Oak Flat, a beautiful and sacred area of land in the Tonto National Forest, is under attack by a powerful mining company—this land grab will be disastrous for wildlife, Native American communities, outdoor enthusiasts, and nearby Arizona towns.
Oak Flat is an area of land located in the Tonto National Forest, about an hour outside of Phoenix. This beautiful piece of land is a hub for outdoor enthusiasts such as rock climbers, hikers, birders, and campers, but it is also a place of spiritual and cultural significance to many southwest Native American tribes.
Oak Flat, known as Chi’chil Biłdagoteel by the Apache, contains hundreds of Indigenous archaeological sites that date back more than 1,500 years. It is currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but unfortunately, this magnificent piece of land is in danger—Oak Flat happens to be sitting upon one of the largest untapped copper deposits in the world.
Before the 1870s, the Apache lived in the area that is now Oak Flat, but they were forcibly removed from their sacred land by the U.S. Cavalry and were placed on the San Carlos Reservation. In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower specifically protected Oak Flat by decreeing the area closed to mining and designating it as public land under the multiple-use mandate of the U.S. Forest Service. In the following decades, more than a dozen attempts to approve a land exchange deal in favor of mining in Oak Flat failed in Congress, and so the area remained protected.
The proposed mine, Resolution Copper, would be the largest copper mine in U.S. history. Owned by Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, the two largest mining companies in the world, Resolution Copper would create a mine 7,000 feet below ground and result in a sinkhole as deep as the Eiffel Tower. Of course, the immediate environmental impacts of this mine would be substantial, not to mention the long-term effects of the mine’s toxic waste, water pollution, and intensive resource use.
But the area is protected from mining, so what is there to worry about?
At the present, Oak Flat is no longer under the protection that Eisenhower granted it during his presidency. In 2014, Senator John McCain and a few collaborators added legislation that allowed the Oak Flat land exchange to occur into the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act—a must-pass defense spending bill. Hidden within hundreds of pages of legislation, Congress was unable to spot this addition and the legislation passed, despite Congress voting against the land exchange many times before.
“I never imagined that we would get it to pass without any community input, without Arizona being able to vote on it, talk about it, anything,” says Thaddeus Barringer, a former welder for Resolution Copper and now a rock climber at Oak Flat. “This place is too special to destroy.”
Without ever considering the will of the public, Oak Flat was put up for sale and is now at risk of being destroyed by Resolution Copper, yet a small glimmer of hope remains. Before the mine can begin, the U.S. Forest Service must approve an Environmental Impact Statement. Thanks to the Biden administration, the government has granted additional time past March 11, 2021 to consider the impacts that this project will have. However, the threat is still looming.
“Oak Flat is still on death row,” says Michael Nixon, an attorney for the indigenous activist group Apache Stronghold. “The Forest Service is just changing the execution date.”
Not everyone is against mining in Oak Flat though. Many residents in the small town of Superior await the economic revival of their town from the jobs and money that the mine will bring. Even some members of the Apache support Copper Resolution for the same reason.
But mining is not sustainable for the environment or the economy.
Once the copper is taken out, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton will leave Oak Flat and move on to destroy the next piece of land. And what will become of Superior? When the mine is empty and the land is left broken, the residents will be jobless yet again, with an economy that is still fragile and dependent on mining.
Even the temporary gains from mining at Oak Flat will be meek. Of the entire mass being extracted from underground, only 1% is commodity metal, and the town will receive little of the money gained from this project, mainly a small employee income tax. Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton will reap the largest benefits from the mine.
The lasting consequences of Resolution Copper are even more alarming. The proposed mining method, known as block caving, will leave behind huge voids that will eventually collapse to form a massive crater in the earth. Anything on the surface—indigenous sacred sites, outdoor recreation areas, and animal habitats—will collapse into the crater and be destroyed forever.
“Block caving is probably one of the most, I would say, environmentally dangerous types of mining that you can have,” says Henry Munoz Sr., a miner with 23 years of experience. “It’s basically an upside-down earthquake and there has never been a mine in the world that has started block caving at these depths, so basically all this is an experiment. We don’t know if it’s going to work or not.”
Not only will Resolution Copper destroy the land immediately surrounding Oak Flat, but it also has the potential to affect Phoenix, home to millions and the fastest-growing urban area in the Southwestern U.S. In a state now in its 21st consecutive year of long-term drought, a mining company planning to use the same amount of water as Tempe will exacerbate the challenges we are facing now.
Resolution Copper plans to dump all 1.6 billion tons of waste produced from the mine at a site called Skunk Camp southeast of Superior. The toxic waste will remain there forever, seeping into our ground and our water supply. A single failure of the tailing dam will contaminate Arizona’s water and worsen the region’s air quality, bringing tons of toxic and radioactive waste into Superior and the Phoenix Metro Area.
The potential mine at Oak Flat is an environmental issue and a social justice issue. History is repeating itself as indigenous people are forced out of their sacred land for the benefit of large corporations. The environment is sacrificed again in the name of money.
“They talk about indigenous people, they make it sound like we’re in the past and that we don’t exist and that we no longer carry on these ceremonies and these prayers, but we do,” says Vanessa Nosie, an Apache archaeologist. “We still do it now, in the present.”
There is still a chance that this land exchange will fall through, so it is up to us now, to speak out against the government and large corporations. For more information and to learn how you can help, visit http://apache-stronghold.com/take-action.html.
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