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The U.S. Forest Service will not restart its process of getting public comments and questions about the proposed Rosemont Mine, despite a request to do so from Tucson's two U.S. House members.

But the agency has agreed to improve its Web site containing information about the mining project southeast of Tucson.

It also will start meeting soon with an outside group representing various interests involved in the Rosemont project, the head of Coronado National Forest wrote in a recent letter.

The letter, from Forest Supervisor Jeanine Derby, dealt with what's known as the "scoping" process. In it, a federal agency actively seeks comments, questions and descriptions of alternatives to a project from the public and local governments.

This process is a prelude to a formal environmental-impact statement, which in Rosemont's case is scheduled to start work on July 14. A draft statement is due to be released in March 2009.

U.S. Reps. Raúl Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords, both Tucson Democrats, wrote Derby last month seeking to have the scoping effort started over.

They said their constituents and local government officials are confused about deadlines for submitting comments.

Constituents also are concerned about the delayed or curtailed release of important studies and public documents, Grijalva and Giffords said.

Overall, the process, which started in March, was "flawed from the beginning," they wrote.

In her letter last Friday, Derby disagreed with that claim.

"While scoping may not have been perfectly implemented in the eyes of everyone, it has complied with and exceeded all legal requirements," wrote Derby, who added that the Forest Service already had modified its efforts in this area to meet earlier requests from Giffords.

"Now, we must not discount the efforts of all those who have already gone to exceptional lengths to participate by studying the proposal, traveling to meetings and providing comments," Derby wrote. "The results are too valuable to abandon."

Derby made three commitments in her new letter:

● As the environmental-statement work proceeds, the Coronado National Forest office will get reviews of the effort from its parent, the Regional Forester's office in Albuquerque, and will put into effect any recommendations "in a timely manner."

● The Coronado Forest will set up a test run or pilot project of a working group of outside interest-group representatives to give the Forest Service ideas and opinions on how the agency analyzes public comments. Ultimately, this could be the first of several such working groups to advise the service on how to deal with other issues involving the environmental document.

● By the fall, the Forest Service should have upgraded its Rosemont Web site to include more service documents on the mine and allow other government agencies, private citizens, interested groups, the media and mining company Augusta Resources to communicate with each other.