Sometimes TV, radio and print ads promoting businesses end up achieving the opposite effect of what they are intended to do. Ever watch those prime-time TV ads for new drugs that have a longer list of side effects than they do benefits: for reducing the pain of a tooth ache, the risk of heart attacks and breathing failure increases, your private parts fall out of or off your body, and you’ll never see your loved ones again? Who would buy into that Faustian bargain?
Well, that’s exactly the response that is happening in Patagonia and Santa Cruz County since South32’s Hermosa Mine has begun to stuff our mailboxes with fliers about the bright, sustainable future they are building for us, and ads on Arizona Public Media’s Morning Edition radio about how they are at the forefront of sustainability. Every conversation I’ve had with Patagonia residents in the last two weeks has echoed my neighbors’ distrust for “green Kool-Aid” made with what tastes like contaminated water.
South32’s premature claim to sustainability is a little like an 18-year-old boy getting married to his pregnant girlfriend and claiming that he’s a good father. Wait a minute: can you wait to see how it all works out before putting a trophy up on your mantle? If you have not mined any material for sale, nor divulged how much water you are actually going to use, why should we trust your claim that South32 will be “consuming 75% less water than other mines in the region?”
The proof is in the pudding, hoss. I’d rather talk to mine technicians in the Wagon Wheel Saloon who are clearly conversant with trucks, heavy equipment, sports, fishing and country music than South32’s office crew who continue to make claims they cannot support and who use the sustainability sword they cannot define, let alone operationalize.
Most would agree that sustainability has to do with “ways to avoid depleting natural resources and social capital in order to maintain an ecological balance.” I ran a state-funded Center for Sustainable Environments for eight years where we had to say “no!” to endorsing questionable “sustainable” gravel quarries—in part, because the gravel wasn’t very green, nor did it regenerate itself in the pit!
You wait for results that indicate that more of a resource is being regenerated or recycled then is being depleted. You don’t get to brag in advance about what you haven’t yet done.
To date, South32 has knocked down tens of thousands of trees (and reduced carbon pulldown) to build its “get-away” road just north of the town limits without planting any new ones. That’s not sustainable, nor is it very “hermosa” (beautiful).
To date, South32 has generated more runoff, erosion and sedimentation downhill from its property just north of town than before it owned the land. That’s not sustainable, but it does make muddier pudding.
To date, South32 has extracted more groundwater to build its roads just north of town than previous owners used. That’s not sustainable, nor is it a wetter future.
To date, South32 has forced foxes, javelina and deer to flee from the uplands just north of town, and many refugees have ended up as roadkill. That’s not a wilder future, it’s more dismal.