The main web site for the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan contains information of vital interest to anyone involved in mining. The following information is from documents on that site. See the References section for additional links and information.
According to the Preliminary Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, mining areas seem to be either a historic site to be preserved as in:
"Of the 338 historic sites recorded in Pima County, most are of ranching, mining, and farming."
or is a threat to historical sites
"The attached report quantifies the resource integrity of each subarea by measuring total ground disturbance from four sources that historically have been damaging to cultural and historical resources: urbanization, agriculture, mining and road construction."
as well as a stress on the ecology, in a report by the Nature Conservancy and shown on tables in the plan.
The Sonoran News - the official newsletter of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, Issue #2 May 2001 consists entirely of an article on "PROTECT THE IRONWOOD FOREST NATIONAL MONUMENT DESIGNATION" by Raúl M. Grijalva, Chairman, Pima County Board of Supervisors and has the following paragraph on mining:
"I believe that the broad and spirited community support for the designation of the Ironwood Forest National Monument is an indication that we have not asked for enough in the way of preservation, and that we have overestimated the meaning of prior defeats of protection efforts. Years before the designation, a drawn out community process that reflected near unanimous support for protecting Ragged Top Mountain as a wilderness area was flicked away in the end, when a single interest generated a moment of fear within Congress about the potential for small mining claim holders to emerge in numbers. We must not let this happen again."
The above comments are actually most of the mining references in the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan and newsletter. This does not bode well for mining of any sort within the confines of Pima County. It is up to us to let our county supervisors know that many small mining claim holders live within their midst and we are watching them closely on this issue.
The Pima County Board of Supervisors web page has the phone numbers of the county supervisors and links to their web pages. The County Administrator has its own web page for contacting Chuck Huckelberry. To make it easy for everyone to make their wishes known, I have included contact information below.
County Administrator
Board of Supervisors
Note that metro area in ( ) is only approximate. See their website for more exact
district boundaries. Addresses are the same for all the supervisors, only the name
and district of the supervisor changes.
Ann Day
Supervisor, District 1
Pima County Board of Supervisors
130 W. Congress, 11th Floor
Tucson, Arizona, 85701
Terms of service: January 1, 2001 through December 31, 2004
Please send any comments and suggestions on these pages to the DGD Webmaster
This page was last updated on 4 March 2004.