-grazing leases to have too much access. This could lead to the destruction or theft of some of the archaeological and ecological prizes inside the monuments’ boundaries.

The case is now in federal court in Tucson. James S. Angell and McCrystie Adams, two Denver-based lawyers for a nonprofit legal group called Earth Justice, are representing the preservation groups.

Railroad fights price-gouging claim

BENSON — Union Pacific Railroad Co. is suing a leading electricity provider for rural Arizona, claiming it backed out of a valid contract that locked in its shipping rates for coal.

The suit closely follows a formal complaint the utility company filed with federal transportation authorities against Union Pacific. It claims the railroad is charging “excessive” prices and is, ahem, railroading its new contract.

The legal squabble involves Arizona Electric Power Cooperative Inc., a utility outfit based in this small southeastern Arizona town that serves 100,000 homes and businesses in places such as Duncan, Bullhead City, Pima and Willcox. A small fraction of its electricity also feeds Salt River Project Co. in Tempe and users in Mesa.

Both sides had a contract for shipping coal to the cooperative’s Apache generating station in Cochise that lasted from 2003 until Dec. 31, 2008. The coal is picked up from mines in Colorado and Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, then shipped to Arizona by train.

Last April, lawyers for the railroad drafted a new contract that they claim mirrored the old contract. They gave the utility cooperative one month to accept it, and they claim the cooperative did just that.

A legal back-and-forth ensued when the cooperative asked for lower shipping rates. They claimed they had never agreed to the new deal, and issued a prepared statement that called the rates “unfair and excessive.”

Now Union Pacific is asking U.S. District Court Judge Frank Zapata in Tucson to uphold their new contract, essentially forcing the utility company to pay the new rates.

In Sonora, one fishy lawsuit

TUCSON — Several Mexican fishermen and their American business partners are suing one of the largest seafood distributors in the world, claiming the company recently pocketed almost $2 million from crab meat pulled from the Sea of Cortez.

The recent hiccups have shattered a business relationship that goes back to 1996. That’s when Maryland-based Ocean Technology, which has offices in Arizona, first signed a contract to receive and distribute crab meat from AXSA Inc. of Houston, Mexi Food and Alta Sonora, two Mexican fishing companies. Since then, both sides have done almost $40 million worth of business together, according to court records.

But between April 2004 and December 2007, the crab suppliers claim Ocean Technology short-changed them by $1.4 million. Over the same period, they claim the company gave them defective shipping containers that caused more than $1 million worth of seafood to spoil, then pocketed the money it received as compensation from the container manufacturer without paying the fishermen.

In late 2007, the fishermen were forced to get a loan from Banamex Bank of Mexico. Proceeds of crab meat sales to Ocean Technology were supposed to go to the bank to help pay off that loan. The bank claimed the company never paid and required the fishermen to cover the loan.

But the fishermen’s troubles continued in 2008, according to the complaint. Between January and October, they claim Ocean Technology did not pay for $527,000 worth of crab meat.

Now they’re suing in federal court in Tucson, and they’ve hired attorneys from Snell and Wilmer, one of Arizona’s most high-powered lawfirms. Tucson lawyers Andrew M. Jacobs and Melissa A. Marcus are representing the crab fishermen.

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