TORONTO — Hudbay Minerals announced last week that it has received the approved Mine Plan of Operations for the Rosemont project from the U.S. Forest Service. The issuance of the MPO is the final administrative step in the permitting process.
“Receiving the Mine Plan of Operations (MPO) is an important milestone that completes the permitting process at Rosemont,” said Alan Hair, Hudbay’s president and chief executive officer in a press release. “With the receipt of the Section 404 Water Permit, an agreement to consolidate 100% ownership and receipt of the approved MPO, Hudbay continues to move the project forward. Rosemont is now a fully permitted, shovel-ready copper project and we look forward to developing this world-class asset.”
Rosemont is expected to produce approximately 127,000 tonnes of copper annually at a cash cost of $1.14 per pound (net of by-product credits) over the first 10 years of operations, according to the company.
Despite the fact that the mine could bring desperately needed high-paying jobs to the people of the fifth poorest metropolitan area in the country, opponents of the state-of-the-art mining project have vowed to tie it up in court.
Randy Serraglio, a conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, stated in a press release, “Rosemont would do devastating damage to Arizona’s water and wildlife. There’s no justification for this destructive project. We’ll fight with everything we have to protect Tucson’s water supply, Arizona’s jaguars and the beautiful wildlands that sustain us all.”
In January 2017, the Center for Biological Diversity claimed in a press release that a jaguar captured on a trail video camera in the Chiricahua Mountains was a female.
“This Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) footage confirms that this is a jaguar we’ve seen before, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has photographic proof that this animal is unequivocally male,” said Jim deVos, assistant director for Wildlife Management at AZGFD said at the time. “We promptly informed the organization when the news release was issued that there is clear anatomical evidence of this jaguar’s gender.”
That press release quoted Seraglio, “The really exciting part of all this is that we don’t know yet what sex (it) is,” and it refers to “the possibility that it may be a female… capable of jump-starting jaguar recovery in the region.”
Had the jaguar been female, the Center would have been able to assert that a breeding population existed and the mine would put it in peril. However, as the ADI reported at the time, the nearest breeding population in is Mexico and the decades-long lack of a documented female make a population in this state unforeseeable.
“The Rosemont Mine would be a tragic loss for Arizona’s wildlands and wildlife,” claims Serraglio. “The mine is a huge threat to Tucson’s water security and would dry up irreplaceable springs and streams that support endangered jaguars, frogs and fish. This disaster cannot be mitigated, and it must be stopped.”