rich 1.0 Action Network https://actionnetwork.org <link href='https://actionnetwork.org/css/style-embed-v3.css' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' /><script src='https://actionnetwork.org/widgets/v6/letter/please-ask-the-us-forest-service-to-protect-oak-flat?format=js&source=widget'></script><div id='can-letter-area-please-ask-the-us-forest-service-to-protect-oak-flat' style='width: 100%'><!-- this div is the target for our HTML insertion --></div> Arizona Mining Reform Coalition https://actionnetwork.org/groups/arizona-mining-reform-coalition https://can2-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/letters/photos/000/259/776/normal/EBD49486-FB68-40AA-B45B-3583B364B283.jpeg Please ask Dr. Homer Wilkes, the Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment overseeing the US Forest Service, to protect Oak Flat. Oak Flat is a sacred recreational and ecological haven located within the Tonto National Forest an hour east of Phoenix, Arizona.  Oak Flat is used for ceremony, hiking, biking, camping, birdwatching, canyoneering, bouldering and rock climbing.  It is a rare desert riparian area and an oasis of biodiversity.  Less than 10 percent of this habitat remains in Arizona to support the native plants and animals that cannot survive without it. Resolution Copper, (wholly owned by foreign mining companies Rio Tinto and BHP) would like to destroy Oak Flat to build an underground mine that would not only devastate Oak Flat, but a total of 16,000 acres of federal, state, and private lands. With Arizona in the midst of the worst drought we’d faced in 1,200 years, we simply do not have enough water for both our communities and the environment and for this inappropriate mine proposal. The proposed Resolution Copper Mine would; create a crater roughly two miles wide and 1,000 feet deep right there at Oak Flat due to subsidence of the land; dump nearly 1.5 billion tons of toxic mining waste into an unlined tailings dump — the preferred alternative tailings site will ultimately cover six square miles with a dam 490 feet high and sits in the Gila River watershed; and use more water annually than the City of Tempe, AZ, a minimum of 50,000 acre-feet per year. https://actionnetwork.org/letters/please-ask-the-us-forest-service-to-protect-oak-flat