Rio Tinto’s proposed Resolution Copper Mine in Arizona would tunnel 7 000 feet underground, where rocks radiate heat from the earth’s molten core. It would suck up enough water to supply a city and leave a crater a mile and a half wide and 1 000 feet deep.
Planned for more than a decade, the project would be a prototype for a looming era of more invasive US mines as companies run out of easy-to-reach deposits, geologists say. It is also the project President Donald Trump’s Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, had in mind as he began crafting a “hit list” of regulations that should be killed to speed industrial permitting.
