Southern Arizona’s Democratic two congressional delegates want the head of the United States Department of Agriculture to consider a “no-action” alternative in an environmental impact statement that could lead to a decision to deny the proposed Augusta Resource Rosemont Mine.

Meantime, the Coronado National Forest will not release a draft of the Mine Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) by November, as originally planned.

The EIS is required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), but Coronado Supervisor Jeanine Derby said on Wednesday, that the statement will not be released next month and her office “has not developed an alternative schedule.”

Derby’s decision comes shortly before an Oct. 24 visit by Jay Jensen, environment deputy secretary of United States Department of Agriculture Natural Resources, who oversees Forest Service policy for the agency.

Jensen will tour the proposed mine site and attend a public meeting at the request of U.S. Reps. Gabrielle Giffords and Raul M. Grijalva. They want USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack to have the Coronado consider the “no-action” alternative on the grounds that mitigation to the forest land is not possible.

The Forest Service has never issued a decision denying a hard-rock mine, although litigation in response to agency approval has halted mining. Coronado’s position is that under federal law, particularly the 1872 Mining Act, it must only come up with means to mitigate or reduce impacts from a mine. This stance conflicts with other policies requiring environmental protection within the Forest Service.

Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry wrote Vilsack in September calling the Coronado-Augusta memorandum of understanding to evaluate a mining proposal an “abuse of power” and requested that the USDA secretary order Coronado National Forest to examine the validity of mining claims that would have tailings deposited on them, and to suspend the EIS process until the validity claim was done and an MOU rewritten.

Derby’s postponement of the draft EIS follows a growing series of studies and EIS alternatives submitted by Pima County, a formal “cooperating agency,” along with state agencies, for the NEPA process.

Two letters were sent on Sept. 30 by Huckelberry to Derby. One of them included a study commissioned by the county written by National Academy of Sciences member-geochemist Ann Maest. Huckelberry emphasized that Maest was co-author of a 2006 analysis for Earthworks, an environmental nonprofit, that concluded that 76 percent of mines studied, approved under NEPA for U.S. public lands, violated the Clean Water Act.

Maest’s analysis examined Augusta tailings “leaching” (water polluting) potential, and ore analyses submitted to the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality as part of a state Aquifer Protection Permit. Such analyses are submitted to demonstrate the potential of a mine to contaminate ground and surface water based on the actual ore mined and tailings produced.

Maest said Thursday, “Augusta’s reports lacked information clearly stating which rock formations the copper ore would come from �- it is impossible to know if the tests conducted by the mine are of ore that would actually be mined. Too few samples were used in the testing and not all contaminants of concern, such as radioactive compounds, were measured. Even so, Augusta’s results suggest that elevated concentrations of sulfate, fluoride, and antimony may be leached from mined materials in a relatively short time.”

Huckelberry asked Derby to, “refrain from relying on unproven statements (by Rosemont) and to gain more scientific information,” to characterize the ore, tailings, and geochemistry of the mine.

In August, Pima County officials had suggested that Rosemont consider an underground mine alternative that included tunneling through the Santa Rita Mountain ridge and sending waste by rail to the Twin Buttes mine in the Green Valley area, an idea that would generate considerable discussion in that area.

The mine dismissed the proposal “without reason,” said Huckelberry. The county also suggested land trades as partial mitigation, backfilling or partially backfilling the pit and using liners below the tailings, all dismissed by Rosemont, according to Huckelberry.

Huckelberry said that Augusta’s submissions to the EIS process included: incomplete hydrological analysis; protection of offsite springs and seeps; underestimation of amount of runoff; lack of protection for groundwater and surface water; the need to analyze creating a new canyon for runoff to avoid runoff through tailings into Barrel and Davidson Canyons; long-term closure design to fit proposed use of land in the future; monitoring and reclamation bonds.

Some comments were related to Pima County’s authority to regulate flood plains under state law and originated with that department. Huckelberry re-submitted requests originally given to the forest service in 2008 for independent hydrologic studies of the Sahuarita-Green Valley basins that have received no agency response to date. Julia Fonseca, who has represented the Pima Flood Control District, said that the county “has no idea what water data is available.”

Pima County officials had proposed that Augusta provide precise locations of where different operations will take place to the county public GIS Web site so that interested parties can conduct alternative studies.

In an Oct. 14 letter to county supervisors, Huckelberry attacked a recent Rosemont Mine public mailing to regional residents that described the mine as “sustainable,” producing twice the copper out of half the land on half the water consumption, and that said purchases of excess CAP recharges of water for the Santa Cruz basin had already offset up to 10 years of mine water use.

In his letter, Huckelberry said the proposed mine has failed to meet other criteria beyond reclamation that the county laid out in 2006 including pre-funded and enforceable reclamation while operating, setting aside 8,800 acres for preservation per county conservation guidelines with an environmental endowment to manage those lands, and no impact to water in Cienega Basin and Creek.

Rosemont Vice President for Sustainable Development Jamie Sturgess originally suggested that he could respond to the county letters to the Coronado Forest Service, but later said, “Rosemont chooses not to comment on internal deliberative or draft documents that have not been released to Rosemont by the Coronado Forest.”

Forest Supervisor Derby said, “We haven’t responded yet to the Sept. 30 letters. We consider the meetings of cooperating agencies to be the appropriate venue.”

At an Oct. 15 meeting of those agencies, the forest service agreed to provide Pima County with a list of studies under way.

Coronado Regional Hydrogeologist Roger Congdon said it was unknown how long it would take to characterize the hydrology (behavior of water) in the basins around the mine and in surrounding aquifers for the Rosemont EIS

(Edtior’s Note: Kamp is environmental liaison for Wick Communications, which owns the Nogales International/Weekly Bulletin.)