Environmentalists and Apache traditionalists have a
new legal wrench to throw into the controversial Mount Graham
telescope project the University of Arizona is building. The site
designated for the $200 million project is outside the area
approved by Congress in 1988, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S.
District Court May 25. The university pushed for the 1988
Arizona-Idaho Conservation Act because it included an exemption
from legal issues over the endangered Mount Graham red squirrel and
other environmental regulations, says Mount Graham Coalition’s
Roger Featherstone. “The law is pretty clear about the location,”
says Featherstone. “If they wanted to move they should have gone
back through the legal process.” The 21 groups who filed the suit
have long maintained that the project desecrates traditional Apache
shrine sites and threatens a unique mountain
ecosystem.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Mount Graham fight continues.
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