We have been involved and concerned Santa Cruz County citizens in the Community Protection and Benefit Agreement (CPBA) process for the South32 Hermosa Mining Project. All along, we have been trying to follow the very piecemeal information shared with Santa Cruz County residents. Now we have been asked by the potential Signatories, The City of Nogales, the Town of Patagonia, Santa Cruz County and South32, to fill out a survey found online at https://cpba-hermosa.org/survey/.
After looking at the survey several times, we are surprised at how complicated, cumbersome, and incredibly lengthy it is. This paragraph alone was a turnoff:
This is not a general opinion form. Submissions should identify a specific concern, explain the basis for that concern, describe the potential pathway of impact, and recommend a practical protection, monitoring measure, trigger, or accountability provision that could be considered for inclusion in a Community Protections and Benefits Agreement.
We want to participate in the process, but we are not experts in any of the nine topical areas listed (water, air quality, traffic/roads, etc.), nor could we provide recommended “pathways of impact” or “monitoring measures” or “accountability provisions,” etc. Not our job! Yet the Signatories ask us to describe our concern about each area, then provide information no citizen would ever have. The whole thing makes us angry.
They say that silence is deemed acceptance and, while we cannot complete the survey, we must share our input somehow with the public and the powers that be. Here goes:
We’re concerned citizens who are worried about the current and future impacts of this mine, or any industrial impact of this magnitude, as well as the post-mining impacts that will never go away (aka legacy impacts). We fully expect the consultants to take all of the data and findings in the FEIS, the documents submitted for the input portion of the FEIS (and those that may have been screened out by the USFS and its contractor), all public input and this survey input received, and to develop meaningful protections and mitigation measures.
We are disappointed that this survey is the vehicle that citizens have been given to share our important feedback. We expected better. We suspect that others will be so turned off that they will, like us, send it to the circular file. But we encourage all citizens of Santa Cruz County to take the time to write their public officials by August 7, 2026, anyway. Let them know your concerns in whatever way makes sense to you. And while you are at it, tell them how you feel about this “survey.”