Records show town was aware before March 12 but never informed public
Sahuarita — The Town of Sahuarita is refusing to disclose when the town knew Hudbay Minerals and Tucson Electric Power were jointly planning to use the proposed $18 million Santa Rita Connection power line to deliver power to Hudbay’s Copper World mine.
TEP has repeatedly stated that the Santa Rita Connection was needed to provide redundancy and additional capacity for Sahuarita and neighboring communities and had nothing to do with Copper World. A statement by Sahuarita Mayor Tom Murphy at a Jan. 26 town council meeting supported that claim.
But emails between TEP and Sahuarita uncovered last week by Save the Scenic Santa Ritas reveal that TEP and Hudbay have been quietly planning to build a joint substation at the terminus of the Santa Rita Connection project. The Santa Rita Substation would then relay power directly to the proposed Copper World mine in the Santa Rita Mountains.
The emails show that the town has known about the joint substation plan since at least early March and likely much sooner. SSSR has repeatedly requested Sahuarita Town Manager Shane Dille to disclose when town staff first knew about the joint Santa Rita Substation.
Dille has rejected SSSR’s request for the information.
“The burden of transparency rests solely with TEP in this instance,” Dille said in a June 3 email to several private citizens and SSSR. “TEP carries the responsibility to walk the public through its proposal, detailing the costs, benefits and impacts of what it is proposing.”
Arizona public records and open meeting laws do not allow a town government to ignore its legal requirement to operate transparently by shifting that responsibility onto a public utility or any other private business. On May 28, SSSR filed a request for the town’s records related to the Santa Rita Connection under the Arizona Public Records Law.
The joint substation raises questions of whether the Santa Rita Connection is being built primarily to benefit Hudbay, which will use far more power than the 14,000 residential customers TEP claimed was the primary beneficiary of the project. The backdoor deal to supply power to the mine also raises the very likely possibility that ratepayers are being set up to subsidize Hudbay’s expense to connect to TEP’s grid.
The burden of transparency rests solely with TEP in this instance. — Sahuarita Town Manager Shane Dille
The long saga to deliver power to Copper World
The TEP-Hudbay joint substation is just the latest twist in a 16-year effort to deliver power to the Copper World mine. The proposed mine, which was formerly known as Rosemont, would be in a remote location in the Santa Rita Mountains without direct access to the high voltage power lines needed to operate the mine’s processing plant.
Copper World’s concentrator and crushing facilities are planned to be built on the western slope of the Santa Rita Mountains. Lying between the mountains and Sahuarita is the 52,000-acre Santa Rita Experimental Range which is owned by the state land department.
To get power to the mine site, Hudbay needs two 138 kV power lines constructed. Rosemont Copper, the mine’s previous owner, purchased land near S. Country Club and Corto roads north of Quail Creek to house its planned Toro Switchyard. One line from the switchyard would connect to TEP’s main electrical grid. The other line would extend across the Santa Rita Experimental Range to the mine site.
Sahuarita staff has known for more than 14 years that Rosemont, and then Hudbay, was planning to build the Toro Switchyard. Rosemont obtained state approval to build the power line from the switchyard to the mine site in 2012. Hudbay bought Rosemont in 2014.
TEP subsequently leased Arizona State Trust Land immediately east of Hudbay’s Toro Switchyard where it intends to construct the Santa Rita Substation.
With both companies acquiring the land needed for their respective switchyard and substation in place, TEP next needed a way to get sufficient power to the Santa Rita Substation to operate one of the largest copper mines in the United States.
That’s where the Santa Rita Connection – with a 138 kV power line matching Hudbay’s 138 kV power line that would go from switchyard to the mine site—comes into play.
Sahuarita’s town staff raises questions about Copper World
It was not surprising that Sahuarita’s staff was asking questions about Copper World’s possible connection to the Santa Rita Connection. TEP records submitted to state regulators reviewing the project state that town staff asked TEP during a Jan. 12 virtual meeting whether the Santa Rita power line “has any connection to the Copper World project.”
TEP’s filing does not state what TEP told the town. And now, Sahuarita’s town manager is refusing to provide information about what the town learned from that meeting.
Two weeks later, on Jan. 26, TEP appeared before the Sahuarita Town Council to give a presentation on the Santa Rita Connection.
Christopher Ortiz y Pino, TEP’s Project Manager for Siting, Outreach and Engagement, told the council during a 10-minute presentation that the Santa Rita Connection was needed to protect the area from possible power failures and to replace an obsolete 48 kV power line.
He did not mention in his comments that the Santa Rita Connection would also provide power to Copper World. The Santa Rita Connection, Ortiz y Pino said, would “provide for substantial new capacity for the Sahuarita area for future load growth.”
At this point in the meeting, very few people knew that the Santa Rita Substation was planned to be built immediately adjacent to where Hudbay was planning to build its switchyard. SSSR knew because it has been tracking various mining plans in the Santa Ritas for 30 years.
And Sahuarita’s town manager and staff knew because they were aware that the state approved plans in 2012 to run the 138 KV power line from the switchyard to the mine. They also knew that the switchyard still needed to be connected to TEP’s grid.
For unknown reasons, the town did not disclose this information in its staff report provided to the council and the public before the meeting.
Mayor Tom Murphy, who is a vocal supporter of mining and publicly endorsed Copper World earlier this year in a full-page advertisement paid for by Hudbay, followed up on Ortiz y Pino’s explanation about the need for the Santa Rita Connection with a statement and a follow up question.
“Just, because I know there’s some concerns, this really is just connected to having future capacity and growth,” Murphy said before following with a question. “This is not connected to Hudbay in any way, is it?”
“No, it is not,” Ortiz y Pino responded.
The exchange left the public attending the meeting believing that the Santa Rita Connection had nothing to do with Copper World.
The smoking email
TEP never explicity states that it is planning to construct the Santa Rita Substation with Hudbay. The reference revealing the plan is buried in a stack of documents that was submitted to state regulators over the span of nearly six weeks as part of its application for a Certificate of Environmental Compatibility.
The application was submitted to an obscure state regulatory panel called the Arizona Power Plant and Line Siting Committee. TEP is required to obtain the committee’s approval before its CEC application is submitted to the Arizona Corporation Commission for final review.
On April 17, TEP submitted an 804-page application that included communications between TEP and local governments, tribes and members of the public. There is no mention of the TEP-Hudbay joint Santa Rita Substation to serve Copper World.
On May 18, TEP submitted another 235 pages of exhibits. This time, TEP noted that one of the two power line routes under consideration would “co-locate” with a section of Hudbay’s planned 138 kV power line from the Toro Switchyard to Copper World.
Even after referencing the Copper World power line, TEP does not disclose it is also planning to build the Santa Rita Substation with Hudbay.
On May 26 – the same date as the Line Siting Committee’s public hearing on the CEC application – TEP submitted another batch of documents under the title “Late-Filed Exhibits”. The 57-page filing was docketed at 11:47 a.m., less than six hours before the public hearing.
On page 24 of the filing, TEP included a one-page email exchange between Sahuarita Community Development Director Anna Casadei and TEP’s Ortiz y Pino. The email included some extraordinary information.
For the first time, TEP discloses that it plans to jointly build the Santa Rita Substation with Hudbay’s Copper World. And the time stamp on the email reveals Sahuarita had known about the plan sometime before March 12.
“Can you please refresh my memory – is the collocated substation proposed to be built on the parcel owned by Rosemont (Copper World) or the adjacent (Arizona State Land Department) parcel?” Casadei asked Ortiz y Pina in her March 12 email (emphasis added).
The “collocated substation” Casadei is referring to is the joint Hudbay-TEP Santa Rita Substation.
Just over an hour later, Ortiz y Pino responded.
“The Santa Rita Substation will be on a leased parcel from ASLD that is directly adjacent to the “Rosemont” CopperWorld (sic) parcel. The Santa Rita Substation will now house the connection from CopperWorld (sic),” Ortiz y Pino stated.
No longer would Hudbay have to build the separate Toro Switchyard. Instead, the two facilities would be combined into a larger Santa Rita Substation. The Santa Rita Connection’s 138 kV power line would terminate at the substation. And the substation would then transfer power to Copper World through a separate 138 kV power line, also to be operated by TEP.
Staff does not disclose joint substation at May 11 council meeting
The town staff, council and TEP had another opportunity to disclose that TEP and Hudbay were planning to jointly operate the substation at the May 11 town council meeting when TEP appeared to provide an update on the project.
Two weeks before the meeting, Dille sent an April 22 email to TEP where he discussed Hudbay and the Santa Rita Substation.
“With the Santa Rita Substation in place, I’m confident that Hudbay would take appropriate steps to pay for the infrastructure needed to connect its project to the sub-station to secure power to meet its operational needs,” Dille wrote.
The town’s staff report presented to the council and the public at the May 11 meeting, however, did not mention that the substation would provide power to Copper World.
“The proposed Santa Rita Substation will support service reliability for distribution customers in the area. It will serve homes and businesses as far north as Sahuarita Road,” the staff report stated.
The council and TEP engaged in an extensive discussion about the Santa Rita Substation and how it would provide power to Sahuarita residents, a proposed waste water treatment plant and a wildlife center.
But neither TEP, nor any member of the council, nor staff disclosed that TEP and Hudbay would combine their operations at the substation and that the Santa Rita Connection’s single biggest load by far would be Copper World.
We expect this kind of subterfuge from TEP. We do not, and should not, expect such deviant behavior from a public entity like the town of Sahuarita. They need to immediately provide sunlight on every facet of this enterprise. The town officials should publicly apologize for their behavior that was hidden from the population they govern on behalf of.,
Immediately.
tep.
Evil lying people on all groups!!! Always backfiring the public!!! I live in the area where lines will go up. My father and my brother died of Cancer living on this property I live on now. We have major power lines already on the west side of County Club Rd right next to my property! Also several years ago the mines were drilling well within walking distance to our home wihich we were never informed about! I own my well and have used it since 1972. Never having to dig deeper. The mines as well as TEP and Sahuarita councils don’t care about the area or the people who live in it!!! We need to fight!!!!