Florence Town Council opposes Florence Copper’s ongoing attempts to push through mining operation
SanTanValley.com
A town’s most basic responsibility is to provide infrastructure and protect natural resources for its residents. Each year, the Town builds new wells to obtain clean water, provides recreational amenities like hiking trails or pickleball courts, repaves roads and inspects bridges to ensure safe passage for motorists, and modernizes equipment at sewer plants to ensure its operations have a positive impact on the local environment. The Town routinely enforces international building and fire codes that protect our environment, our residents, our visitors, and our local economy.
As part of its annual budget process, the Town Council approves the infrastructure spending plan for the upcoming years. In 2011, the Town of Florence approved a Capital Improvement Plan totaling more than $228 million of projects from 2011 until 2018. The recently approved budget for the Town of Florence similarly included a plan for funding $81 million of improvements over the next five years. There is no doubt that preserving our infrastructure is a very costly, technical, and time-consuming effort. Nonetheless, the Town feels its duty to current and future residents requires it to make these investments in the community.
Consistent with its mission to protect natural resources, the Town of Florence has spent an average of $311,000 per year (since 2013) to enforce zoning regulations and to participate in the public permitting process surrounding the Florence Copper project. Despite objections from the Town and local residents, Florence Copper has sought to obtain permits that would allow for the direct injection of harmful chemicals into the groundwater, on State land within the geographical center of the Town of Florence, and directly into the drinking water supply.
