A wise old Greek Philosopher said that you can only step in the same river once. Of course he meant that the water you had stepped into first had already flowed downstream by the second time you entered the river. He never envisioned that the river would disappear altogether. But this is what may well happen to Pinto Creek, just west of Globe, Arizona.
Today Pinto Creek babbles merrily along beneath a cottonwood willow-arcade, considered one of the rarest vegetative communities globally. The river itself is a most unusual phenomenon for Arizona, an undammed waterway that still flows all year round for a third of its twenty-eight miles. It plays host to breeding birds, including the elusive eared trogon, and provides a home for four species of amphibians, six of fish, and nine of reptiles, and a wide variety of mammals such as bear, mountain lion and bobcat.
A tranquil setting, a hub of life - but not for long. Cambior, Inc. a Canadian company, has plans to change all this. According to information from American Rivers, which has designated Pinto Creek one of the ten most endangered rivers in our country, Cambior's Carlota Copper Project will be located "right on top of Pinto Creek and its tributary, Powers Gulch. This mining project would consist of one large open pit and three smaller ones, a leaching pad of about 313 acres, two major rock dumps, and various other infrastructures . . .The main pit would lie right in Pinto Creek forcing the permanent relocation of approximately one mile of the creek out of the pit area and into a diversion channel. The heap leach pad would lie in Powers Gulch, requiring another mile-long diversion channel for that tributary. . . ."
This heap leach pad with a capacity of approximately 100 million tons, would contain, in part, a solution of sulfuric acid, toxic to both man and animals. (So toxic, in fact, that the river must be permanently rerouted, never again to flow freely between its original banks.) In that regard, it comes as something of a shock to look at a map only to discover that Pinto Creek flows directly north into Lake Roosevelt, the beginning of the chain of lakes which provides the drinking water for the Phoenix metropolitan area. Of course, in case of a spill, the sulfuric acid would be many times diluted by the time it reached the Valley, just one more pollutant among many. But how many pollutants does it take before we begin to experience the effects?
Spill? Sulfuric acid spill? Such a thing would never happen, we are assured. And this in spite of the fact that the walls of Powers Gulch are extremely steep, just the sort of place where an August storm can drop an enormous amount of rain very quickly, creating a flash flood which can gush down a gulch with catastrophic results.
The effects of heavy rains and the possibility of spills are something with which Cambior, of all companies, would be well acquainted. In August of 1995, at their gold mining operation in Guyana, "a retaining pond gave way in a rainstorm and dumped 800 million gallons of cyanide-tainted wastewater into the Essequibo River. At least two people died of poisoning. The river ran thick with dead fish and wild hogs. It took Cambior five days to plug the leak. It was the second such spill in a matter of months." ("No Miner Consideration", New Times, September 7-13, 1995, p 16.)
But, for the sake of argument, let us assume that no spill will ever occur, that the fauna will learn to love diversion channels, concrete diversion channels by the way, and that the disturbance of 1,400 thousand acres of Tonto National Forest including prime riparian acreage will not result in too drastic a diminution of wildlife. Let us also be charitable and set aside the fact that a globally endangered vegetative habitat will be destroyed (but, we are told, will also be replanted - as if a natural balance which has evolved over centuries can be duplicated over night). We are still left with the question, what about the water? The mine would require 750 to 1,200 gallons of water per minute for the next twenty to thirty years. And thanks to the sulfuric acid, that's not water which can be used again.
Another glance at the map will show that Pinto Creek runs just east of the Superstition Wilderness Area. It is anyone's guess what effect this long term loss of water will have on a place which was set aside for our enjoyment today, our children's enjoyment tomorrow and for the preservation of wildlife habitat. However, given the basic aridity of the area, one can hardly suppose that this effect will prove benign.
What is all this loss in the name of? Copper. But do not underestimate copper. If you want to drive a car, keep food in the refrigerator, and enjoy many of the comforts that we tend to take for granted, copper is a necessity. And there is copper ore in Pinto Creek, reputedly 1/2 of 1%, a percentage that is viable with today's advanced mining techniques.
However, even here there is a downside. According to the original Environmental Impact Statement (which received the EPA's worst possible rating), " for the 5 year period ending in 1988, the free world consumption of copper exceeded the output by 1.75 million tons." (Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Carlota Copper Project. p. 1) But eight, almost nine, years is a long time in the world of economics, and for one thing, this statement does not take into account the projected doubling of Phelps Dodge's copper output in Chile. The worst possible scenario would be for the mine to be constructed, with all the environmental destruction this would entail, and then to have it prove economically unfeasible.
The other strong argument in favor of the mine, beside the existence of copper, is the number of jobs (an estimated 300) to be generated in the Globe-Miami area. Globe itself is one of the undiscovered treasures of our state, but being undiscovered could, along with the surrounding area, use an economic boost. Jobs (and mining today involves quality employment) are nothing to which one can turn a jaundiced eye.
To add to this, Globe has traditionally been a mining area. In fact, the Carlota site is right next to the Magma Copper Pinto Valley Mine, which incidentally, was fined $ 625,000 by Arizona and the federal government for a 1993 spill of toxic mine tailings - all going to prove that even the most conscientious and high tech mining operations can have problems.
Copper, a mineral necessary to our quality of life, and jobs -- these are both powerful incentives, as well as arguments in favor of the Carlota which would be extremely convincing if only the projected mine were in another location, specifically, not in a riparian area declared by Region IX of the Environmental Protection Agency to be "an aquatic resource of national importance."
The Game and Fish Department claims that 80 to 85% of Arizona wildlife depend at some point in their life-cycle on riparian areas such as Pinto Creek while, according to the figures used by both the Center for Environmental Studies at Arizona State University and the Arizona Chapter of the Nature Conservancy, 90% of Arizona's riparian acreage has been destroyed or seriously degraded. (Riparian areas have fallen prey to mines before. In fact, traces of the old Carlota mine acquired by Cambior yet remain. But even as late as the 1940's, when the old Carlota was still being worked, men lacked the means to create the environmental havoc they can wreak today.)
Sooner or later we must face the fact that to maintain bio-diversity in Arizona and to enjoy the plants and animals which are unique to our state, we have to protect the riparian areas that we have left. The line must be drawn somewhere. In twenty, or at most thirty, years Pinto Creek's copper will be gone. The mine will be closed and the jobs will be gone. Much of the wildlife, their habitat compromised, will be long gone. Pinto Creek itself and the riparian area associated with it will be, if not exactly gone, lost to the future generations in the biotically rich and welcoming state in which they exist today.
But traces of toxic sulfuric acid will still be with us.
Editorial by E. B. Lewis.
Bryant Bryson
Operations, Construction, and Readiness Division
Regulatory Branch
Department of the Army
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Washington, D.C 20314-1000
For more information contact:
Pamela Hyde, American Rivers, Southwest Regional Office, (602) 234-3946
Deborah Ham, Citizens for the Preservation of Powers Gulch and Pinto Creek,
(520) 425-4834
Don Steuter, Sierra Club, (602) 956-5057
Aimee Boulanger, Mineral Policy Center, (970) 382-0114
Links to additional information:
"Carlota Complaints" - Article on the archeological significants of the area around Pinto Creek New Times, September 7-13, 1995
Feedback - Letter to the Editor of NewTimes, about "Carlota Complaints" by Brian Lowry, Tempe
Over the next few issues, AZEENET will welcome articles, comments and references to documents which can help us evaluate these issues.