PATAGONIA, Ariz.—When Becky and John Ball retired from careers in firefighting, they found their dream home in the foothills of Arizona’s famed Patagonia mountains. But less than a year after moving in, they worry they made a mistake. In June, a letter arrived in the mail informing them their home was within the “cone of depression” that a proposed mine in the nearby mountains would create, which could cause their well to go dry.
In the mountains above the mine, John Nordstrom got the same letter after his well’s water levels dropped 87 percent, according to data taken by the mine and shared with him. A local pond that was wet year-round on his property went dry after the mine began to dewater the aquifer to make way for underground mining.
Susan Wethington, just a few miles downstream from the proposed mine, has not drank from her well since 2021, when an “iron sludge” began to show up in her water after mining activity began. She relies on the town’s fire department to bring non-potable water to her home each week, with each delivery costing around $150 on top of what she spends on drinking water. Since the mine began to dump water into a local creek, lead levels in her well’s water have risen rapidly, from 0.0007 milligrams per liter to .479 in recent months. The Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum contaminant level goals for lead is zero. Iron and sulfate levels in Wethington’s well have also risen above the maximum allowable levels for those contaminants.
“I might be the first person that’s detecting [the contaminants], but I won’t be the last,” said Wethington, a biologist who founded the nonprofit Hummingbird Monitoring Network, a conservation organization. “It’s a much broader problem than just a personal problem.”
Under both the Biden and Trump administrations, federal agencies have looked to boost domestic mining, particularly for critical minerals like zinc and manganese, both crucial for battery technologies, construction and defense purposes. The agencies have paved the way for projects like South32’s Hermosa project, which will extract those elements as well as lead and silver, to be streamlined under the Fast-41 program, which is supposed to improve the timeliness, predictability and transparency of federal permitting for selected projects. That’s having a real impact on the ground for local communities like Patagonia, Arizona, which is in a region already gripped by deep drought and is now being forced to reckon with a new water-intensive project. The Trump administration has added numerous new mines to the program, making the Hermosa project a test case of how the streamlined permitting process will impact communities on the ground.
“These critical minerals are not more valuable than the water for the community that lives here and the wildlife in this global biodiversity hotspot,” said Carolyn Shafer, who leads the local environmental group Patagonia Area Resource Alliance. “The bottom line is: you cannot have exponential growth on a planet with finite resources.”
The letter to homeowners arrived with a contract. If the residents agreed to waive any claims against South32 for damage to their property or water, the company would monitor their wells and mitigate the impacts, such as by hauling water to them or deepening their wells. The contract also makes South32 the sole decider on whether the mine caused the issue and how to address it. Homeowners within the cone of depression worry they will sign away their water to the company and have no recourse if their wells are affected and the company doesn’t take adequate steps to help. They fear, too, that the value of their homes will drop, and the things that drew them to Patagonia will suffer no matter what’s promised to them as the dig disrupts the landscape and hydrology, and pressures the area’s wildlife, which includes endangered jaguars and Mexican spotted owls along with endemic species found nowhere else in the world like Sonoran tiger salamanders.
“I’d like to get along with them,” Nordstrom said. “But I can’t make them do the right thing.”
“These critical minerals are not more valuable than the water for the community that lives here and the wildlife in this global biodiversity hotspot.”
— Carolyn Shafer, Patagonia Area Resource Alliance
Residents also worry about whether their water will be safe to drink. In the letter and contract from South32, there is no mention of contaminants potentially affecting the local water supply.
But recent water samples taken from Wetherington’s well have seen lead, iron, sulfate, manganese and zinc levels all increase since the mine began to discharge treated water into nearby Harshaw Creek. Chris Gardner, a local hydrologist who in public comments during the project’s permitting raised concerns over the mine’s impact to the region’s water resources said the mine discharges far more water into the local creek than the waterway typically carries, likely causing the substances like lead to dissolve naturally from the streambed and surrounding terrain and leach into the groundwater.
Even the project’s draft environmental impact statement notes this could be an impact: “Some of the new flow in the channel will infiltrate through the creek bed and could leach metals present in naturally occurring sediments and sediments that may have been impacted by historic mining and subsequently deposited in the channel.”
Diminishing Supply and Increasing Contamination of an Unregulated Resource
A spokesperson for South32 said the company has two water treatment plants that capture and remove naturally occurring elements that could be increased to dangerous concentrations by the mining operation, and treat the water to federal and state safety standards. South32 voluntarily monitors water quality downstream, they added, and the “data does not show elevated contaminant levels that exceed environmental standards at any of the wells monitored.”
“Our state-of-the-art water treatment plant is designed to meet or exceed state and federal water quality standards—and it does,” said South32 Hermosa president Pat Risner, in a statement. “We’ve been monitoring water in this region for nearly a decade, and that includes Harshaw Creek, wells, and other areas. Independent, third-party testing continues to show that our discharge is not negatively impacting water quality.”
In much of rural Arizona, groundwater is a resource available for anyone to use without restriction. Roughly 80 percent of the state lacks any form of groundwater pumping limitations, though agencies do have rules that protect the quality of water across Arizona. So when big water users come to places like Patagonia, they can pump as much as they want without even keeping track of how much they suck from aquifers or paying a penny for it. In some cases, the groundwater pumping has led wells to run dry, and those affected have had little, if any, recourse. Water experts, local leaders and rural residents have pushed for years to regulate rural groundwater use, and the governor also called for action, but proposed laws to resolve rural Arizona’s groundwater issues have proven divisive in the state legislature.
“If your neighbor comes and drills a big, deep, powerful well and pumps water, and your own water level goes down in your well, there’s nothing you can do about that,” said Sarah Porter, the director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University.
Given the lack of restrictions and legal protections, the agreement South22 has proposed to residents might be mutually beneficial for both the mining company and well owners, Porter said.
Though some well owners near the Hermosa project like Nordstrom have little recourse to protect their water, others affected by the cone of depression fall into areas known as active management areas (AMA) where groundwater is protected. In the Santa Cruz AMA, near Patagonia, groundwater is managed to maintain a “safe-yield” condition in which no more water is pumped out of the aquifer than goes into it, and prevent long-term declines in water levels.
While the mine is outside of this area, and the quantity of groundwater it uses is not regulated, the project’s cone of depression extends out roughly 70 times the 750-acre project footprint, so it will impact the areas protected by the AMA. The environmental impact statement from the U.S. Forest Service found that every alternative presented by the mine had the potential to hinder the recharging of the Santa Cruz AMA’s groundwater or divert water flows in its creeks.
“The volume of regional groundwater flow and recharge lost from the AMA has not been quantified,” the statement noted.
Shuan Evans, a spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Water Resources, said in a statement that an AMA typically includes an entire groundwater basin, so groundwater pumping outside the area should not impact it. But there is no cone of depression testing done by the department, she added. Over its 70-year lifespan, the mine will take an estimated 195,000 acre-feet of water from the groundwater system—about 2,790 acre-feet per year—according to the draft EIS for the project. Approximately 88,000 acre-feet would recharge the groundwater via rapid infiltration basins designed to speed the flow into an aquifer, and another 73,000 acre-feet would recharge the aquifer from the discharges into Harshaw Creek. The Forest Service estimates the net volume loss to the aquifer from the mine’s water use will be 34,000 acre-feet, though environmental groups have questioned that claim. One acre foot is enough water to supply two to three homes in Arizona for a year.
The company’s “Well Protection Program is a completely voluntary initiative—not required by any permit or statute—developed by South32 in the spirit of good faith and proactive community engagement,” the South32 spokesperson said in a statement. “Our intention is to work directly with landowners who could be affected by potential long-term groundwater changes associated with the Hermosa project’s water management activities.”
The spokesperson added that “most wells are not expected to experience immediate effects” and the program is designed to be preventive. The new agreements are an extension of an existing program, they added, and the company is already monitoring 23 private wells.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, said in a statement that the agency “is working closely with project proponents to evaluate potential effects of the South32 Hermosa Project on nearby springs, wells, and drainages as part of its environmental review. Mitigating impacts to groundwater-dependent ecosystems and community water resources is an important consideration in the analysis.”
No final decision on the project has been made, and the agency will work with all parties involved to address concerns, they said.
A Community Pivoting to Ecotourism Faces the Return of Mining
Nearly everyone living in or around Patagonia says they live here for the nature that surrounds them.
It’s what brought Becky and John Ball to the area from Wyoming. Becky fell in love with the area as soon as she saw it, and the couple thought they were lucky when they found an available lot with the ridges of the Patagonia Mountains rising before it on which to build their home.
It came as a surprise when they got a letter in the mail from South32 saying their home was in the cone of depression surrounding the proposed mine, and it could affect their well. The Balls have no intention of signing the current version of the contract that arrived with the correspondence, which they fear will make them unable to sell their home and forced to accept whatever solution the company may come up with if the mine impacts their water.
The Patagonia Mountains are one of southern Arizona’s most famous Sky Islands. They are famed for the biodiversity nurtured by the elevation of the mountains that provide isolated refuges from the hot desert floor, both inspiring their island moniker and serving as a bridge for wildlife connecting the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Madre range in Mexico. The Sky Islands’ lush cottonwoods, creeks and range of wildlife can lead people to forget they are in the heart of the Sonoran Desert.
Extraction is nothing new in the Patagonia mountains—the name of the town and the mountains themselves stem from a silver mine that opened there in the 1850s. Like most mining towns, Patagonia went through a series of booms and busts, until mining largely faded out of the mountains in the 1950s.
But unlike many of the other former mining towns scattered across the Southwest, Patagonia has pivoted its economy to one centered on the environment around them. The town is a hotspot for birders, hikers and bikers, and is well known in Arizona as a charming mountain town. A study from the University of Arizona on the nature-based economy of Santa Cruz county—home to Patagonia—found ecotourism and conservation drove $121.7 million in sales, contributed $4.7 million in state and local taxes, added $53.8 million to the county’s GDP and supported 1,200 jobs that generated $41.2 million in income.
Patagonia Mayor Andrea Wood said the town “over and over and over again” has expressed its concerns over the mine’s impacts on local water and ecotourism.
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The town is engaged in discussions to sign a community benefits agreement with South32, and their top priority is making sure any negative impacts to the area are addressed and mitigations are put in place.
Public pressure has forced the company to be more transparent, Wood said, as seen by the letters sent out to community members concerning the water.
“The community is demanding that they do that,” she said. “I always keep in mind that a corporate entity’s goal is to make a profit. That’s what they’re in business for.” That makes it critical for the community to be outspoken to get their concerns addressed, she added.
For locals, trusting South32 is hard to do.
Lorrie Larsen and Robert Paulsen are one of the couples that received South32’s letter and contract informing them they are in the cone of depression. They moved here for the wildlife, and, since moving in, they have spent every day working on their property. Their home features a garden and horses, while both of their cars are adorned with stickers that read “FU32.”
They don’t trust the company and are reluctant to sign any agreement with them. But they fear for their water. They worry the mine will force them to move, but they ask how they will be able to sell a property with a well found in the mine’s cone of depression?
Across Southern Arizona, you can see what happens when large companies move into rural areas and begin to pump aquifers, they said.
“I’m all for being green,” Larsen said. “But they’re doing a lot of damage in the meantime.”
“There’s Clearly a Water Problem”
High in the Patagonia mountains, John Nordstrom stood on his porch and watched as wild, native turkeys roamed his backyard. He had searched for years for a property like this. The 4.5-acre inholding deep in the Coronado National Forest is one of the most biodiverse places in the country. From his home, he’s seen black bears, cougars, javelinas and even raccoon-like coatimundis.
“There isn’t another property like this,” he said, recalling how he found his home while hiking through the forest and spotting the previous owners packing to move. He bought it on the spot. “How do you begin to even quantify what a property like this is even worth?”
A geologist by training, Nordstrom isn’t opposed to mining, and noted he voted for Donald Trump to be president three times. “I’m not a treehugger,” he said.
But he succinctly summed up what will happen to him if the mine is approved without addressing the threats he recognizes it poses to the aquifer and the region: “I’m f—d.”
“I’ll be run off eventually,” he said. “But in the meantime, I got to do the right thing.”
The Hermosa project is a done deal, he said, thanks to the country’s mining laws and the federal push to approve the mine. He doesn’t believe the community will be able to stop it.
All they can do is mitigate the risks, and his top priority is making sure the water that enables the wildlife to thrive here is protected.
Behind his home are a series of creeks and streams where Nordstrom spends his days building a series of rock detention structures designed to slow down the flow of water so that, when it comes, it better infiltrates the aquifer below.
It’s a well-known way to help recharge groundwater systems, done across Arizona and even by a local conservation group based in Patagonia.
“The thought process is, this will eventually all backfill with sediment,” he said as he looked over one of the structures he made. He hopes his work will help counter the water issues in the region, and mitigate some of the mine’s potential impacts. “The sediment will cause grasses to come and start stabilizing the soil and that’ll be like a big sponge, and then the deer will eat,” he said. “It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy or a feedback loop.”
His property has already seen water impacts. His well’s water levels dropped 87 percent in recent months, and a pond went dry after Hermosa began to dewater the mine.
“Can I prove it was the mine? No,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter. We got to fix the problem. It doesn’t matter if it was the mine or not—there’s clearly a water problem.”
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Wyatt Myskow covers drought, biodiversity and the renewable energy transition throughout the Western U.S. Based in Phoenix, he previously reported for The Arizona Republic and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Wyatt has lived in the Southwest since birth and graduated from Arizona State University with his bachelor’s degree in journalism.
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