Rosemont Mine prospects continue to look shakier

by

by David Safier

The push by Augusta Resource Corporation to build the Rosemont Mine has been running into all kinds of problems lately. Environmental decisions haven't been favorable. The corporation is running out of money and having trouble digging up new funds. And now this.

Augusta Resource Corporation CEO Gil Clausen submitted his resignation from the board of directors of Jaguar Mining Corporation last Friday following a shareholder revolt aimed at forcing Clausen and two other directors off the board.

Mr. Clausen is the highest profile executive of Augusta Resource, whose subsidiary, Rosemont Copper Company, is seeking to a build a massive open pit copper mine in the Santa Rita Mountains on the Coronado National Forest south of Tucson.

Mr. Clausen’s offer to resign as Jaguar’s director could complicate Augusta’s efforts to avert a cash flow crisis and secure $404 million in long-term loans needed to construct the Rosemont mine.

Things continue to look worse for Augusta and better for Southern Arizona.

Discover more from Blog for Arizona

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

6 thoughts on “Rosemont Mine prospects continue to look shakier”

  1. Any jobs are good jobs taken in the extreme is something to be skeptical of. Any (mining) business is bad business taken in the extreme is also something to be skeptical of.

    Pick any portion of Arizona and some NIMBY guy is going to call that environment special if he can get away with it. If Madera Canyon is worthy I would just as well The Nature Conservancy bought it from the government that way I wouldn’t have to worry that George W. Bush or John McCain or Jon Kyl or Jeff Flake or Ed Pastor or Barack Obama or their underlings would slide a economic enema of a unknown nature into a bill when I wasn’t looking.

  2. As I said, you are sadly ignorant of the very unique area that would be impacted by this. The fact is that the ‘highest and best’ use for this land may well be in the touri$t$ that have been attracted for years to the special environments in the Tucson area. Just like thinking uranium mining is OK in the Grand Canyon area, this shortsightedness and ANY-jobs-are-good-jobs mentality is bad for the state on many levels.

  3. If a high paid mining engineer from Denver Colorado is hired to work at the Rosemont mine that guy pays (in part) the wage of dentists, doctors, county tax collectors and grocers in Southern Arizona. Just because that person may not have been born, raised and educated in Southern Arizona doesn’t mean he isn’t keeping folks employed. I imagine there will be at least one security guard hired from the Tucson area to work at this proposed mining enterprise. I don’t sneeze at even one job.

    Arizona has plenty of Sonoran desert. I have little worry that the supply of that is endangered by one more copper mine.

  4. You’ve obviously never been out to the Madera Canyon area, then, right? And you assume that the positions they would be hiring for are exactly what Tucson’s unemployed would be qualified for? Mining isn’t the little prospector and his burro anymore, it’s very high tech, requiring highly qualified workers. But easier to find them than beautiful Sonoran desert and mountain range with an unpolluted groundwater table. This thing was a bad idea from the get-go on many different levels. May they run into more of the same.

  5. If Rosemont gets approved the only positive economic impact will be for the company headquartered in Vancouver and China who will process the copper and sell it back to us at a high price in consumer goods.

    There may be a small amount of people hired locally to work in the mine for a limited duration. There may be work for the well drillers who have to deepen all the private wells that become useless because Rosemont’s water use drops the water table 100 feet. There may be work for the highway construction workers (paid for with tax dollars) to keep SR 83 usable. Scenic SR 83 was not designed for continuous heavy truck traffic and will be pounded to death. The employment opportunities will be limited and the devastation left behind will be forever.

    With the latest revelations about the Rosemont’s financial status what guarantee is there that the mine will be in continuous operation after it starts up? As copper fluctuates in price these mines start and stop operations based on demand. Who handles the social costs of the layoffs which will become a recurring event?

    The finances of Rosemont (save the salaries of the executives) looks pretty shaky currently. There is no assurance that they will be around with enough money to clean up their mess when they are done. Arizona will be left footing the bill with taxpayers money for remediation of the damage done to the environment

    Ever wonder why all these Canadian companies love to mine in the US? The reason is their OWN COUNTRY is much more restrictive about destroying the environment and requires royalty payments for valuable ore extracted from public lands.

  6. “Things continue to look worse for Augusta and better for Southern Arizona.”

    Because there are absolutely no unemployed people in the Tucson area that might need a job at such a mine? Really?

Comments are closed.