Together, we represent thousands of Pima and Santa Cruz County residents who want to see the river corridor protected in perpetuity. The Santa Cruz River Refuge coalition recognizes that the Santa Cruz River has been a storied spiritual and cultural place for the Tohono O’odham and their distinct ancestors, and Pascua Yaqui people from time immemorial. We recognize that the people of the San Xavier District, in particular, have ancestral ties to the flowing Santa Cruz River and the lands around it. The original homeland of the O’odham and their ancestors, including the Hohokam and Early Agricultural People, is located on the river, which they collectively have stewarded for millennia. They continue to access these lands for ongoing cultural and religious practices.

The ecologically and culturally rich Santa Cruz River flows through the heart of Tucson, a fast-growing city of over 1 million people in the greater metropolitan area. After generations of colonization and groundwater overuse, the surface flow stopped running in some areas, with flows all but drying up except during heavy seasonal rains. In 2012, Pima County approved funding to vastly improve the quality of wastewater effluent that was being released into the Santa Cruz River. By upgrading the wastewater treatment facilities—which currently release highly treated wastewater into the Santa Cruz—local leaders, alongside restoration volunteers, created over 25 miles of vibrant habitat that has been foundational to the recovery of native vegetation, wildlife, insects, and migratory bird species.

The Santa Cruz corridor offers abundant recreation opportunities, including birdwatching at Sweetwater Wetlands and cycling and walking along the beloved 137-mile Chuck Huckelberry Loop, a popular paved recreation trail with dozens of access points that runs alongside the Santa Cruz and its major tributaries.

Our vision for an urban national wildlife refuge imagines an archipelago of protected properties along the Santa Cruz River that would offer permanent wildlife habitat and outdoor access. The Tucson land would anchor this “string of pearls,” offering shade, river access, and outdoor education for the neighboring communities. The Santa Cruz River Urban National Wildlife Refuge draws inspiration and lessons from current exemplary restoration work happening along the corridor, including the San Xavier District’s Wa:k Hikdan project.

Please reach out to your Congressional Representative(s) and ask them to oppose H.R. 2925, the “Mining Regulatory Clarity Act” sometime this week, as it will be voted on next week.

THE MINING REGULATORY CLARITY ACT: THE LARGEST HANDOUT TO THE MINING INDUSTRY SINCE 1872
 

The Mining Regulatory Clarity Act represents an unprecedented giveaway of America’s cherished public lands to mining corporations, upending and reversing over a hundred years of public land law precedent. Under the bill, anyone—for a nominal fee—gains absolute rights to occupy land in perpetuity, construct massive waste dumps, and build roads and pipelines across public lands to the detriment of all other values. This would preclude all other types of development and use, including renewable energy projects, recreation, and traditional cultural uses.

The Mining Regulatory Clarity Act would undermine the federal government’s longstanding authority to safeguard public lands,threatening the protection of irreplaceable cultural, environmental, and economic resources. That’s because the bill conveys mining claimants with an absolute right to permanently occupy lands. If an alternative use—like an electric transmission line or a renewable energy project—needed to cross “claimed” public lands, mining companies could extract large sums of money from the federal government in exchange for giving up their claim.
 

Unintended consequences – this bill could easily be weaponized. A person wishing to block a solar or wind farm or transmission project could simply file a claim in the path or the project and would be conveyed an absolute right to block it from moving forward.

Under Section 2(e)(1)(B), mining companies would receive a statutory right to permanently occupy and bury our federal public lands under tons of toxic waste. Further, Section 2(e)1(A) grants mining companies automatic rights-of-way for new pipelines, transmission lines, and roads across public lands—eliminating a central provision of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) that requires mining companies to receive a permit for such uses just like every other industry operating on public lands. Section 2(e)(2) would also eliminate FLPMA’s requirement that the company pay “fair market value” for using public lands for these facilities.

The Mining Regulatory Clarify Act was authored in reaction to recent court decisions that affirmed and enforced longstanding law.  According to proponents of this egregious corporate handout, the need from this bill arises from ac our case known as Rosemont, as well as two subsequent federal court rulings, where a company proposed using invalid mining claims to dump enormous quantities of waste generated at the mine site.  Their solution was to assert a right to dump water on thousands of acres of public lands, despite any valid mining claims.  The problem with that was obvious and courts blocked them:  holding an invalid mining claim confers no right to use or occupy the lands covered by the claim unless a valuable mineral is discovered.

This bill would tip the scales away from communities, the environment, and our clean energy future--giving the mining industry the power to dictate how we use our public lands.  Instead, Congress should work to balance our nation's clean energy mineral needs with all other public land uses, such as for renewable energy projects, cultural and historical resources, ranching, recreation, water resources, and wildlife.

Let's do our part == contact your legislators by clicking on the link below. Let them know that you OPPOSE the Mining Regulatory Act. Find and contact elected officialsI

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