Maybe. The U.S. Forest Service emailed officials of a raft of local, state and federal agencies last week that they're not only cancelling a meeting scheduled for this week of cooperative agencies who have worked with the service on preparing the Draft Rosemont Environmental Impact Statement. They're also not going to hold any more of these meetings until they have a Draft EIS ready for the agencies to review.
But Mindee Roth, a Coronado National Forest official, said on Thursday that the Coronado staff should have a draft ready to send to their supervisors in the Forest Service's regional office "in a matter of days to weeks.'
Then, the regional office would have to review that draft and decide if it's ready to go, or needs more work. If it's deemed ready to go, "the cooperating agencies are next" to get their hands on the draft, said Roth, a special assistant to Coronado Forest Supervisor Jim Upchurch.
The cooperating agencies include, among others, the Pima County government, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the State Game and Fish Department, the Tohono O'Odham tribe, the city of Tucson and the Arizona State Mine Inspector's office.
How soon might the agencies get a draft?
"I'm not going to speculate. It's too difficult to judge," Roth said in a telephone interview.
Maybe by the summer?
"I'm not going to say."
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