Congress has passed two laws dealing with the Mount Graham International Observatory.
The Arizona Wilderness Act of 1984 designated a 3,500-acre potential astrophysical research study area in the Pinaleno Mountains at the same time as 62,000 acres of the mountain range was designated as a federal wilderness study area.
The Arizona-Idaho Conservation Act of 1988 (AICA) incorporated the terms of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Biological Opinion, agreed to by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and The University of Arizona (UA), into federal law. AICA authorized the UA and its partners to build three telescopes and an access road on Emerald Peak as the first phase of the observatory. AICA also provided that if a USFWS biological study performed after the first phase showed no serious impact on the endangered Mount Graham red squirrel, the UA and its partners could build four more telescopes so long as the entire seven-instrument observatory, support buildings and roads occupied no more than 24 acres. The Biological Opinion required the UA, to construct a new narrow two-mile access road, to restore an old road leading to the site, occupying 60 acres, to its natural state. The legislation also required the UA to implement a red squirrel monitoring program for ten years to study the impact of construction on the red squirrel.
In the summer of 1989 the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund filed a nine-claim lawsuit against the Forest Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service, seeking to halt construction. The UA intervened in the suit as a co-defendant in August of that year because it was obvious that the University's project was the real target of the litigation.
A U.S. District Court judge in Tucson granted a summary judgment to the federal agencies and the UA on seven of the nine claims in June of 1990. The observatory opponents then appealed that ruling to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the District Court ruling in December 1991.
In October 1991, the District Court in Tucson ruled in favor of the federal agencies and the UA on the two remaining claims of the Sierra Club lawsuit. The opponents again appealed to the Ninth Circuit, which once more upheld the lower court in May 1992, bringing that lawsuit to an end.
Meanwhile, after the first U.S. District Court ruling against the Sierra Club's suit, a Tucson- based group sued the Forest Service in August 1991 in another attempt to halt the project. This group, the Apache Survival Coalition, contained some of the same environmental opponents who had been active in the Sierra Club lawsuit and does not officially represent any Native American tribe. Coalition lawyers have made many of the same arguments presented in the Sierra Club suit. Because, once again, the UA is the obvious target of this lawsuit, the University has also intervened in this matter as a co-defendant.
In May 1992 a U.S. District Court judge in Phoenix denied the coalition's motions and granted a motion by the Forest Service and the UA to dismiss the suit. Lawyers for the Survival Coalition appealed the dismissal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. On April 8, 1994, the Appeals Court upheld the District Court's decision, finding the Arizona-Idaho Conservation Act to be constitutional and the Coalition's objections to the project brought after "inexcusable delay."