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Tribal request to halt Arizona copper mine work is denied

A federal judge has rejected a request by Native American tribes to stop Toronto-based Hudbay Minerals Inc. from preparing a planned new Arizona copper mine’s site.
Credit: AP
FILE - This, May 12, 2019 file photo, shows what's left of the Lavender pit mine outside the southeastern Arizona city of Bisbee, where the copper operation stopped in 1974. A federal judge on Wednesday, July 31, 2019, has overturned the U.S. Forest Service's approval of a Canadian company's planned new copper mine in southeastern Arizona. The judge ruled the agency improperly evaluated and considered water use issues associated with the Rosemont Mine planned in the Santa Rita Mountains on part of the Coronado National Forest. (AP Photo/Anita Snow, File)

TUCSON, Ariz. — A federal judge has rejected a request by Native American tribes to stop Toronto-based Hudbay Minerals Inc. from preparing a planned new Arizona copper mine site in the Santa Rita Mountains near Tucson.

U.S. District Judge James Soto refused to issue a temporary restraining order and dismissed the lawsuit filed by the Tohono O'odham, Pasqua Yaqui and Hopi tribes and the group Save the Scenic Santa Ritas, the Arizona Daily Star reported.

Soto's ruling Monday said Hudbay's surrender of a suspended Clean Water Act Permit for a nearby project named the Rosemont Mine removed the lawsuit's legal basis because the projects were not legally related.

The company pivoted to the Copper World project on private land on the Santa Ritas' western slopes after the Rosemont Mine ran into legal obstacles related to its location largely on public land.

Hudbay maintains that the Copper World site on private land doesn’t include stream beds, which are mostly dry except when it rains, that are subject to Clean Water Act authority.

Stu Gillespie, an attorney for the tribes, said Soto's ruling was disappointing because it “allows Rosemont to evade the regulatory process and bedrock environmental laws."

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