Arid mining in Tucson and Cripple Creek: of plastic water bottles and copper-laden cell phones

by Jack Caldwell

Tucson is not a particularly pretty town.  In mid-summer heat the dusty roads and look-alike shopping centers shimmer and visually pollute your view.  Yet look to the north and the mountains are perfect.  Or go out east or west of the town and just before, or maybe well after, your patience with more ugly houses runs out, there is that beautiful desert. 

I once took my family out into the beautiful desert for a picnic.  Disaster hardly describes the bugs and the heat and the dirty sand.  We should have guessed: we were the only people in the picnic area parking lot.  From then on it was to the Desert Museum or Old Tucson where corporate control produces a semblance of shade and entertainment. 

 

 

These crass Disney-appreciation-like thoughts are prompted by a report in today’s news of protests over a new mine south of Tucson.  My recollection of that area is a huge airfield and more old planes than than you can count and then industrial sprawl and then nothing.  Maybe I just never got past the industrial sprawl.

In the best American fashion those without jobs are supporting the proposed Rosemont mine, and those with jobs are protesting the mine.   And in the best American tradition we have the silliest of reasons given for not building the mine.  One that comes up every time people protest development is the impact of more traffic on the Interstate:

But for Mylan Webb, a junior at Cienega High School, the mine would make a safety hazard on Interstate 10 where her parents drive to work each day.   “My dad drives 100 miles round-trip to work and uses vegetable oil for fuel — he uses the same interstate that will be used to haul copper,” she said.

If that is the quality of thinking that comes from an eduction at Cienaga High School, it is little wonder jobs are flowing to other countries.  Personally I recall I10 as a busy highway of speeding, badly driven vehicles—I cannot envisage how a few more are going to affect the already affected. 

My favorite picture from the linked new report is that hoary old public meeting tactic:  the glass or bottle of water.  This time it gets even better.  I quote:

Chuck Hammond of the Sonoita area held up a copper-laden cell phone and a plastic bottle of water to illustrate what he saw as a stark choice.  “There’s simply not enough water left in the West for us to be able to continue to have both of these things. We will have to give up one or the other. Now I can live without the cell phone. But this I can’t live without,” he said, holding the water bottle.

I can see his point about needing water, but in a place that has already mined groundwater so much that half the countryside is subsiding?  Yet I cannot envisage him, or anybody else, happily giving up their “copper-laden” cell phone.   Personally I have given up water from plastic bottles, as I believe that is a terrible waste of resources.  I take the radical approach of using a glass filled from a tap.  Kind of novel, I know. 

Another old mining community split between those with and without jobs is Cripple Creek in Colorado.  The report summarizes their dilemma: 

Owners of Colorado’s largest gold mine are getting opposition to a $200 million plan to extend operations for four more years from an unexpected source - Cripple Creek, which was founded as a home for miners more than a century ago.  That’s because the plan would extend open-pit mining into areas that would remove trees from a ridge just east of Cripple Creek, which now depends more on gamblers than miners for its economic fortunes.

I do not know Cripple Creek.  Its pictures hardly shows beauty.  But you have to hand it to the city folk though.  As potential victims of foreign mining interests, they are prepared to get their pound of flesh to let the mine proceed.  Those folk down in Peru would be impressed. 

The city wants Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mining Co., owned by South African mining giant AngloGold Ashanti Ltd., to provide easements to extend a former tourist railroad from Cripple Creek to Victor, donate matching funds to build a recreation center for the two towns, design and build a historic site for century-old mining head frames and other equipment and ban its trucks from traveling through Cripple Creek, among other conditions.

I like old mining head frames as much as any and promise to go to the museum if it is ever built.  I bet it will be far more interesting than that fake Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas.  Building a museum for mining equipment in a gambling town seems such a worthy act, and such a small price to get out of South African mining, that I support the request to AngloGold. 

Fun and instructive as it is too read these reports by earnest young reporters unschooled in the ways of the world,  it is depressing to see the same tired old fights ever ongoing.   It is scary to think that major issues like resource development and economic development and environmental protection depend on who can more effectively wave a phone and a water bottle, and on who can more effectively conjure up images of more trucks on already over-crowded interstates. 

In reality, these fights occur in other arenas that we do not see that easily:  the environmental impact statements, the lobbing in Washington, the politics of presidential elections, and the fights in the courts going all the way to the Supreme Court.  

Yet these two instances of proposed mines and mine extensions represent the real issues of mining in the United States.  The place is crowded.  There is a shortage of water in the west.  There is little enough attractive open public land.  There is unemployment.  There are gamblers who value their views.  Foreigners do want to invest in a safe haven.  And people want their cell phones and maybe someday hybrid cars all laden with copper. 

 

6 comments

1 bob johnson { 07.01.08 at 10:42 am }

I think you would greatly enjoy a trip to Cripple Creek and Victor (much more thna Tucson!)

Here’s a few photos from my last trip:
http://picasaweb.google.com/goldsheet/CrippleCreekAndVictorColorado

and the Gold Belt Tour has a website: http://www.goldbeltbyway.com

Tourism and gambling may be the future of CC, but mining history must be preserved and respected.

2 Joan { 07.01.08 at 1:32 pm }

Yet again it is always quite surprising how short sighted people become. Just a few thoughts on why it makes no sense to oppose mining, as per this article:
- Jobs: mining provides a great source of jobs and a healthy flow of money to any area surrounding its sites. It revitalizes economies and allows its workers to improve their living standards.
- Highway traffic: This is almost an oxymoron. Highways were built to support traffic. If somebody doesn’t want to face traffic on a highway, take a back road.
- Water: the mining project will hardly be the cause of water loss, it’s everything else we do over the world that’s causing global warming - if that is actually true.
Green areas: What good does it do to have green areas in an impoverished ground? Give me progress and a decent living wage over a few trees any day. Try feeding your kids off of trees…

3 Ol' Snark { 07.01.08 at 7:46 pm }

At least the guy figured out that copper goes into a “sell phone” along with many other mineral commodities… that is something of an improvement from the average yahoo in the US who has not a clue as to what things are made of… most haven’t figured out that the road they drove to work on today was built with stuff that came from a mine.

But even the folks who do have a bit of a ‘clue’ still don’t get how dearly their conveniences will cost them over the near and medium term. We are rich here in North America - far richer than the folks in Asia who want a similar lifestyle. There has been a tectonic shift in the demand for mineral commodities.

Mineral Resources and Reserves are the key to a future rich North American lifestyle in Asia. Copper will play a foremost role in achieving that lifestyle. Thus the state companies from Asia (read that China) go forth to acquire production throughout the world - the rest of the world will pay market prices while they get their for the cost of production. Guess who really knows how markets work.

Here in North America we can afford to decide what we ‘want’ in the way of mining versus ‘pretty places’ rather than taking the hard path and making choices based on a recognition of what we ‘need’ to continue our rich lifestyles… For the moment anyway.

4 rearden215 { 07.04.08 at 9:37 am }

I watched the vista around Austinville/Ivanhoe, Virginia area go from one of the spinning headframe sheaves of prosperity to one of destitute screen doors on abandoned camp houses slapping in the wind.

The social impact of mining is seen by many contemporary commentators as the primary reason to forego gathering up earth’s resources- even if done so for the greater good of the many.

Few of us would presume to stand and defend the mining industry against these arguments given the checkered past of some promoters and operators over the past two hundred years.

Like many proponents of mining, I, too, see a disconnect between the consumer and where things really come from and feel a genuine need to educate those who are so vociferous and passionate in their quest to end all mining on the planet.

However, I truly fear that somewhere in the deeper reaches of those souls who disdain what we do as miners is is a dislike of capitalism which is genuine but obscured from view.

Perhaps I shall go shopping today and demand to purchase finished goods manufactured without any raw materials.

5 Lee Allison { 07.06.08 at 8:06 pm }

It’s been a while since you’ve been to Tucson. The proposed Rosemont mine is about 20 miles south of town in the Santa Rita mountains. The Davis-Monthan Air Base you describe is not that far from the city center and is now mostly surrounded by urbanization.

The Santa Ritas have been mined and ranched for more than a century but are still considered pristine by the copper mine opponents.

And while not forested and green by Canadian standards, I will argue that Tucson is indeed a beautiful city. Get out of the industrial-air base area and find the barrios being rejuvenated and the lush diversity of the Sonoran desert. Let me know when you’re in the area and we’ll give you a greater appreciation for Arizona mining and esthetics.

6 Silver Fox { 07.09.08 at 8:03 am }

Tucson is a fine city, and you show three pictures of its beauty. Many people don’t appreciate any desert areas; drive up the Santa Catalina Mountains, go skiing and have a look at the great views.

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