TUCSON, Ariz. - Looking south, the Santa Rita Mountains rise dreamlike from the desert floor, a hazy string of stony monoliths peppered with stands of oak and pine. Only a 30-minute drive from Tucson city limits, the range is typically thick with hikers, birders and hunters seeking refuge from traffic, noise and heat.


But from the downtown offices of ASARCO Inc., the Santa Ritas represent the future of copper harvesting in southern Arizona, a potential open pit from which the company hopes to reap millions.


The mining giant has announced plans to develop 2,800 acres it already holds on the range's northern flanks, and has requested a land swap with the Forest Service that would give it 13,272 additional acres around its present private holdings. In exchange, the federal agency would gain 2,222 long-sought-after acres scattered around the state.


If the trade is approved, ASARCO would lock up the additional property no matter how Congress alters the General Mining Act of 1872. Long under fire, that law allows hardrock mining companies to patent public land for minimal fees and never pay royalties to the government for minerals extracted.


But the proposed trade is not going smoothly. The company has inadvertently created a coalition among Tucson's noisy environmentalists and some local ranchers and newer retirees in Sonoita, the nearest town to the proposed copper mine. The Tucson critics say ASARCO's "Rosemont Project" threatens a valuable watershed, a crucial wildlife corridor in one of the state's "sky islands' and the integrity of a popular recreation area. Sonoitans, including newcomers who moved to the area for its quiet and beauty, fear the mine would bring them truck traffic and industrialization.


Often at odds over grazing and other land-use issues, the several camps have found common voice in a budding nonprofit group called Save the Scenic Santa Ritas, or SSSR. As a sign of its growing strength, last February the organization's lobbying bore fruit. In symbolic votes, Tucson's city council and the Pima County board of supervisors opposed the land swap.


"The people joining our coalition run the spectrum from liberal to conservative, with all of them united to stop this project," says Save the Scenic Santa Ritas chairman Bob Beatson, who also heads the increasingly influential Arizona League of Conservation Voters.


"The bottom line is that we all want to prevent this mine from going into the most inappropriate place imaginable," he says. "In fact, the only less appropriate place I could think of for it would be in downtown Tucson."


Jake Kittle agrees. A former Wyoming rancher retired to Sonoita, he's among the proposed mine's sharpest critics. "That 13,000 acres ASARCO wants is very heavily used by people as a prime recreation area, full of wildlife like mule and whitetail deer," he says. "And I know that right now ASARCO is testing the air. If we don't rise up and fight it right now, it will be too late."


ASARCO, a New York-based corporation with $3.2 billion in sales in 1995, seems hunkered down for the long haul. Water needed for a new mine may not be available until another of the company's operations, the Mission Mine, near the retirement burg of Green Valley, plays out in an estimated 15 years.


Meanwhile, even approving a plan for the swap could take up to six years, according to Steve Christiansen, the Forest Service's new point man on the project. On Aug. 8, the Forest Service suspended work on ASARCO's proposal until it receives the company's mining plan. Coronado National Forest Supervisor John McGee says the agreement between the agency and ASARCO to complete an environmental impact statement will be on hold until the company delivers.


"This project is very controversial, and there's a high degree of public interest in it," said Christiansen.


That is an understatement, according to mine foes, who accuse the agency of favoring the swap simply to make their bureaucratic lives easier. While ASARCO says it wants the additional 13,000 acres to "create a buffer" around the mine, opponents say the company is pushing the swap to avoid a burdensome environmental impact statement if it were to operate on public land.


Dale Dixon, an ASARCO project development manager, denies that his company seeks a land trade primarily to dodge oversight. "That area could be mined just as well without the exchange," he says.


ASARCO is trying to be a good neighbor, he adds. "We hope there's room for compromise. We're not in the habit of just going in and tearing land up."


That statement raises the hackles of John Donaldson, a Sonoita rancher who's already tasted corporate incursions firsthand. A big chunk of public land once leased to his Empire Ranch was sold to a mining company in the late 1980s. The property ended up in the hands of ASARCO and now comprises its Santa Rita holdings.


Insult would only be added to still-raw injury if his view is transformed into a slag heap, he says.





* Tim Vanderpool





Tim Vanderpool freelances from Tucson, Arizona.





You can ...


* Contact Save the Scenic Santa Ritas, Box 857, Sonoita, AZ 85637 (520/455-4727), or,


* Contact Steve Christiansen, Rosemont Project supervisor, Coronado National Forest, 300 W. Congress, Tucson, AZ 85701 (520/670-4583), or,


* Contact John Balla, ASARCO Rosemont Project director, 520/798-7754.