I 
118TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 1351 
To repeal section 3003 of the Carl Levin and Howard P. ‘‘Buck’’ McKeon 
National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015, and for other 
purposes. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
MARCH 3, 2023 
Mr. GRIJALVA (for himself, Mr. SABLAN, Mr. HUFFMAN, Ms. MOORE of Wis-
consin, Mr. GOMEZ, and Ms. LEGER FERNANDEZ) introduced the fol-
lowing bill; which was referred to the Committee on Natural Resources 
A BILL 
To repeal section 3003 of the Carl Levin and Howard P. 
‘‘Buck’’ McKeon National Defense Authorization Act for 
Fiscal Year 2015, and for other purposes. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Save Oak Flat From 
Foreign Mining Act’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress finds as follows: 
(1) Resolution Copper is jointly owned by two 
foreign mining companies, Rio Tinto and BHP. 
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(2) The largest shareholder of Rio Tinto is a 
foreign mining entity, Shining Prospect Private 
Limited Company, that is based in Singapore and is 
owned by the company Chinalco. 
(3) Chinalco is a holding company of the State- 
owned Assets Supervision and Administration Com-
mission of the State Council (SASAC) of the Peo-
ple’s Republic of China. 
(4) Rio Tinto has a long record of human 
rights violations and environmental devastation, 
harming Indigenous and other communities around 
the world, including in Australia, Papua New Guin-
ea, Madagascar, Indonesia, Mongolia, and Namibia. 
(5) In 2020, Rio Tinto used explosives to blow 
up a site sacred to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and 
Pinikura peoples in Western Australia, including the 
Juukan Gorge Rock Dwellings which have evidence 
of human habitation dating back 46,000 years, re-
sulting in immeasurable cultural and spiritual loss 
and pain for Indigenous communities. 
(6) Oak Flat is located in the Tonto National 
Forest, which was established in 1905 from the an-
cestral homelands of American Indians who were 
forcibly removed at gunpoint from Oak Flat and 
other areas of the Forest by the United States Army 
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during the 1880s and held as prisoners of war until 
the early 1900s. 
(7) Oak Flat is listed on the National Register 
of Historic Places as the Traditional Cultural Prop-
erty of Chı´’chil Bi5dagoteel Historic District. 
(8) Despite significant opposition in the United 
States Congress, section 3003 was included as a 
rider in the Carl Levin and Howard P. ‘Buck’ 
McKeon National Defense Authorization Act for 
Fiscal Year 2015 (16 U.S.C. 539p) that mandates 
the transfer of 2,422 acres of the sacred Oak Flat 
area to foreign-owned Resolution Copper within 60 
days of publication of an Environmental Impact 
Statement. 
(9) To maximize shareholder profits through 
the monetization of American resources, foreign- 
owned Resolution Copper plans to use the cheapest 
and most destructive form of mining, block cave 
mining, to develop a large-scale copper mine that 
will obliterate the sacred Oak Flat area and result 
in a crater 1.8 miles long and at least 1,000 feet 
deep, depriving American Indians from conducting 
religious ceremonies and other traditional practices. 
(10) Section 3003 lacks any requirement for 
foreign-owned Resolution Copper to sell the copper 
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it extracts from beneath Oak Flat in the United 
States. 
(11) According to the United States Geological 
Survey’s 2023 annual report, over 25 percent of all 
copper mined in the United States in 2022 was ex-
ported overseas. 
(12) According to a 2020 University of Arizona 
report, copper has consistently been a top export 
from the State of Arizona, with most of it being 
shipped to the People’s Republic of China from the 
Port of Guaymas in Sonora, Mexico. 
(13) Foreign-owned Resolution Copper intends 
to extract copper ore beneath Oak Flat, which will 
be slurried through 22 miles of pipelines and loaded 
onto trains to be likely shipped overseas according to 
the Arizona Department of Transportation. 
(14) Foreign-owned Resolution Copper’s mine 
will deplete, destroy, and poison substantial amounts 
of limited and precious water resources in a region 
that is already suffering from severe water shortages 
by— 
(A) pumping at least 775,000 acre-feet of 
water, which is approximately 250,000,000,000 
gallons over the 40-year life of the mine and is 
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enough water to support 140,000 homes annu-
ally for 40 years; and 
(B) redirecting water from the East Salt 
River Valley, which will comprise approximately 
seventy percent of the project’s groundwater 
that will be used to slurry 1,370,000,000 tons 
of toxic mine waste through approximately 19 
miles of pipelines to a massive toxic waste 
dump. 
(15) Foreign-owned Resolution Copper’s mas-
sive depletion of local groundwater will cause land 
subsidence in the East Salt River Valley by as much 
as 4 feet, and groundwater level decreases by 199 
feet in some areas. 
(16) Despite the rapidly deteriorating drought 
conditions in the Colorado River Basin, foreign- 
owned Resolution Copper received an allocation of 
over 2,200 acre-feet per year of Central Arizona 
Project water in 2021, while homes across the 
southwest continue to face looming water restric-
tions due to oversubscribed water supplies. 
(17) Foreign-owned Resolution Copper’s mine 
will result in a permanent toxic waste dump site of 
approximately 500 feet high and 3 miles long, span-
ning approximately 4,000 acres, in the Gila River 
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