John,
Public lands are under an alarming new attack by mining companies.
A proposed bill would make it easier for industry to dump huge amounts of rock waste on public lands that wildlife depend on and people cherish.
Will you help stop it?
Across the nation, mining waste causes toxic pollution that harms frontline communities and ecosystems. Far too often, mining companies use legal loopholes to make a profit, declare bankruptcy, and then skip town, saddling the public with the bill to clean up their waste. There are already more than 50,000 abandoned hardrock mines in the United States.
This legislation will only make the problem worse.
Just one of many places at stake lies in the beautiful Santa Rita Mountains in the Sky Islands region near Tucson, Arizona. For more than 15 years, the Center has fought to protect this region, which provides critical habitat for jaguars and other endangered species. Thanks to our lawsuit, last year a federal appeals court ruled that a mining company couldn’t destroy these public lands by building a massive open-pit copper mine.
But the new bill would reverse that victory, turning this biodiverse place into a massive waste pile of rock laced with toxic chemicals. It would doom many other precious places to the same fate.
Urge your senators to oppose this bill and save public lands from becoming private waste dumps.
