With the U.S. Supreme Court declining to hear a last-ditch appeal, a long-planned Arizona copper mine could break ground in early 2026 and, once fully operational, supply up to 25 percent of the nation’s domestic demand for the critical mineral.
For the second time in five months, the court on Oct. 6 denied Apache Stronghold’s petition to hear its lawsuit challenging a land exchange Resolution Copper needs to build a 7,000-acre copper mine near Superior in Pinal County, 70 miles east of Phoenix and 70 miles north of Tucson, in Arizona’s “Copper Triangle.”
The swap would allow Resolution Copper to trade 5,400 acres of conservation land it owns in Arizona for 2,422 acres within Tonto National Forest that the company estimates contains up to 40 billion pounds of high-grade copper worth $150 billion. The land transfer was originally approved by President Barack Obama and endorsed by Congress in 2014….