“I’m here to listen to you,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes told an audience of more than 150 people in the Patagonia School cafeteria on May 30. “Let’s talk.”
True to her word, Mayes stood beside the podium for close to two hours, taking notes and occasionally asking questions as 27 speakers came up to the mike to voice their concerns regarding South32’s Hermosa mining project in the Patagonia Mountains.
Mayes’ visit to Patagonia came about because of the efforts of Circle Z Ranch owner Diana Nash.
“I want top officials at the state level to hear about the mine and its detrimental impacts on health, safety, biodiversity, and recreation especially with the mine’s intent to use forest service lands as well as their own property for decades into the future,” Nash said in a recent interview with the PRT.
Nash hired Joe DeMenna, a partner at DeMenna Public Affairs, a government affairs consulting company in Phoenix. Nash and DeMenna coordinated with Patagonia Mayor Andy Wood and Mayes to give the attorney general an opportunity to hear face-to-face from members of the local community. Since taking office in 2023, Mayes has traveled across the state to hear the concerns of residents in rural areas who are having to deal with environmental challenges.
Ethnobotanist and Patagonia resident Gary Nabhan thanked Mayes for her work to revoke water permits to Saudi-owned alfalfa farms in La Paz County. South32, a foreign-owned company based in Australia, plans to discharge up to 6.48 million gallons per day at Hermosa.
“We now urge you to consider suspending South32’s water permits until further investigations are undertaken,” he said.
Patagonia Vice Mayor Michael Stabile echoed Nabhan’s comments, adding, “Water is more precious than zinc and lead and manganese.”
Mayes responded to Stabile and Nabhan’s comments by citing examples of areas in the state that are suffering because of the drawdown of water. In the town of Wenden, she said, the entire town has sunk by four feet and people’s wells have dried up, due to the wells supplying alfalfa fields owned by the United Arab Emirates.
“People’s wells in Willcox are being dewatered by the Riverview Dairy,” she said, referring to the 51,000-acre Minnesota owned dairy farm that dropped 600 wells, and is purported to draw more water than all the rest of Cochise County uses.
“The problem is not solved,” Mayes said. “Our groundwater laws must be updated. Unfortunately, we have a legislature that simply refuses to do its job. I am determined to use every lever available to me to stop over-pumping.”
The accelerated approval process for the mine drew criticism from several speakers.
“I don’t think we should be in such a hurry that we are going to sacrifice the incredible biodiversity we have in these mountains in the name of national security, especially when we don’t even know the impacts of the project we’re getting ready to undertake,” Jeff Buchanan, of Patagonia, and a member of the AZ Fish and Game Commission, said. “What I’m asking you to do is get involved to slow it down.”
Other concerns raised by speakers included threats to the rural character of the area, the lack of third-party monitoring, inadequate groundwater and soil studies, safety of residents, air pollution, fire danger and potential conflicts of interest on the part of County officials and employees.
“This has been an incredibly impactful town hall,” Mayes told the audience at the end of the event. “I can’t stand before you and make any promises, but I can tell you that I’m going to look at every tool available to me to help you, to work with you on this issue. You’ve seen what I have done in other communities. You know that I have tried my damnedest to do that… We saw a situation in Chino Valley in which there was a proposed aggregate mine and I used nuisance laws to stop that mine.
“I can’t tell you that I can do that here, I can’t tell you what I can do, I can just tell you that I’m going to go back and I’m going to look at the laws. I’m going to reexamine everything that you have said to me tonight and I’m going to put our lawyers on it, I’m going to put our investigators on it and we’re going to take a look and I’ll be back.”