While I was unable to attend Redhawk’s latest sideshow at the San Manuel Community Center (“Redhawk Exploration holds open house in San Manuel” by T.C. Brown, Oct. 15, 2025), from colleagues at the Lower San Pedro Watershed Alliance (LSPWA), I understand that little has changed about the format or content to allow for a “robust public consultation process.” And that is the point, or rather one of several points that need to be made.
In spite of repeated requests, Redhawk and its Canadian parent Faraday Copper refuse to host a public forum where the public is able to express and hear each other’s questions and concerns. Instead of open dialogue, we are treated to a parade of displays manned by company spokespeople, who eagerly recite their lines to small, ragtag visitor groups.
This format often allows explanations to fall short and contradictions to go unquestioned. As but one example, at last October’s open house I met a Redhawk geologist who enthused about today’s “green mining,” and her own and her employer’s commitment to protecting the environment. As proof, she claimed Faraday/Redhawk was conducting in-depth environmental-water studies. When queried, it turned out the focus of those studies was not on addressing whether sufficient water stores exist to sustain a full-scale industrial mining operation, but to show how the San Pedro has suffered historic contamination—which then prompted her to imply that Arizona’s last free-flowing river was not worth saving.
When informed that the San Pedro, in fact, sustains millions of migratory birds per year, along with several rare and endangered species living in one of the nation’s most unique bio-habitats, the same employee pivoted to discussing ways in which Redhawk was trying to conserve water during its exploratory phase of development. She then emphasized that Redhawk’s sole mission was to discover copper—not to gauge the environmental impacts of a future industrial mine.
To my mind, her claims were at odds with both her own and the company’s professed pro-environment stance. This year, LSPWA’s consulting hydrologist asked further questions about projected dewatering rates of an operational mine and stressed concerns about impacts to Aravaipa, but Faraday/Redhawk was unwilling to share details of their promised hydrological analysis approach.
I was reminded of these and other shortcomings in reading over Brown’s article on the latest Redhawk open house. For starters, we at LSPWA understand that Faraday/Redhawk’s “560 drill holes and over 200,000 meters of drilling” have been conducted without meaningful environmental oversight. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which must legally make only one to two site visits annually, relies on Faraday/Redhawk’s data collection and monitoring of its own environmental impacts—even on the new 67 drill sites on public land. This is a bit like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.
Lastly, when Faraday/Redhawk talks about the potential for a “significant, low-cost long-life copper operation,” it should be underscored that:
Faraday/Redhawk’s ultimate goal, as indicated in its prospectus, is to sell the Copper Creek operation to a large multinational—at which point one might assume that any early environmental promises will be moot.
“Low-cost” refers to the expectation that few jobs will be generated, a positive for investors that aligns with the stripped-down labor requirements of “automated” mining processes.
The lion’s share of profits will in all probability—because of the laxity of the 1872 Mining Law—depart not just the Tri-Community and not just Arizona, but the U.S. altogether.
In terms of lifespan, who is to say that another boom-and-bust cycle won’t find our region, at the end of the day, with an enormous abandoned crater, a mountain of toxic tailings, a community without water, and a ruined desert river wilderness?
While the folks at Faraday/Redhawk may be oblivious to the marvels of the San Pedro River watershed (of which Copper Creek is a tributary), naturalists, hydrologists, and those of us who live on or near—and love—our river know full well that the lower San Pedro sustains not just Arizona’s second-largest un-fragmented riparian wilderness, not just one of the world’s most unique and diverse bio-habitats, not just the state’s largest bosque forest and a beloved canyon, not just an increasingly popular destination for hikers, campers, sportsmen/women, and the people who choose to make this area their home—but that it is also essential to the City of Mammoth’s drinking-water supply and survival. Too, as issues of drought and water accessibility become ever more pressing, we know the aquifer sustains the flora that helps the desert to resist increasingly rampant forest fire, drought and flooding.
Sincerely,
/s/ Emily Duwel
Vice-Chair, Lower San Pedro Watershed Alliance