COMMERCE/WILBUR ROSS: “Rio Tinto’s proposed Resolution Copper Mine in Arizona would tunnel 7,000 feet underground, where rocks radiate heat from the earth’s molten core. It would suck up enough water to supply a city and leave a crater a mile and a half wide and 1,000 feet deep.
Planned for more than a decade, the project would be a prototype for a looming era of more invasive U.S. mines as companies run out of easy-to-reach deposits, geologists say. It is also the project President Donald Trump’s Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, had in mind as he began crafting a ‘hit list’ of regulations that should be killed to speed industrial permitting…
The massive project – which would be among the world’s largest copper mines – underscores the dangers of weakening America’s rigorous permitting process at a time mining endeavors are becoming increasingly complex and environmentally risky. And Ross’s citation of Resolution as a poster child for suffocating regulation reflects how far the Trump administration is willing to go to advance economic growth.
Sorting out the mine’s potentially negative impacts is anything but simple, and many local residents, along with Native American and environmental groups, say Resolution is exactly the kind of development that cries out for intense public scrutiny – no matter how long it takes…
A federal government review of the project has drawn about 130,000 comments from concerned constituents – more than 10 times the number who gave input on the smaller Rosemont Copper Mine nearby.”
-Emily Flitter, “Massive copper mine tests Trump’s push to slash regulation,” Reuters, July 10, 2017 10:20pm