Region is home to one of the world’s largest undeveloped zinc resources.
President Donald Trump’s drive to restore American energy dominance and economic strength is increasingly turning on one crucial ingredient: secure, domestic supplies of critical minerals.
The Hermosa Critical Minerals Project in Arizona’s Patagonia Mountains stands at the center of that effort, promising U.S.-based production of zinc and manganese essential for grid reliability, advanced manufacturing, and next‑generation technologies. The U.S. Forest Service approved a final record of decision on Tuesday for the South32 Hermosa project, removing one of the few remaining hurdles for the planned critical-minerals mine.
The Forest Service issued the final record of decision for the Hermosa project on Tuesday, concluding the environmental review process required for infrastructure development on public land.
“The Hermosa Critical Minerals Project shows how increasing domestic production can reduce our dependence on vulnerable foreign sources, and power modern industries, advanced technologies, and essential infrastructure,” U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said.
While the project is primarily located on private land, planned infrastructure–including an access road, a mine-waste facility and a portion of a power line–crosses into the Coronado National Forest.
President Trump has launched an all-of-government mandate to strengthen and secure America’s critical mineral supply chains — and @USDA is doing just that.@ForestService just issued the final Record of Decision for the Hermosa Critical Minerals Project in Arizona. This will…
— Secretary Brooke Rollins (@SecRollins) July 8, 2026
The approval was expedited by the Trump administration‘s use of FAST-41, which originated as a permitting improvement program created by Congress in 2015 under Title 41 of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act. The rules streamline federal environmental reviews and authorizations for complex infrastructure projects.
Once all elements are in place, the project is expected to create thousands of jobs in the region.
The decision, completed in record time as a FAST 41project, supports President Trump’s goal of increasing mineral independence and bolstering the nation’s energy and economic resilience.
South32 Hermosa Inc., an Australia-based mining and metals company, is proposing a $2.16 billion mining and processing operation in a historic mining district in Santa Cruz County, Arizona, near the U.S.–Mexico border. The project is expected to create up to 900 direct jobs and thousands more through indirect economic activity, with a goal of hiring 80 percent of its workforce locally.
…The Hermosa project represents a major economic and strategic opportunity for the United States. As home to one of the world’s largest undeveloped zinc resources—and minerals essential for steel production and large‑capacity batteries—it is a critical investment in the nation’s energy and manufacturing future.
At a time when the United States remains heavily dependent on mineral imports that are vulnerable to long‑term disruptions, the Hermosa Project strengthens national security, supports economic stability, and improves supply chain resilience.
The Hermosa Project was the first to be assisted by the FAST-41 process and impacts the potential route for the development of over 50 other mines.
The final record of decision also represents an important milestone in the broader national conversation around domestic critical mineral development and permitting reform.
Hermosa’s advancement under FAST-41 did not reduce the robustness of environmental review or limit public input. Rather, the process helped improve interagency coordination, transparency and accountability across federal agencies while ensuring the project moved through permitting in a timely and disciplined manner, Risner states.
…Hermosa marked the first project covered by FAST-41 and helped lay the groundwork for the 57 additional mining projects that have followed during the Trump administration.
South32 ultimately committed to more than 135 conservation, mitigation and monitoring measures, which were developed together with federal agencies, Tribes and other local stakeholders.
Investment to get this mine going will be robust, and other key minerals for industry (e.g., silver and lead) will also be extracted.
Australian company South32 acquired the Hermosa project in 2013 when it bought Arizona Minerals, and has pushed to develop what company officials call a “modern, state-of-the-art” mine that will extract high-grade zinc-lead-silver and “battery-grade” manganese, central to building high-capacity batteries for electric cars. South32 said it would invest billions to develop the mine, including funding to build key infrastructure projects, including water management systems, power, site facilities, underground shaft sinking, and other work.
In late April, the company said costs to develop the mine surged more than 50 percent from a $2.2 billion estimate in 2024 to $3.3 billion, and production was pushed to the second half of the fiscal 2028, Mining reported.
The Hermosa Mine will also extract silver and lead “essential for harnessing renewable energy,” the company said. Unlike the pit mines expected for copper mining like the long-controversial Rosemont or Copper World projects, the mine will sink two shafts and use remote-controlled vehicles to extract the minerals.
The mine will occupy around 750 acres, and South32 has said the mine will use advanced technology to minimize air pollution and use 90 percent less water than other mines.
The Hermosa Project seems to be the first real-world test of whether Washington can finally balance national security priorities with some form of sensible environmental policy, all without the usual bureaucratic paralysis.
If this model holds, it not only unlocks Arizona’s mineral wealth but signals that the U.S. is serious about breaking its dangerous dependence on foreign supply chains. And that development is pure gold.
Another step in the right direction .
But Australians and Canadians do most of the mine development work these days, including in AZ.
And experienced LNG site builders such as Chevron also build gas plants in Australia.
The democratic political machine will try to tie this up in court for 100 years. If they win control of congress in november and the white house in 2028 the project will be stopped as they want everybody not them on welfare and helpless except of course them.
On welfare and helpless are just small byproducts of their real goal; the end of Western democracy.
If mine approval is accelerated by the introduction of a bureaucracy whose sole purpose is to overcome the existing delays, those delays have a high probability of being caused by the implementation of a bureaucracy whose sole purpose was to impede economic development, including mining. It is time the country shone bright lights on the players, their purposes and methods.
“Alberta’s long-delayed inquiry into the foreign funding of anti-oil and anti-pipeline activism in Canada was released today with the conclusion that mostly American philanthropy groups bankrolled Canadian activism to the tune of $1.3 billion.
The inquiry, led by Steve Allan, used the research of Vancouver’s Vivian Krause as a starting point. Krause had looked at American tax donation data to trace the flow of American dollars into Canada to fund anti-fossil fuel and anti-pipeline activities, like the Tar Sands campaign, the stated goal of which was to halt or slow the expansion of oil sands expansion in Alberta.
The Tar Sands campaign was jointly sponsored by Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Corporate Ethics International, the Pembina Institute, and National Resources Defence Council, according to the Allan inquiry.”
https://www.biv.com/news/economy-law-politics/canadian-environmental-groups-got-13-billion-foreign-funding-inquiry-8265781
A good article on the deposit here:
https://www.mining-technology.com/projects/hermosa-project-arizona-usa/?cf-view
Thanks for posting this link. Other than referring to the Cretaceous as an “era,” it looks like the information is useful for understanding what they are doing.
I’ve read studies that claimed that the way to fight regulations is to form another agency who’s sole mission is to eliminate regulations. Their salaries and promotions are judged solely on how many regulations they remove from the books.
Set up government to fight itself.
That’s the way the founders originally designed our government.
The three branches each had their own sphere of influence and the states were a power center in opposition to the federal government.
Then the left decided to make government more efficient. First they concentrated power in the federal bureaucracy, primarily by making the senator elected by the people instead of being appointed by state governments. Then they concentrated federal power in the president by having the legislature pass vague bills, and assigning the executive branch the power to fill in the details later.
Len:
I just finished a Quillette.com interview with Gerald Steinberg on antisemitism in major NGOs [like NRDC, Amnesty International, etc] that also mentioned government funding of the NGOs to do things the politicians can’t get passed by legislation. Many of the huge NGOs have become overtly political with Progressive & even Marxist ideologies, yet are presumed by the unwitting public (and donors!) to be non-partisan [the “halo effect”].
As you mentioned, donations do not stop at national borders.
Likely, many of the founders of these organizations would scarcely recognize what they have become.
The NGO funding sources and behaviors are at NGOMonitor.com
[And check-out the quillette site for some interesting reads. Shameless plug! – I am a subscriber]
Thanks for that, I will follow it up. I would expect however that The Rockefeller Foundation has no confusion about either its roots or present activities, they know exactly what they are doing and why. You’d be right however about the NGO’s that they fund, like so many entities in modern society many have outgrown their reason for original existence, and now continued/increasing funding is the primary goal.
I kept wondering why, when in first year engineering in 1966, that I was meeting so many students taking Psychology–so went to the Student Placement Centre to see who was on campus advertising to interview graduates. I got quite a valuable education from 20 minutes of bulletin board reading.
Zinc, manganese? Seems to be stretching the notion of critical minerals.
I dunno, Nick. Are they necessary? What is your definition of critical, and how does it differ from necessary?
Everything we mine is necessary, else money would not be spent mining it.
If you think that is all critical means, well OK, Your opinion is probably shared by everyone who wants to open a mine in the USA.
I asked YOU what your definition was. Thanks for whinging instead of answering.
People spend money on ice cream. Is ice cream necessary?
No. That is why it isn’t mined.
“Critical” is a function of the relative domestic availability of a commodity. That is, if overseas sources were not available, would we be able to substitute something else for it? If not, then it is critical.
So here is a list of zinc ore exporting countries. US is one of the big three. China is the big impoerter, much from the US.
China dominates in smelting and refining and it’s yet another example of Western producers having limited options by shipping concentrate long distance or shipping it regionally to isolated locations. The same dominance applies to copper smelting, coal powered aluminum refining, and rare earth processing. Get a clue. You don’t even know the right questions to ask AI for help.
Wearily, a new mine will not help with smelting and refining. The USA is a major exporter of zinc ore.
This is a seriously misleading statistic taken by itself. I found this within seconds of going to look–
The U.S. exports most of its zinc in ore concentrates, not as refined metal. In 2019, it exported about 870,000 tonnes of zinc in ore concentrates, while imports of refined zinc metal and products were about 830,000 tonnes.
The real problem seems to be a lack of smelting capacity in the US, which logically is a result of environmentalism forcing pollution offshore into someone else’s country instead of cleaning it up at home. I’m not sure that adding Hermosa’s zinc concentrate output is going to help ‘criticality’; the country needs to build smelters. Once again, I would look closely at who is funding the environmentalism that forced American smelting into a critical shortage of refining capacity.
But, to add a bit of humour, you’ll have to stop presenting one-sided and/or isolated statistics without the full picture lest people start to downvote your contributions. If being serious, we have to assume you’re doing this either deliberately to misdirect a conversation, or out of ignorance–neither of which are very supportable positions.
“The U.S. exports most of its zinc in ore concentrates, not as refined metal.”
Yes. And the mine in Arizona will produce still more ore, and not refined metal. If you want to produce more zinc metal, you need refineries, not mines. There is plenty of ore being exported that could supply the refineries.
Rather than putting up with your rationalizations, I went to Copilot to see what it had to say.
CS: Why does the US Geological Survey classify zinc as a critical mineral?
Copilot: The USGS classifies zinc as a critical mineral because it meets the core criteria used in U.S. criticality assessments: essentiality to modern technologies and industries, supply-chain vulnerability, and strategic importance for future energy systems.
…
The U.S. is not self‑sufficient in zinc:
This limited reserve life and high import reliance increase supply risk.
…
Zinc deposits often contain other critical elements such as germanium, gallium, indium, cobalt, tellurium, and antimony. This amplifies its strategic value because disruptions in zinc mining can affect multiple critical mineral supply chains simultaneously.
FS8_ZincFactSheet-2023.indd
Note: When concentrates are sent to China for refining into zinc, the USA does not get the other elements that are associated with the zinc sulfide (sphalerite).
I doubt that it is an issue of ignorance. That’s what troubles me about Stokes.
That does not seem to escape the scrutiny of many reading his comments. I’ve never ‘downvoted’ anybody as I tend to avoid negativity, but Stokes does push the limits. An amazing tenacity of attempting to confuse; it never works but yet he tries and tries again. Is that insanity? I generally try to ignore his contributions but this time he bumped up against my field of expertise and introduced misleading statistics presented seriously out of context. As you just demonstrated, it didn’t take much to expose the ruse; that contextual explanation was available to anyone just for the asking.
The U.S. now imports over 70% of its refined zinc, with domestic mining concentrated in Alaska, Tennessee, and a few other states, and only one primary smelter operating.
This needs to be rectified.
Better look again in terms of refined zinc usage in solar, wind, and energy storage uses. That’s with emphasis on refined zinc as coatings, not raw materials. You don’t think those offshore wind turbines in Europe are made with uncoated steel do you?
I think that they are usually fiberglass.
With respect, I don’t want to start any fights–but it doesn’t really matter what Mr. Stokes’ opinion of ‘critical mineral’ is; that list in the US is set by the US Geological Survey. It does include zinc and manganese.
https://www.usgs.gov/programs/mineral-resources-program/science/what-are-critical-minerals-0
Yes, it is an expansive list. 60 elements are included.
In your “opinion”, only a few things are allowed to be critical?
Here is the EU list. Almost as expansive, but Mn and Zn are not marked as critical.
But they are listed as critical by the only people who matter in this case…
… the USGS.
The current topic has nothing to do with Europe.
The US fought a war 250 years ago so that we wouldn’t be dependent on what the EU thinks.
Britain in EU?
So why can the EU get minerals that the US thinks they can’t?
Perhaps they have their own supplies.
Perhaps since they have already sent most of their manufacturing to China, they don’t need as much?
How much Mn and Zn are mined in the EU?
How much is used?
If they are readily available, then they aren’t critical.
“If they are readily available, then they aren’t critical.”
Yes. The US is a major exporter of zinc ore. It is readily available.
Obviously, the EU uses different criteria in the definition of “critical.”
Ask the Chinese monopolists if you have questions.
Most manganese ore comes from Africa. China is a very small producer.
China is the largest producer of zinc ore, but there is plenty elsewhere, including Australia.
Re Zinc, Google says:
“The world’s top exporters of zinc ore and concentrates (HS code 260800) are Peru, Australia, Bolivia, and the United States. Together, these nations account for the vast majority of the global zinc ore export market, with China acting as the primary destination for a large portion of these shipments.”
The US is already a major exporter. China imports.
USA has basically no domestic refining of Manganese.
The US imports all manganese, primarily from West and South Africa, processed in China before reaching U.S. markets.
Several projects are underway to establish high‑purity manganese production and refining capacity in the US, which is why US sources of the critical mineral, Manganese, are so important.
A new mine won’t help with the refining issue. There is plenty of ore available.
Why not check with the USGS and find out why they decided as they did to include Mn and Zn? Rather than quote AI and Google, that would seem a most logical approach.
It would be, if your goal was understanding the issue.
If your goal was merely distraction and obfuscation, AI and Google are perfect sources.
OMG… you really don’t understand much about mineral production, do you.. !!
It is far cheaper and more reliable for a country to mine its own ore and process it there.
This is what it is all about… becoming self-sufficient in both mining and processing.
Perhaps that’s why China has been buying influence in Africa.
Don’t sound so bitter Nick, just because you wasted more than half your life on something that doesn’t exist. We tried to tell you. My good friend perplexity says:
What products will be affected if zinc and manganese become short in supply:
A shortage of zinc and manganese would ripple through many sectors because both metals are essential inputs for steelmaking, agriculture, batteries, and a range of industrial and consumer products.
Key product categories at risk
1. Steel and metal alloys
· Steel products: Manganese is used in >90% of global consumption, mainly to make steel stronger and more wear‑resistant (automotive sheets, construction rebar, rails, machinery parts). A manganese shortage would directly affect the cost and availability of most steel products.
· Galvanized steel and zinc‑coated products: Zinc is the primary metal for galvanizing steel to prevent corrosion (roofing, cladding, automotive bodies, appliances, fasteners). A zinc shortage would raise costs and constrain supply of galvanized steel and downstream products that rely on it.
· Non‑ferrous alloys: Both metals appear in brass, bronzes, and specialty alloys used in plumbing, marine hardware, and aerospace components; tight supply would feed into higher alloy prices and potential reformulation.
2. Agriculture and food production
· Fertilizers and crop inputs: Zinc and manganese are critical micronutrients; many crops (corn, beans, potatoes, wheat, soy, vegetables) show strong yield responses to Zn/Mn fertilizers when soils are deficient. Shortages would affect:
o Micronutrient fertilizer blends and foliar sprays
o Yields and quality of sensitive crops (e.g., corn striping, bean chlorosis, potato leaf issues)
· Animal feed additives: Zn and Mn salts are routinely added to livestock and poultry feeds for growth, immunity, and reproduction; shortages would affect feed formulations and potentially animal health and productivity.
· Food quality and nutrition: Because these elements influence plant metabolism and human/animal nutrition, prolonged shortages could indirectly affect nutritional profiles of crops and increase reliance on supplementation.
3. Batteries and energy storage
· Lithium‑ion battery cathodes: Manganese is already used in cathode chemistries (e.g., NMC, LMNO) and demand from batteries is projected to grow sharply; high‑purity manganese sulfate (HPMSM) is the battery‑grade form. A manganese shortage—especially of battery‑grade sulfate—would affect:
o EV battery production and costs
o Consumer electronics and grid storage using Mn‑containing cathodes
· Zinc‑based batteries: Aqueous zinc batteries are being developed as Li‑ion alternatives; while still emerging, tight zinc supply would raise material costs and could slow scale‑up.
4. Pharmaceuticals, supplements, and medical nutrition
· Trace element injections for parenteral nutrition: Multi‑trace element products (e.g., copper/manganese/selenium/zinc injections such as Tralement/Multrys) have faced recurring shortages; these are essential for patients on long‑term IV nutrition. A raw‑material shortage would exacerbate scarcity and pricing for these sterile injectables.
· Dietary supplements and fortified foods: Zinc and manganese are common in multivitamins, immune support products, and fortified foods; shortages would affect supplement availability and formulation costs.
5. Industrial chemicals and coatings
· Zinc chemicals: Zinc oxide, zinc sulfate, and related compounds are used in rubber vulcanization, ceramics, paints, and corrosion inhibitors; shortages would affect these downstream chemical products.
· Manganese chemicals: Manganese dioxide and sulfates are used in water treatment, glass/ceramics colorants, and dry‑cell batteries; constrained supply would impact these niches.
Why shortages hit certain products harder
· Grade specificity: For batteries, the bottleneck is often high‑purity manganese sulfate rather than total manganese ore; most manganese goes to steel, so battery‑grade capacity can be tight even when overall supply looks adequate.
· Single‑source or limited manufacturing: Some pharmaceutical trace‑element injections rely on few manufacturers, making them vulnerable to upstream metal constraints and production issues.
· Crop sensitivity: Certain crops have high Zn/Mn responsiveness; fertilizer shortages show up quickly as visible deficiency symptoms and yield losses.
If you tell me which sector you care about most (e.g., EV batteries, steel, agriculture, or pharma), I can narrow this to a focused list of specific products and likely substitution or reformulation options.
Nothing all that important, eh ?
Yes, of course there would be a problem if they became hard to get. You could say the same of iron and alumina.
But critical means that there is one entity that could choke off supply (thinking China). Mn and Zn do not qualify.
USGS says otherwise.
oops , coloured the wrong one.. Manganese is just below Magnesium..
Both in the USGS critical minerals list
You were already asked to supply a definition of “critical.” Can you provide a citation for your ‘choking’ definition?
Racehorse doesn’t do that sort of thing.
Wow, something can’t be critical if there is more than one source.
Nick has managed to completely rewrite a fundamental economic principle.
Yet, the lefties will champion clear cutting forests for windmills and look the other way while raptors are chopped to bits. Hypocrites.
I was interested so did some quick research. There are two known separate major ore bodies of different compositions. Hence the two mine shafts. Both ore bodies are CRD sulfide deposits, and extend to a depth of about 4000 feet. The mine property is on private land, but the access road, a power line, and mine tailings intrude into the Coronado National Forest, hence US Forest Service involvement. Been under development since 2013–a long time.