ASARCO Eyes The Santa Ritas. By Jeff Smith THIS NO DOUBT will surprise you, but in certain circles the mine tailings dumps that blot out the late afternoon sun west of Green Valley are considered the Eighth Wonder of the man-made world. No joke: right up there with the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, Colossus of Rhodes, that sort of stuff. Of course the circle in which this premise was postulated comprised the hat-band of one David F. Brinegar, former executive editor of The Arizona Daily Star, and it was widely held during the man's tenure that he was owned, body and soul, by Arizona's copper mines. At least those portions of him that had not already been co-opted by the Central Arizona Project. Bless his heart, Dave strove mightily to convince anyone who would listen that what was good for the mines was good for us all. Anyone who regards the awful symmetry of those sterile heaps of over-burden that contribute to airborne particulate pollution and lend a kind of martial/industrial wasteland ambiance to what would otherwise be a lovely desert setting will appreciate what a crock both Brinegar and his preposterous notion were. Those piles of dust are butt-ugly; no way around it. The mining companies that put them there have squirted them with hoses to keep the dust down--to no avail. They've planted them with grass and trees to break the rectilinear outlines and disguise them as something approximating natural--same result. Most recently they've run cattle up and down their slope so that something--anything--might find enough organic matter to support plant life--and the jury's still out on that one. My suggestion, one which has yet to be tried, is that the mines contract with the Disney people, to sculpt the whole mess into something approximating desert foothills, complete with fake flora and fauna, maybe even a Matterhorn or an Alp or two. But no roller coasters. Maybe retrofitting would be cost-prohibitive. But an opportunity to test my suggestion looms, just one mountain range to the east, in ASARCO Mining's plans to re-open the Helvetia/Rosemont area of the Santa Rita range to open pit copper mining. This is news to you? Well it shouldn't be. This is the third time in the past three decades that various owners of the underlying ore bodies and water rights have floated similar plans. Each previous instance went away because of falling prices on the world copper market. Pray that this will happen a third, charming, time. Because make no mistake about it: the 20-square-mile development ASARCO envisions for the Rosemont property will turn Scenic Highway 83, between I-10 and Sonoita, into something more nearly resembling Mordor, of Tolkeinian infamy. You know--hobbits, Black Riders, trolls and orcs. As we speak the U.S. Forest Service is dickering with ASARCO over a land-swap which would trade about 2,000 acres of little chunks owned by the mines for 13,000 acres of public land around Rosemont, so ASARCO can dump its tailings and do its other housekeeping related to the mine, without having to haul the tailings somewhere else to dispose of them. In fairness it needs be said that the land ASARCO proposes to trade consists of many key "inholdings" the Forest Service has been wanting to get to consolidate larger tracts of public land, and that the dollar value of both sides of the proposed trade are virtually equal. It must also be noted that ASARCO could go ahead and mine the Rosemont ore body without doing the land swap. The federal mining laws allow mineral developers to do pretty much what they please. Making the land trade, and then doing the Environmental Impact Study, the mine development plans, and the other bureaucratic prep work really just provide both parties to the deal with opportunities to improve the outcome from their individual and joint points of view. In the extreme case, my point of view is that the copper ought to be left right where it is and that ASARCO should diversify into solar energy development. The penny is practically worthless today and on its way out of the currency market. Fiber optics are replacing copper conductors in the communications industry. If we could get homeowners off the grid and into solar power, our homes could get along just fine with aluminum wire and we wouldn't need any more copper than the minuscule amount required by quack doctors for copper bracelets that allegedly relieve arthritis. On the other hand, ASARCO probably would like to bulldoze the Santa Rita Mountains flat, pave it over and charge to park cars there, and ship all the copper to Japan at exorbitant prices. Estimates vary as to how long it may take for any or all of this to come to pass. Three to five years for an environmental impact study, another five to develop a mining plan and get it all going. Maybe 15 years while ASARCO's Mission Unit peters out. Maybe copper will become a drag on the market again and the whole thing will be tabled for the third time. But I've never been that lucky. I'm proceeding under a worst-case scenario mentality, and pushing for my Disneyland Option: If they must turn the Santa Rita Mountains into sterile dust and toxic waste, then at least make the tailings dumps into some kind of western theme park, where the deer and the antelope can play and poop, along with the ASARcows they hire to fertilize the infertile overburden... ...and local travelers as well as tourists are actively encouraged to pull over to take a look...and a leak.

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