Indianz.Com > News > Cronkite News: Judge won’t stop copper mine on sacred Apache site
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Federal judge rejects Apache Stronghold request to block Oak Flat mine
Monday, February 15, 2021
Cronkite News
WASHINGTON – A federal judge Friday refused to order a halt to the proposed Resolution Copper Mine on Oak Flat, land that opponents say is sacred to the Apache people and will be destroyed by the mine.
U.S. District Judge Steven Logan rejected a request by the group Apache Stronghold for a preliminary injunction against the mine, saying the group did not have standing to challenge the project. Further,
Logan wrote,
the group had not shown it had “a likelihood of success on, or serious questions going to, the merits of its claims.”
Those included claims, in sometimes tearful testimony last week, that the project violated an
1852 treaty
with the Apache, that it would violate their First Amendment rights to worship and that the government violated their due process rights by rushing approval.
Calls seeking comment from the group and its attorneys were not immediately returned Friday. But in
a statement
posted to its website Thursday, Apache Stronghold advocates said the mine would destroy Oak Flat, leaving behind a “crater of rubble more than 1,000 feet deep and almost two miles across.”
The group’s leader, Wendsler Nosie Sr., said in the statement that “Oak Flat or Chi’chil Bildagoteel cannot be replaced.”
![Copper Rush](https://indianz.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/15/oakflat.jpg)
Note: This story originally appeared on Cronkite News. It is published via a Creative Commons license. Cronkite News is produced by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.
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Cronkite News: Apache Stronghold fights to protect sacred site from foreign mine (February 9, 2021)Cronkite News: Republican pardoned in connection with Oak Flat land deal (January 21, 2021)
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