In “Setting the Document Straight”, revealed by the Tucson Sentinel on July 28, South32 CEO Pat Risner touts his firm’s dedication to belief and transparency when referring to its mining plans for the Patagonia Mountains and Santa Cruz County typically. Space residents, nevertheless, solely have the legacy of the mine’s earlier proprietor, AMI, to guage the poisonous legacy of mining in our mountains.
Now come the huge proposals of the present proprietor, Australia-based South32, and its file in different elements of the globe.
On July 16, “Residents: Mining in Patagonia Mountains can be an imminent hazard”, the authors famous that native residents ought to notice that “crucial minerals” for the rising electrical automobile world do not should be mined in a floor water-deprived and biodiversity-rich space as a way to handle the wants of the U.S. market. Furthermore, please take into account the truth that the Hermosa Mine has not demonstrated its price competitiveness with sources situated in close by free commerce nations corresponding to Canada.
On Might 8, in a South32 report back to shareholders, ears have been perked right here in Southern Arizona after we discovered about South32’s plans for a so-called “battery-grade manganese facility” with Santa Cruz County being anointed as the popular location. Bear in mind, if this involves fruition, the South32 manganese enterprise is claimed to final for the subsequent 60 years earlier than reserves are depleted.
In plain language, South 32 is definitely proposing the development of a chemical plant that processes Hermosa Mine manganese ores into excessive purity manganese sulfate monohydrate (HPMSM), a extremely poisonous manganese compound. This materials is helpful for some EV battery sorts — however not all — and is derived from liquid options that include extremely harmful and environmentally unfriendly chemical substances. As proven throughout its July 18 assembly to the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors, the rendering of this “facility” additionally consists of a big tailings storage pile proper subsequent to this plant, much like these used to retailer zinc and lead waste supplies in perpetuity, corresponding to on the Hermosa Mine web site.
This, and the spreading of much more tough to manage HPMSM mud particles throughout transport, makes most manganese mines, together with those already operated by South32 in Australia and South Africa for a very long time, determine to export a part of their ore to China for purification into HPMSM. But when South 32 has its method, manganese mining and purification are coming to a Santa Cruz County location within the very close to future.
Risner guarantees that the plant will function “with strict operational controls and regulatory oversight”. One solely has to overview the video by investigative media outlet Carte Blanche of South Africa on how, for a very long time, South32 witnessed the spreading of a devastating nerve illness, known as “manganism”, amongst miners and the neighboring inhabitants alongside mine-to-harbor transportation routes. In a report within the Washington Publish on June 8, medical specialists commented on the neuro-toxicology results of manganese compounds. They comment clearly concerning the state of flux relating to acceptable publicity ranges to manganese.
The authors due to this fact strongly encourage residents to talk up throughout upcoming Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors conferences that hopefully will scrutinize — within the curiosity of public well being and security — the nonetheless vaguely outlined however already extremely controversial industrial manganese actions being pursued by South32. Attend the South32 open home assembly introduced for August 17 in Rio Rico and ask questions on topics corresponding to outlined above.