Tribal activists, geologists and water experts, and a former mayor appeared before a congressional subcommittee in Washington on March 12 to deliver a message: Congress should stop the upcoming destruction of an area east of Phoenix for a copper mine.

Oak Flat, known as Chi’chil Bildagoteel to Apache people, is the site ofa proposed mining operation by Resolution Copper east of Superior. The land holds cultural and religious significance to about a dozen Arizona tribes, as well as being a popular recreation site and home to important medicinal plants and stands of Emory oak, they said.

Opponents of the mine also held a rally the day before on the Capitol Mall.

The Subcommittee for Indigenous Peoples of the United States, part of the House Natural Resources Committee, held the oversight hearing to learn more about the issue from members of the San Carlos Apache Tribe, which opposes a land swap that would give Oak Flat to the mining company. The site is part of the Tonto National Forest.

Resolution, owned by British-Australian mining firms Rio Tinto and Billiton BHP, is set to trade 5,376 acres of private land for 2,200 acres of forest land, giving it access to the copper underground.

The land swap was authorized during a late-night rider attached to a defense spending bill in 2014.

Subcommittee chairman Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., said that he felt the process to develop a draft environmental impact statement was flawed. “The language in the National Defense Act stipulated that the National Forest Service produce an environmental impact statement, or EIS, to document the effects of the mining plan before the exchange occurred,” Gallego said.

But, he added, the legislation stipulates that Oak Flat be given to Resolution Copper within 60 days of the completion of the EIS, regardless of the findings. “This is absurd and completely backwards,” Gallego said. He said that the process should have occurred before any land exchange was agreed on.

The mine will eventually create a crater between 800 and 1,100 feet deep and 1.8 miles across, he said. “That’s about twice as deep as the Washington Monument is tall,” Gallego said, “and as long as the distance between the U.S. Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial.”

Tribal activists decry the destruction of sacred and culturally significant places

Former San Carlos Apache Tribal Chairman Wendsler Nosie, Sr., who’s leading the opposition to the mine, said that he and his tribe fought the land swap proposal for more than a decade. And, he said, more than 300 other tribes and organizations prevented the proposal from moving forward on several occasions, only to be stymied at the 11th-hour by a rider “unveiled just minutes prior to midnight the evening before the vote.”

“We know we have to live with water,” he said. “I wish people would come with me and sit on the mountaintops and see how the winds move, and how the mountains direct the winds to bring the rain.”

Nosie’s granddaughter Naelyn Pike represented the youth voice. “Chi'Chil Bildagoteel is my home, it is who I am, and it is where I am free to be Apache,” she said. Pike had her Sunrise Ceremony, which is her rite of passage, at Oak Flat. And, she said, Apaches have the right to practice their ceremonies in these sacred places. “How can we practice our ceremonies at Oak Flat when it is destroyed?,” Pike asked. “How will the future Apache girls and boys know what it is to be Apache, to know our home when it is gone?”

Environmental impacts could include the destruction of a rock escarpment called Apache Leap, tailings pollution and water shortages, experts say.

In addition to the cultural impacts, said some experts, water and electric use will also have an impact on the Valley and Arizona.

The water that the mine will require greatly exceeds the promises made by Resolution and its corporate owner, Rio Tinto, geophysicist and hydrology expert Steven H. Emerman told the subcommittee. “Rio Tinto has promised water consumption of only 15,700 acre-feet per year,” said Emerman, “but the projected consumption is actually 50,000 acre-feet.” And, under the best-case scenario, the mine will have to contend with a flow of groundwater that’s about 3,800 gallons per minute. The additional power requirements to dewater that water and cool the tunnels, which at 180 degrees are too hot for human survival, would require about 24 megawatts. And, he said, the total electricity required to run the mine could slurp up to 22% of the Salt River Project’s peak power capacity.

The crater is also of concern: Emerman noted that based upon the uncertainty of how fast the land will subside due to the block cave mining process, there’s about a 9% chance the crater will reach Apache Leap, causing damage to the iconic formation.

And then there’s the matter of the tailings dam, which could rise as high as 60 stories. “It’s not a matter of if this tailings dam will fail but when,” Emerman, the author of more than five dozen peer-reviewed papers on hydrology and geophysics. He said that, if the toxic tailings escape their containment, the pollution could travel up to 370 miles.

Emerman broke into tears as he said, “Don’t do it, don’t let the project go forward.”

MORE: Wendsler Nosie, Sr., has spent his life advocating for Native rights; now he's facing his biggest challenge to save Oak Flat

Emerman added that much of the draft environmental statement simply repeated many of Resolution’s assertions, a statement echoed by James Wells, a geologist with environmental firm L. Everett & Associates. “This was not a normal National Environmental Policy Act process,” said Wells.

Also, Wells, who served on the groundwater modeling group that advised Tonto National Forest during the draft EIS process, said that the EIS failed to take into account that Resolution’s plan to pump groundwater to process the ore is a “vast new water demand for an area of the Southwest that is already experiencing water shortages – there’s simply not enough water to go around.” But, thanks to current state law that gives mines great latitude to use water, Resolution may be entitled to pump an unlimited amount of East Valley water, he said.

Roy Chavez, head of the group Concerned Citizens and Retired Miners Coalition, and former mayor of Superior, said that the old mining technique used at the mine, called cut and fill, is more expensive and labor-intensive than the block cave mining method that Resolution wants to employ. However, the method, which involves tunneling underneath the ore body until it collapses under its own weight for trucking out to a processing facility, uses fewer workers but increases the chances of catastrophic failure, he said. “Nobody has discussed the appraised value of the copper ore, nor the 12 square miles of land that would be used for the tailings,” said Chavez. And, he said, “We’re not getting a penny out of it,” referring to an 1872 federal law that failed to provide for any royalties to be paid to the government for minerals extracted.

The Center for Biological Diversity commissioned appraisals of the lands that Resolution would convey to the government in December 2019. Appraisers determined that the four parcels are worth $7.14 million, far less than the estimated $112 billion of copper that Resolution would extract from the mine, based on the December price of $2.80 per pound. “The value of the copper a mile below Oak Flat alone is worth approximately 15,700 times more than the land the foreign mining companies hope to trade for the area,” Robin Silver, co-founder and board member of the center, said in a statement.

Other tribes and tribal organizations lent their support. White Mountain Apache Tribal Councilman Jerold Altaha said that his tribe’s stance has not changed since it first enacted a resolution supporting San Carlos’ efforts to protect Oak Flat in 2006 even though White Mountain participates in a monitoring program to determine where cultural artifacts may be located. “Our tribe continues to support San Carlos in protection of its sacred places,” said Altaha. “We stand with them.”

Kevin Allis, CEO of the National Congress of American Indians, said that the land transfer of Oak Flat to Resolution Copper contradicts the federal government’s responsibilities toward tribes as well as Congress’ record of supporting protection and preservation of tribal environmental, historical and cultural resources. Allis, a citizen of the Forest County Potawatomi Community, noted that Oak Flat has been under federal protection since 1955 during the Eisenhower administration. And, he said, the area was placed on the National Register of Historic Places as a traditional cultural property.

Resolution Copper issued an emailed response through a spokesperson. “Resolution Copper welcomes the opportunity to continue building on the extensive engagement with Native American Tribes, who are playing an important role in shaping this project,” the statement said. “The draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) released by the U.S. Forest Service shows that its preferred alternative identified for the Resolution Copper project meets all applicable federal requirements for protection of the environment and cultural heritage.” The statement went on to say that ongoing dialogue between the Forest Service, other agencies and tribes would help shape the final environmental impact statement and offer up mitigation strategies.

No Republican lawmakers were at the hearing; committee communications director Adam Sarvana said that the Republicans had chosen to boycott the hearing. Ranking Republican Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, issued a statement saying that some witnesses, including a tribal member who’s in favor of “responsible resource development” and some tribal leaders, were prevented from attending because of COVID-19 travel restrictions. Rep. Paul Gosar, R.-Ariz., a member of the committee, is still self-quarantined, said Bishop.

“These are obvious grounds to delay the hearing,” he said. “The responsible action would have resulted in postponement so that voices can be heard.”

However, Sarvana said, “Out of respect for tribal voices and the health risks our invited witnesses took to attend this hearing, we kept to our schedule.” He added that the committee had offered options, including video testimony and a second hearing date on the issue to accommodate other witnesses and lawmakers, but the Republicans declined.

House Natural Resources Committee chairman Rep. Raul Grijalva, D.-Ariz., who filed a bill to stop the land exchange that has stalled in Congress, said that the Oak Flat legislation denied tribal voices "in the middle of the night when it was stuck in the legislation — there was no transparency or honesty there."

And, Sarvana said, Nosie’s appearance and the attendance of Allis, whose organization represents hundreds of tribes, are proof that tribal leaders were present.

Pike concluded that the impact of the mine would have generational implications. She said, “I may be taking my children to a crater where our sacred places used to be.”

Reach the reporter at debra.krol@AZCentral.com or at 602-444-8490. Follow her on Twitter at @debkrol.

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