The Resolution Copper Conversation We're Not Having
SUPERIOR, AZ
By Kate Mayeski
I Fell in Love With Arizona Slowly
I love Arizona now, but I did not arrive here with an open mind.
I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, and when my parents told me at 16 that we were moving across the country to a hotter-than-hell desert, I mostly heard the "hotter-than-hell" part. It took me years to understand Arizona beyond concrete fences, beige walls, and the kind of summer sidewalk that teaches you very quickly not to walk outside barefoot. I only made that mistake once.
It took even longer to discover the Arizona I now cannot stop exploring: the desert light, the mountains, the rivers that appear where you do not expect them, the pine forests, the mining towns, and the roadside turns that somehow become full-day detours. I learned to become an early bird, partly because there is a limited window in July when you can enjoy the outdoors without feeling personally attacked by the sun, but mostly because Arizona kept giving me reasons to get up and see more of it.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped tolerating Arizona and started loving it. That shift made me more curious about how the state works, who gets to shape its future, and why so many of our biggest conversations leave little room for the people who will actually live with the outcome.
I grew up in a blue-white-ish-collar family. Blue in the work and blue in the politics, with a healthy suspicion of "the man," powerful corporations, and the people making decisions in rooms regular families rarely get invited into. I remember broad declarations about corporations being evil, stealing jobs, ruining communities, and leaving ordinary people to clean up the damage.
Some of that suspicion was earned, and I still believe skepticism has a place.
What I have less patience for now is certainty without curiosity. The more time I spend in rural Arizona, the harder it becomes to accept the neat version of almost any story. People are too complicated, places are too specific, and history is too layered. Arizona is growing too quickly and too unevenly for slogans to do much good.
I did not become curious about Resolution Copper because I had a strong opinion about mining. I became curious because I fell in love with Superior.
The drive past the Superstitions. Main Street. Boyce Thompson Arboretum. The people who know every backstory. The feeling that you have stumbled into a town that has already lived several lives and is still deciding what the next one will be.
I have written before that my car practically drives itself to Apache Junction, Superior, Globe, and Miami these days. I meant it. The mountains help, obviously, but it is more than that. These towns are full of history, hope, and potential. Half the time, their magic is hidden even from the people who live there.
It's a jarring transition driving from the concrete jungle to suddenly be transported through the winding highway roads and dropped in a tiny town surrounded by mountains and depending on the time of year, green.
Mayor Mila Besich describes Superior as "a town with a mine, not a mining town."
Resolution Copper will play a major role in Superior's future, but Superior is not Resolution Copper. It is a town with families, businesses, tourism, public lands, water questions, housing pressure, old wounds, and a real desire to grow without losing itself in the process.
Growth is the easy part to measure. Whether the people already there still recognize their town when the building is done is the harder question.
That is where the Resolution Copper conversation becomes more complicated than most people want it to be.
So here is the frame I want you to hold:
Resolution Copper is not the villain it is often painted to be. Superior is not collateral damage waiting to happen. And Oak Flat is not a footnote.
All three are true at the same time.
Suspicion Is Not Research
There are plenty of companies in Arizona and beyond that deserve public suspicion. Plenty of projects arrive wrapped in big promises and leave small communities with the cleanup, traffic, housing pressure, broken trust, or the bill.
I understand why people are skeptical when a global mining company says it wants to be a good neighbor. I was raised on skepticism.
But suspicion without curiosity is not research.
We are trained to look for the dramatic villain: the boardroom, the land grab, the company man, the backroom deal. The Taylor Sheridan version of every Western conflict, where someone is always about to steal the land, poison the water, or sell out the town. And to be clear, #SheridanFan4Life.
That instinct can be useful, especially when it keeps powerful people from operating without consequence. It can also obscure what is actually happening.
Resolution Copper is a massive proposed underground mine backed by Rio Tinto and BHP, two global companies that should be scrutinized accordingly. The scale is enormous. The process is complicated. The history is, to put it lightly, loaded.
But copper, jobs, water, sacred land, environmental impact, local identity, and the question of who gets heard before decisions are made all matter. None of those concerns disappear just because one of them makes a cleaner headline.
What I have seen is not a perfect company beyond scrutiny. I do not believe in those. I also do not believe Resolution fits the flat version of this story.
That does not mean it gets a blank check. It means that if we are going to argue about this project, we should at least argue from the same set of facts.
Resolution Copper: The Mine and the Timeline
Resolution Copper is a proposed underground mine near Superior, about 60 miles east of Phoenix. It is a joint venture between Rio Tinto, which owns 55 percent, and BHP, which owns 45 percent. The deposit sits between 5,000 and 7,000 feet underground, and the company estimates it could produce as much as 40 billion pounds of copper over an operating life of up to 40 years. Resolution also says the project could eventually supply up to 25 percent of U.S. copper demand.
One very, often overlooked distinction, is that as of the time of this article - Resolution Copper is not currently producing copper. The mine is not operating.
The congressionally mandated land exchange was completed on March 16, 2026, transferring approximately 2,400 acres to Resolution in exchange for more than 5,400 acres intended for public conservation. The project has moved into enabling work, additional studies, state-level permitting, and future investment decisions. Moving forward is not the same thing as producing copper.
Copper itself is not optional infrastructure, no matter how uncomfortable that makes the mining conversation. It is in our buildings, electronics, vehicles, power lines, industrial equipment, and the grid we keep asking to do more every year. Until someone invents a future that does not require the pinkish-brown metal, pretending we can simply opt out of copper is not a serious position.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Arizona accounted for about 70 percent of domestic copper production in 2025, while the United States relied on net imports for 57 percent of apparent copper consumption. Most refined copper imports came from Chile, Canada, Peru, and Mexico, not China. The larger supply-chain question is not simply where the rock comes from, but where it is mined, processed, refined, priced, and turned into something useful.
As reported by Reuters in March 2026, Rio Tinto and BHP had already spent more than $2 billion on the project without producing copper.
Remember learning Arizona’s 5 C’s (Copper, Cattle, Cotton, Citrus, and Climate) in school? Arizona does not have to become a copper state. It already is one.
The question is whether we can do copper differently this time.
Oak Flat Is Not a Footnote
No honest article about Resolution Copper can leave out Oak Flat.
For those unfamiliar, Oak Flat refers to a rugged, high-desert plateau in the Tonto National Forest—known to the Apache as Chi’chil Biłdagoteel—defined by its ancient groves of Emory oaks, towering volcanic boulders, and profound sacred significance to Southwestern tribes.
It is a place of prayer, ceremony, and connection that goes back generations, long before the mine, the land exchange, or any of this. Apache Stronghold and others have opposed the project for years, arguing it would permanently damage or destroy a sacred place, as reported by the Associated Press. Not pause it. Not inconvenience it. End it.
One important point of balance: the campground did not close when the land exchange was completed. Since taking over management, Resolution says it has invested approximately $130,000 in improvements, including restroom repairs, new picnic tables, signage, concrete pads, and fire rings. The campground remains open, and federal law requires Resolution to maintain public access to the maximum extent practicable until mine operations make continued use unsafe. Resolution says it expects the campground to remain open for decades, but that is the company's projection, not a fixed or guaranteed closure date.
Almost everything else in this story can be negotiated, monitored, mitigated, or revisited. Water agreements can be strengthened. Buildings can be restored. Jobs can be trained for. A sacred place, once it is gone, does not come back to the table.
I am not Apache, and I do not have standing to tell Apache people how to weigh that loss, read the courts, or reconcile economic opportunity with sacred ground. I am not going to pretend otherwise.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined in 2025 to hear Apache Stronghold's appeal, leaving the lower-court ruling in place. It does not settle the moral one. A court can decide who holds the right to the land. It cannot decide what the land means.
During the tour, I heard from Apache individuals, including Resolution employees, who said they support the project and do not see the public debate as a complete account of Apache opinion. Stating very clearly they are in support of Resolution Copper, and that whether or not the land in question is the only available sacred place for certain ceremonies required a more nuanced approach.
This doesn’t give us permission to flatten formal tribal opposition into "some Apache people are fine with it." Individual perspectives should not erase a nation's stance, and formal opposition should not be used to pretend every Apache person speaks with one voice.
Here is what I will say plainly. Every dollar invested, every restored building, every gallon of water saved, every job created is real. And none of it answers the Oak Flat question. Those things do not cancel it out.
Oak Flat is not the cost of doing business. It is the center of the controversy.
What Support Looks Like on the Ground
The reality is that there is visible, organized support for Resolution Copper in Superior.
Not unanimous support. Not unquestioning support. But real support from people who live there and have reasons for seeing the project differently than someone reading about it from Phoenix, Washington, or a social-media feed.
Outsiders sometimes assume that anyone who supports a large company must have been fooled by it, bought by it, or failed to understand the stakes. That is condescending.
People in Superior know the history of mining. Many have lived through mine closures, layoffs, shrinking school enrollment, deteriorating buildings, and the long aftermath of companies leaving. Support for Resolution does not automatically mean trust in every promise. It may mean people are looking at what has already been built, cleaned up, funded, or made possible and deciding that matters, too.
The Superior Enterprise Center is one example. It sits inside the original Superior High School, built in 1925, and brings workforce training, small-business services, co-working, and entrepreneurship programs into a building that could easily have become another piece of local history left to deteriorate. The Center is a collaboration among Rebuild Superior, the Town of Superior, and Resolution Copper.
The larger redevelopment is also part of Superior's blight-recovery story. The Copper Corridor Blight Busters program received a $600,000 federal brownfields assessment grant in 2021 to evaluate neglected and underused properties across the region. In Superior, that work helped support the transformation of the historic school into a multigenerational center with space for town services, recreation, education, workforce training, and small-business development.
That public grant should not be credited to Resolution. But Resolution was part of the larger stack of support that made the redevelopment possible.
That is what economic development in a small town often looks like. It is rarely one magical grant or one benevolent company writing a check. It is five sources of money, three levels of government, a nonprofit, a business partner, years of paperwork — and several people refusing to let an old building rot.
During the tour, Vicky Peacey, President and General Manager of Resolution Copper, said, “There were terrible decisions made 100 years ago that we’re dealing with today.”
That does not erase what happened or guarantee better decisions now. But it matters that the person leading the project can say plainly that the skepticism surrounding mining in Superior did not come out of nowhere. Residents are not wary because they failed to understand mining. Many are wary because they understand its history extremely well.
The same is true of the historic Magma site. Resolution says it spent $75 million over 15 years reclaiming 475 acres affected by nearly a century of mining activity. The work included soil cleanup, covering and revegetating historic tailings, restoring drainage, reshaping rock piles, and removing old concentrator and smelter structures. The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality approved the completed reclamation, with long-term monitoring continuing.
I saw part of that work during the tour. It is easier to dismiss corporate language about responsibility than it is to stand on land where cleanup has already happened and pretend none of it counts.
When historic flooding devastated Globe and Miami in fall 2025, Rio Tinto, Resolution's majority owner, contributed $1 million to relief and recovery through the United Fund of Globe-Miami. Resolution employees and contractors also helped with cleanup and distributed recovery supplies.
That does not resolve the mine debate. But it does explain why many people in the Copper Corridor do not see Resolution as only a distant multinational waiting to extract something from them.
None of this should be treated as charity without motive. Resolution expects to make money. These programs build relationships and support for a project the company wants approved and operating. I cannot name another company in my own experience that has put this much money into a community before earning a dollar from the project itself. There may be examples I do not know, but none come quickly to mind. The spending is not selfless, and it does not earn Resolution a free pass. But, it is unusual.
Cleanup, workforce programs, building reuse, emergency response, education, and infrastructure are being funded years before there is copper revenue coming out of Superior. From my perspective, pretending that does not matter is just as incomplete as pretending the investment answers every concern.
A company can act in its own interest while helping restore buildings, clean up legacy mining damage, train workers, support emergency recovery, and build community infrastructure. A town can accept that investment without surrendering its right to negotiate, question, or demand more.
Most of the public conversation skips that part.
Water Is Where the Conversation Gets Real
Water fear in Arizona is not irrational. We live in the desert. Every serious conversation about growth eventually becomes a water conversation.
On May 28, 2026, the Superior Town Council unanimously approved a long-term water agreement with Resolution that includes more than $20 million in mitigation commitments. The agreement includes work to restore and enhance Queen Creek, rehabilitate or rebuild the town's infiltration gallery, establish a $5 million watershed endowment, transfer water-storage credits, and invest in infrastructure that could support future growth. It also includes long-term monitoring and mitigation commitments.
Mayor Besich called it a first-of-its-kind agreement between an Arizona town and a mining company. In her remarks at the signing, she asked residents to imagine Queen Creek flowing again, healthier aquifers, new homes being built, and another generation choosing to stay and invest in Superior.
The practical point was even more important: there were moments when walking away would have been easier, but the town stayed at the table because water had to remain the priority.
That is what local leadership is supposed to do. Not trust blindly. Not oppose reflexively. Negotiate before the dust settles.
During the tour, water came up again and again. Guests asked about Gold Canyon, Apache Junction, Queen Valley, aquifers, Queen Creek, wells, dewatering, tailings, and what happens if water moves differently than expected.
Resolution says the project is designed to use less than 5 gallons of water per pound of copper, compared with 10 to 50 gallons at other Arizona copper mines. Those are company claims, and they should be read that way. But they are specific claims that can be compared against permits, monitoring, and public data.
Resolution attributes this low footprint to its underground design—which requires far less water for dust control than an open-pit mine—and advanced filtration technology that recycles the vast majority of water used.
The same applies to technology. A lot of people are still arguing about Resolution as if it is being planned with the same tools and assumptions that shaped mines a century ago. Some of that skepticism is earned. The evidence of old mining decisions is still sitting in plain sight across the Copper Corridor.
But the tour discussion was not built around "trust us." It covered baseline data, monitoring wells thousands of feet deep, surface-water diversions, quarterly spring monitoring, treatment, reporting, and mitigation requirements. None of that removes risk. It creates a record against which change can be measured.
Tailings deserve the same seriousness. Resolution says its plan calls for tailings to move by pipeline to Skunk Camp, be partially dewatered, and return water to the mine for reuse. At the West Plant, we discussed lime treatment used to remove metals before water is recycled or sent for agricultural use, along with monitoring, reporting, and reclamation systems intended to reduce water infiltration into historic tailings.
A modern mine is not better because a company says it is better. It is better only if the design, technology, permits, reporting, enforcement, and public access to information are better.
That is the difference between "trust us" and "check the record."
When the Argument Replaces the Work
I have not read the full Environmental Impact Statement cover to cover. That is one reason I am careful about presenting it as proof of a conclusion it may not support.
The EIS is not a marketing brochure. It's also not a crystal ball. It is a legal and technical record examining impacts, alternatives, mitigation, and federal decisions. Some of it is uncomfortable because identifying risk is part of the purpose.
Legal challenges can also be necessary. Sometimes litigation is the only meaningful tool available to a community challenging a powerful company or government decision.
But legal fights, public-relations battles, and misinformation all consume money, time, and attention. Correcting bad information does, too.
When the conversation becomes trapped in half-read documents, social-media claims, and all-or-nothing arguments, the communities closest to the project lose leverage and momentum that could be directed toward stronger water monitoring, better mitigation agreements, local business participation, education, workforce training, and improved technology.
That does not make the project automatically right. It does mean we should be careful about reducing years of work and disagreement to a slogan or an excerpt circulated without context.
The questions should be more specific.
Who verifies the water data? What triggers mitigation? Which commitments are legally enforceable? How will local students and businesses prepare before jobs arrive? Who pays if technology fails? What information will be public?
Those are not anti-mine questions. They are serious questions, and from what I have seen first hand, Resolution Copper is willing to answer them.
None of these questions will be answered overnight, and most of them will not be answered by any single article. What matters is that they are being asked—loudly, specifically, and by people who will still be here when the answers arrive.
What Comes Next
Superior is not sitting quietly and waiting for a mining company to determine its future.
Local leaders, business owners, nonprofits, regional partners, and residents are already working through the housing, tourism, infrastructure, workforce, public-safety, and small-business questions that will shape what growth feels like on the ground.
This is the work people miss when they only follow headlines. It is one thing to talk about economic development from a conference room. It is another thing to stand in Superior, eat in a local restaurant, talk to the people who live there, and remember there are people who actually live with the outcome.
There is real support for Resolution Copper in Superior. There is also opposition, skepticism, and concern. Pretending only one of those realities exists does not make the other disappear.
I went to Superior looking for a clearer answer and left with better questions.
I do not believe Resolution Copper is the villain it is often painted to be. I also do not believe any company, especially a global mining company, should be trusted without accountability.
The next decade will define the Copper Corridor, but the blueprint will not be written only in federal documents, court rulings, or corporate announcements. It is being written in water agreements, old buildings brought back to life, cleanup projects, local businesses, classrooms, emergency-response efforts, tribal consultations, and the conversations people are willing to have before everything is already decided.
The more time I spend in Superior, the less patience I have for the flat version of this story. The town is not collateral damage, Oak Flat is not a footnote, and neither deserves to be reduced to a slogan.
Arizona does not get to call itself serious about growth if we cannot hold all three truths at once.
Transparency Note: This article is not sponsored or supported by Resolution Copper or any related organization, and I have no financial ties to the project. It is based on public sources, conversations, my own reporting, and a Resolution Copper surface tour I attended on June 29, 2026. I am writing not as a technical expert, but as someone invested in how Arizona grows, what we preserve, and whether the people closest to these decisions are heard before they become permanent.
Sources and Further Reading
Reuters reporting on Resolution Copper's investment and land exchange
Associated Press reporting on Oak Flat and Apache Stronghold
U.S. Supreme Court order list, May 27, 2025 — Resolution Copper, Stewardship You Can See at Oak Flat Campground
National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015, Section 3003
U.S. Forest Service, Resolution Copper Project Questions and Answers
