President Trump this week launched his full support behind a massive project to transform a sacred site Apache outside Phoenix into one of the largest copper mines in the world, meeting mining leaders at the White House and ridicules a recent judicial decision which temporarily stopped the transfer of federal land to their businesses.
Trump and the interior secretary Doug Burgum met on Tuesday at the White House with several leaders of Rio Tinto and BHP, the two multinational mining companies behind the planned copper mine. As proposed, the mine would become flat oak – a site long preserved from rocky outcrops and desert sailors at the edge of the Tonto National Forest – in an industrial crater almost 2 miles wide and 1,000 feet deep.
Trump also posted on the project on his social site Truth, calling for the court of court of court of the 9th American circuit which blocked the transfer a “radical left courtyard” and saying that it was “sad” that “radical left -wing activists” could block such a project.
“3,800 jobs are affected, and our country simply needs copper – and now!” Trump wrote.
He also wrote, without evidence, that those who fight the mine are “anti-American” and work on behalf of “other competitive copper countries”.
The Apache tribe of San Carlos, which is one of the complainants pursuing to block the mine, described the court’s decision “last -minute victory” in its current battle to save the earth.
“The people of Apache will never stop fighting for Chí’Chil Biłdagoteel,” said the Terry Rambler tribe in a statement, using the traditional Apache name for Oak Flat. “We thank the court for arresting this horrible exchange of land and allowed us to assert the advantages of our current trial in court.”
Trump’s decision to weigh directly increases the already significant profile of a monumental legal battle. He has aligned environmental activists and supporters of religious freedom, and has major implications for the country’s ability to meet his growing copper demand, which is an essential element of telecommunications networks, electric vehicles and other growing technologies.
Oak Flat was protected by the federal government for decades. The members of the tribe of San Carlos Apache describe it as a sacred terrain which houses spiritual tutors similar to the angels, and say that it was used for ceremonies of transition to adulthood and other generations.
In 2004, prospectors discovered that one of the largest copper ore deposits in the world, estimated to contain enough copper to provide up to a quarter of American demand, experienced 5,000 to 7,000 feet below the surface.
The battle to extract the deposit has been raging since, but in particular since 2014, when the former republican of Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake inserted the language forcing land transfer to a last -minute defense credits bill.
A trial brought by the Apache Stronghold group and led by Apache, Wesndsler Nosie Sr.
In May, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal to Apache of this decision, paving the way to the US Forest Service to publish a final environmental impact report and hear a final cycle of public comments before putting the land to the resolution of copper.
The decision marked a major loss for the mine opponents, but it has not ended other prosecution deposited to arrest it – including one tabled by the San Carlos Apache tribe and another by a group called Arizona Mining Reform Coalition.
On August 15, a district judge in Arizona issued an order paving the way to the transfer of land to move forward on Tuesday.
The groups appealed and the group of circuits of the 9th judges of three judges suspended the decision of the district court on Monday, pending its own audience of arguments on the transfer – of which the federal government has circumvented a stage required in the process of environmental examination.
The panel – composed of two people named by Clinton and a person appointed by Trump – said that he did not take a position on the bottom of these arguments, and would accelerate the case, with all the memories of October 14.
The suspended from the court, if only temporary, was applauded by Apache groups and other organizations whose members use the land Flat Oak for climbing and other leisure. Some have also spoken against Trump’s remarks, calling anti-Americans.
Ramber, the president of the tribe of San Carlos, said that the mine opponents “try to save the United States from making a disastrous decision that would renounce American resources with foreign interests”, and that Trump had been “poorly informed” to think otherwise by supporters of the mine.
Rambler said that BHP and Rio Tinto are foreign companies with links with Public Chinese companies and export the taken from Oak Flat – “probably in China”.
Rambler said he is impatiently awaiting “sitting with the administration and providing factual information to protect American assets”.
Nosie, in a press release provided to the Times, also accused Trump of storing on the side of foreign interests on those of Aboriginal Americans.
“Our nation cannot survive if we sacrifice what is crowned in the continuation of temporary profits,” he said.
Wendsler Nosie Sr., a long -standing opponent of the proposed resolution copper mine, brings together with other opponents at the mine at Oak Flat in 2023.
(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
He said that the people of Apache are grateful to all the support they have received from people from all political stripes and religious horizons, which, according to him, recognized the struggle for what it is – a “moral”.
“If we destroy our sacred land and poison our environment, we betray our children and grandchildren and we injure,” he said. “The future of the whole human race is at stake.”
A spokesman for Copper said that the company is convinced that the 9th circuit “would ultimately affirm” the decision “well underlined” of the district court in favor of the transfer of land.
“In the past 11 years, the Copper Resolution project has undergone a rigorous and independent exam under the National Environmental Policy Act, led by the US Forest Service. This review included an in-depth consultation with numerous Native American tribes with ancestral links with this land, local communities, civil society organizations and a dozen federal, state and county agencies, “said the spokesperson. “The collaborative process has directly led to major changes in the mining plan to preserve and reduce the potential impacts on tribal, social, environmental and cultural interests.”
The spokesman said that the project had another local support and “the potential to become one of the largest copper mines in America, contributing $ 1 billion a year to Arizona’s economy and creating thousands of local jobs in a region where mining has played an important role for more than a century.”
Tuesday’s meeting at the White House included Trump and Burgum, as well as the current director general of Rio Tinto, Jakob Stauusholm, the Director General of Rio Tinto, Simon Trott and the Director General of BHP, Mike Henry, as well as other White House officials.
The spokesperson for Resolution Copper said that the discussion was focused on “the mining industry’s ability to provide long-term copper and other critical minerals” of the OAK flat deposit.
