Sponsors (34)
The bill permanently protects Oak Flat and strengthens recognition of local environmental and cultural risks—safeguarding tribal and community values and reducing permitting uncertainty—at the cost of forgoing potential mining jobs, royalty revenue, and creating legal, diplomatic, and supply-chain tradeoffs.
Indigenous tribes and nearby communities keep Oak Flat as protected public land, preserving cultural, recreational, and ecological values and reducing future permitting uncertainty.
Local impacts on water and waste from the proposed project are formally highlighted, supporting stronger water-management and mitigation measures to protect downstream users and homeowners.
The bill raises national-security concerns about foreign control of critical-mineral supply chains, which could justify policies to keep refining and related jobs in the U.S.
Local workers, small businesses, and governments lose potential jobs, investment, royalties, and lease revenue that mining development could have produced.
Findings that prompt regulatory limits or export controls (and the resulting market effects) could raise copper prices and supply-chain costs for U.S. manufacturers, utilities, and consumers.
Publicizing and emphasizing foreign ownership of the project could provoke diplomatic friction, complicate international investment relations, and fuel contentious public debates about resource sovereignty.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Repeals the 2015 land-exchange authority and withdraws ~2,422 acres at Oak Flat from public land and mining disposition authorities, preserving existing valid rights.
Introduced December 3, 2025 by Adelita S. Grijalva · Last progress December 3, 2025
Repeals the 2015 statutory land-exchange authority that would have conveyed Oak Flat to Resolution Copper and withdraws roughly 2,422 acres of Forest Service land at Oak Flat from federal land and mineral disposition authorities, preventing new mining claims or mineral leasing on that area while preserving valid existing rights. The measure frames the change as a response to environmental, cultural, water-resource, and foreign-ownership concerns tied to a planned deep-copper mine beneath Oak Flat and preserves any rights already in existence on enactment.