Rosemont Copper representatives' participation in meetings about their proposed mine is appropriate and hasn't violated federal law, the U.S. Forest Service said Friday.
Coronado National Forest's chief sent a letter to that effect late Friday to environmentalists who have raised legal concerns about the meetings.
Coronado Forest Supervisor Jim Upchurch wrote that mine opponents' letter claiming violations of federal law missed on several grounds.
The opponents' letter of Dec. 27 focused on the Forest Service's practice of inviting Rosemont staff and consultants to meetings of various other local, state and federal agencies working with the service on the Rosemont draft environmental impact statement. Other outside interest groups including mine opponents weren't invited to those meetings.
The main reason Rosemont staff and consultants have joined meetings of various government agencies cooperating on the mine's environmental review "has been and will continue to be solely for the purpose of providing and receiving relevant technical information about the project," the Forest Service's Upchurch said.
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One of the three opponents who wrote the original letter, Gayle Hartmann, said she is sticking to her position that these meetings weren't properly organized, but said the Save the Scenic Santa Ritas group and other opponents haven't decided whether to file suit on the issue.
Jamie Sturgess top official for the Canadian company that owns the mine's private land in the Santa Rita Mountains, said the opponents are simply trying to delay completion of the public process involving Rosemont "and the production of copper in this country."
Advisory vs. Agency meetings
The opponents' letter said the Forest Service was in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act by having Rosemont staff or consultants at 18 of 23 meetings of the cooperating agencies since April 2009.
If one party to the mine dispute was invited to advisory committee meetings, environmentalists and other interest group representatives also should have been invited, said the opponents' letter, also written by the Center for Biological Diversity and the Farmers Investment Company. It's fine if Rosemont officials are there to make presentations on specific issues, but in many meetings consultants were there as invited guests and observers, opponents said.
Upchurch, however, said the cooperating agency sessions on Rosemont are not the same as formal advisory committee meetings that fall under this law. That's because the cooperating agencies don't function as a formal, organized group or committee, he wrote.
"The cooperating agencies do not offer consensus or collective advice or recommendations regarding Forest Service decisions," Upchurch wrote.
Hartmann said she doesn't think the service has analyzed this situation correctly. If Rosemont officials are simply sitting in a room and they have an impact on what's discussed, that is a clear violation of law, she said. She said she has been told by some agency officials involved in the meetings that Rosemont's participation has had a chilling effect on their willingness to voice their opinions, but declined to be more specific, saying she needed to talk to those officials before releasing names.
Sturgess said that opponents' inference is that there were inappropriate discussions between public agencies and private parties, and that "these people (from Rosemont) shouldn't be able to talk, and that's crazy.
"The people who wrote that (first) letter do not know how the NEPA process is supposed to work," said Sturgess, referring to the National Environmental Policy Act, under which environmental reviews are done of major federally approved projects.
DID YOU KNOW
The proposed Rosemont Mine would extract 220 million pounds of copper a year and employ 400 people on private and public land in the Santa Ritas, about 30 miles southeast of Tucson.
Augusta Resource Corp., parent company for Rosemont Copper, hopes to start mine operations in 2012.
The Forest Service plans to release its draft environmental impact statement on Rosemont this year.
Contact reporter Tony Davis at tdavis@azstarnet.com or 806-7746.
