The Santa Cruz River begins in the pale grasslands of southern Arizona’s San Rafael Valley. It ducks into Mexico, then makes its way back north through the ancestral land of the Tohono O’odham tribe in the Santa Rita Mountains, the reservation’s San Xavier District near Tucson, and, finally, to its confluence with the Gila River southwest of Phoenix.
The waterway used to be a lifeline for the Tohono O’odham’s Hohokam ancestors, the source from which traditional crops like tepary beans and squash were sustained. But by 62-year-old Austin Nuñez’s estimation, it hasn’t run through the San Xavier District since he was a child. In fact, most of the Santa Cruz’s 184-mile span no longer runs naturally at all — much of the river is a dry bed most of the time.
Nuñez has been the San Xavier District’s chairman for over 30 years. When he entered office, the Tohono O’odham Nation was lobbying to renegotiate its allotment from the Central Arizona Project, a 336-mile system carrying Colorado River water to cities, farms, and tribal land in southern and central Arizona. By 2004, a combination of the pipeline’s supply and groundwater allowed O’odham farming to begin again.
The change ushered in an era younger tribal members hadn’t known, Nuñez remembers. Traditional farming cooperatives began planting, and riparian restoration projects renewed vegetation and wildlife that had disappeared.
“We began seeing more animals, and hearing more birds,” the chairman said. “We’ve even had a mountain lion sighting; it’s just been really great to see this green space in the midst of all the development around this area.”
Nearly 40 percent of Arizona’s water comes from a deep underground supply of ancient aquifers. Considered nonrenewable sources by hydrologists, they feed a network of surface springs. The state is the second driest in the U.S., but holds over 10,000 springs, the second-most in the nation. But that groundwater supply has been in decline for over a century thanks to pumping for farming, industry, ranching, and population growth around the state. The disappearance of the Santa Cruz River has made Nuñez intimately attuned to that loss. It’s one reason his tribe has joined a growing battle against a proposed copper mine that could deplete the supply even more.
Slated for the Santa Rita Mountains some 40 miles southeast of the San Xavier District, Rosemont Copper would be the first U.S.-based operation of Canadian mining company Hudbay Minerals. The mine would carve a conal pit a half-mile deep and twice as wide into the mountain to excavate some 660 million tons of ore containing copper and molybdenum.
The project is permitted to use 6,000 acre-feet, or more than 1.9 trillion gallons, of water per year. That water would come from the Central Arizona Project and two key groundwater sources in the area. To Nuñez, the allotment is a blow that stands to destroy years of hard-earned water progress in San Xavier.
“We came from a time of not being able to grow our own crops, and it took our entire community to bring back the water,” Nuñez said. “We went through that struggle for almost 23 years. What we want is to make sure the sources we have now are protected, and that their cleanliness is not compromised.”
In March, Hudbay received the necessary Clean Water Act permit from the Army Corps of Engineers; days later, the U.S. Forest Service made its final decision to allow the mine to proceed on 4,000 acres of federal land. With all federal hurdles cleared, Rosemont construction could begin as early as this summer.
But lawsuits filed by the Tohono O’odham, Pascua Yaqui, and Hopi tribes, environmental advocates, and local communities still loom. The groups have filed a total of five cases in federal courts against Hudbay and the agencies that gave its mine the green light, citing reports that show the mine’s potential detrimental impact to the groundwater. Hudbay’s mine, they contend, would provide decades of economic benefit at the cost of a precarious source of water that might never recover, compromising the wildlife, cities, and Native American tribes that call the region home.
The mining industry has always been strong in Arizona. While state representatives Ann Kirkpatrick and Raúl Grijalva have been vocal opponents of the Rosemont project, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey and his predecessor, Jan Brewer, both supported it. Activists argue Hudbay’s operation has been able to move forward more freely under President Donald Trump’s administration, and that their own information requests have been stonewalled by federal agencies since he took office.
Like many before it, the Rosemont mine’s federal approval is underpinned by the General Mining Act of 1872. The U.S. Forest Service first ruled Hudbay had the right to exist on federal land in 2017, citing a provision of the law which deems mining as the “highest and best use of public land.” The national law, which permits royalty-free mining on federal land, was forged 40 years before Arizona gained statehood, but its provisions have been a bedrock of the industry’s success in the region.
“We are the copper state for a reason. We have a copper star on our flag, a copper dome on our state capitol building, and a miner on our state seal,” Steve Trussell, executive director of the Arizona Mining Association, said in an email. “Mining is part of the fabric of this state and the strength of the economy (particularly Arizona’s rural communities) depends on this core pillar.”
According to a 2017 economic impact report from Arizona State University, Arizona’s mining industry employed nearly 10,000 workers and pumped $5.9 billion into the state’s economy that year. Among the state’s minerals, copper is king — in 2017, 68 percent of U.S. copper production occurred in Arizona. Hudbay projects the Rosemont mine would directly employ an additional 500 workers and provide some $350 million in local tax revenue during its estimated 19-year lifespan.
But while mining has been the region’s economic bedrock, some locals say other industries should define its future.
Santa Cruz County, just south of the Rosemont site, is home to a burgeoning tourism industry. Visitors in towns like Patagonia, a biodiversity hotspot famous for birdwatching and outdoor recreation, and Sonoita, where a crop of local wineries have opened over the last decade, spent almost $240 million in the county (the smallest in the state) in 2017, according to the Arizona Office of Tourism.
Todd and Kelley Bostock, who came to Sonoita from Phoenix in 2006 to take over Dos Cabezas Winery, have witnessed the growth firsthand. “There were four wineries down here when we first arrived, we were the fifth,” Kelly said. Since then, the number has tripled.
To get to the area, visitors head south from Tucson and travel through rolling grasslands flanked by mountains on Arizona’s scenic Highway 83. If Rosemont Copper is built, the route would also be used by Hudbay to haul millions of tons of waste rock from the mine. The Bostocks believe that commotion could bring the service-economy momentum they’ve been building to a screeching halt.
“This is an emerging tourist region, and if you get a reputation for having dangerous roads full of hauling trucks or nonstop blast noise, light pollution, and a big gaping hole where the mountain used to be, it destroys the reason to be here,” Todd said. Hudbay’s profits from the mine, he continued, “will be at the direct expense of our business.”
In addition to reducing groundwater supply altogether, locals worry the mine’s tailings — the minerals and chemicals used in the extraction process — could seep into nearby canyons and streams that supply water to everything from regional cities like Tucson to the ranching communities farther south.
Historically, environmentalists and ranchers have clashed over issues like water use and grazing policies. But Grace Wystrach, 77, a rancher and restaurateur who lives about 40 miles south of the Rosemont site, said opposition to the mine is one area the groups find common ground.
Wystrach’s parents came to Arizona in 1949 from Marfa, Texas, and started the family ranch. She grew the operation as an adult, raising cattle and opening several tourist operations in Sonoita. Her children grew up in a home she built across the highway from the ranch where she spent her own childhood.
“I can’t see any upside to the mine, other than short-term economic gain that comes from some people being employed,” she said. “Long-term, I think we’re going to find both this area and Tucson will all be affected in terms of the water table and [water] quality.”
At a viewpoint on Highway 83, environmental activists Louise Misztal and Randy Serraglio studied the shrub-dotted expanse of the Santa Rita Mountains in the distance.
“There, that’s the place,” Serraglio said, pointing to a deep mahogany strip of earth Rosemont Copper is slated to inhabit. “That, and all of this around us, will be destroyed if that thing goes through.”
Around us was the Coronado National Forest, a kaleidoscope of drooping junipers, spindly ocotillos, and cacti bursting with pink flowers. The area doesn’t look quite like the Sonoran Desert further south, or the lush Colorado Plateau of Arizona’s north. Crops as biologically distant as chile peppers and grapes grow here.
Known collectively as the Madrean Archipelago, the area is one of around 50 sky islands throughout northern Mexico and the American Southwest. Less a mountain range than small clusters of peaks jutting from the desert, thousands of plant and animal species live in the sky islands, where a multitude of habitats collide.
“We go from these high forests of 9,000 feet to the low desert,” said Misztal. “It creates this mixing of ecosystems that allows animals like black bears and North American jaguars to meet.”
Those are the meetings both activists are determined to protect. Misztal is executive director of the Tucson-based Sky Island Alliance, and Serraglio oversees Southwest conservation initiatives for the Center for Biological Diversity. Both firms have joined the legal fight against Hudbay.
“I have been fighting this mine for 20 years,” Serraglio said. “We do it because these animals can’t speak up for themselves, so if not us, then who?”
Lodged in Arizona’s collective memory is a jaguar locals called El Jefe, an adult male photographed periodically in the Santa Ritas from 2011 to 2016. Jaguars used to roam the length of the U.S.-Mexico border, but rampant hunting and urbanization over the last several decades plummeted U.S. populations. When El Jefe was videotaped by a remote camera the Santa Ritas in 2016, many Arizonans were delighted, but the cat hasn’t been documented since.
In the Santa Ritas, the jaguar likely found an ideal habitat with fresh water and rugged terrain. Misztal said Hudbay’s project would change all that. She estimates some 40 springs are in the immediate vicinity of the Rosemont property. When the aquifer below them loses water, they could go dry.
“Those are vital sources of water for wildlife ranging from jaguars, black bears, and deer to frogs and various invertebrates,” Misztal said. “What people need to realize is that all those animals rely on drinking from the springs here.”
The Cienega Creek watershed is fed by the same aquifer. Serraglio said key stretches of the source flow year-round — a rarity in the desert — and, together with the Davidson Creek watershed, supplies some 20 percent of Tucson’s groundwater recharge each year.
“Over and over, all over the West, we’ve seen water contamination issues result from mines that promised to be safe and environmentally friendly. This has been happening for decades,” Serraglio said. “But in the old days, nobody really talked about whether the water was going to be contaminated. Now, we have the science to know that that is definitely a risk, and it’s definitely something that people should be concerned about.”
When the Army Corps of Engineers issued Hudbay’s Clean Water Act permit in March, it gave the company a green light to build waste rock piles and tailing facilities on or near the mountain’s water sources. The permit was issued despite a series of letters issued by the Environmental Protection Agency since at least 2013 urging the Corps to deny the permit.
That year, EPA said that Hudbay’s proposed mitigation efforts “would be insufficient to avoid ‘significant degradation’ to the aquatic ecosystem” of the area. Four years later, EPA officials reiterated themselves, writing that the mine would “irreparably undo decades of public efforts to protect drinking water supplies, biological resources and sensitive aquatic ecosystems within the Cienega Creek watershed.”
Hudbay declined our request for a phone interview, but agreed to answer questions by email. A spokesperson wrote that Hudbay has spent over $100 million on mitigation and impact research and more than 1,000 studies by state and federal agencies have been completed. The company claims it would replenish all water consumed during the mine’s lifespan through a series of mitigation efforts, including the construction of a 17-acre groundwater recharge facility fed by water from the Central Arizona Project.
The Corps’ Los Angeles District, which oversees decisions in Arizona, recommended denying the Clean Water Act permit in July 2016. But Arizona Governor Doug Ducey objected, and the decision was forwarded to the agency’s regional South Pacific Division office in San Francisco for appeal.
In a December 2016 letter to Hudbay’s then-vice president Patrick Merrin, Colonel Peter Helmlinger, South Pacific Division commanding officer, summarized the L.A. District’s decision to deny Hudbay’s Clean Water Act permit. The L.A. office’s findings, he wrote, were consistent with the EPA’s: that the project would impede state water quality standards, and “minimization and mitigation measures, along with proposed monitoring, were inadequate to ensure that degradation did not occur.” The mine, Helmlinger wrote, would also have “adverse effects to cultural resources and traditional cultural properties important to tribes.”
But in March, Helmlinger flipped the decision and granted the permit.
Stu Gillespie is an attorney with the environmental law firm Earthjustice, which represents the Tohono O’odham, Pascua Yaqui, and Hopi tribes in the legal challenges to the mine. He’s asked for the Army Corps documents detailing the specifics behind its 2016 denial and subsequent reversal since the first tribal suit was lodged in 2017. A version of the report finally arrived at his office this month, but Gillespie said 70 pages of the 120-page report were redacted.
“The essence of this case is the factual findings of the L.A. District,” Gillespie said. “We need to see how the agency went from a denial in 2016 to a permit in 2019. To do that, we need to have access to the scientific conclusions that we are publicly entitled to.”
As a young father, Nuñez used to take his three children to the Santa Ritas. Known to the tribe as To:wa Kuswo Doʼag, they’d go there to enjoy the breeze and towering trees that are rare in the San Xavier District’s arid lowlands. Nuñez said the Santa Ritas’ plants, animals, and web of springs make the range a cultural cornerstone for tribal members.
The mountains also contain hundreds of the tribe’s ancestral burial sites and remnants of ancient villages dating back to 500 B.C. Rosemont Copper would dive into a stretch of the same land.
“We have been told there will be some mitigation, but from what we understand, it is really very minimal,” he said. “We feel like they want to rush and do the bare minimum to start developing; once they do, those sites will be forever ruined.”
The prospect is what pushed Nuñez and representatives from the Pascua Yaqui and Hopi tribes into a legal case against the U.S. Forest Service in 2017. Since filing suit, Gillespie, their attorney, said the agency has focused on mitigation. “Imagine if someone came and said: ‘We’re going to excavate the Arlington Cemetery, can you tell us how to mitigate the impacts?’ It’s a little like rearranging the chairs of the Titanic,” he said.
The destruction of ancient remains is a story some tribal members are already familiar with. Gillespie’s suit cites an operation by Anamax Mining Company that began surveying the same area in the late 1970s. Without environmental or cultural preservation mandates in place, the project unearthed the remains of almost 200 indigenous people before liquidating assets and shuttering operations in 1985. The Tohono O’odham have spent the last 30 years repatriating those remains to tribal land, only to find themselves potentially facing the same situation all over again with Rosemont Copper.
“This area has a terrible history of cultural destruction,” said Gillespie. “Now we have Hudbay, chomping at the bit, gassing up the bulldozers to rush in there and destroy it even more.”
Tribal members still go to the Santa Ritas. Tohono O’odham women head there to collect willowy strands of beargrass, a yucca-like plant used to weave traditional baskets. Others come to pray and commune with the landscape. Just like he once did with his own children, Nuñez now brings his grandchildren to the mountains.
When I asked Nuñez how he might explain the prospect of the mine to them, he paused for a moment.
“I would tell them that we’ve always been grateful to our ancestors for what they’ve done to help us survive with minimal water in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. We owe them the respect of allowing their remains to stay in the ground [where] they were placed,” he said.
The fight against the mine offers a larger lesson, too, Nuñez said. “And I’d tell them, as O’odham, we must realize that all people need to care for one another, look to our commonalities and strive to live in harmony with the land.”
