Water firm will dig new well
Asks for mine's financial help to locate outside sulfate plume

GREEN VALLEY--Hoping to mitigate a water quality issue that has dogged the utility for years, Community Water Company of Green Valley is planning to drill a replacement well outside the plume of contaminants created by the Phelps Dodge Sierrita Mine.

With the new well in place, the water company will shut down at least one of the existing wells that has registered levels of sulfates and Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) at more than twice those recommended by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The replacement well has to be operational by January of 2006 so Community Water can comply with new federal arsenic standards.

It will replace the company's No. 8 well, which is so contaminated with sulfates and TDS that treating it for arsenic is not a viable option, according to Art Gabald—n, Community Water's general manager.

"We are going to build the well in 2005," Gabald—n said. "We are moving as fast as we can."

The replacement well, with an arsenic treatment plant, will cost about $2 million, Gabald—n said--half of the $4 million line-of-credit the company took out last month.

The other $2 million will be used to build arsenic treatment plants at other company wells.

By January 2006, all U.S. water companies must reduce the arsenic levels in their water supplies to 10 parts per billion, a standard that Gabald—n fully expects will be lowered to five parts per billion in the coming years.

Mine's role

The question now is, will Phelps Dodge help the water company pay for the new well?

"We have told them that their financial assistance is crucial," Gabald—n said this week. "We fully expect them to help pay."

Ken Vaughn, a spokesman for Phelps Dodge in Phoenix, said Tuesday that the company "will be contributing to the cost of the well," and that it should be fully operational by early 2006.

For more than a year now Community Water and Phelps Dodge have been working on a solution to the sulfate and TDS problem, which mine officials have said is a direct result of seepage into the aquifer from the mine's tailings.

Both sulfates and TDS are listed by the EPA as a secondary drinking water standards, meaning they don't pose an immediate health risk to consumers but do affect the aesthetic quality of the water, making it hard, sometimes colored, and bad tasting.

Also, high levels of sulfates and TDS have been known to cause diarrhea (which can lead to dehydration) in some populations, notably the old, the infant, and transients not acclimated to the local water supply.

Because the contaminates are listed in the secondary standards, however, there is nothing any government agency can to do to force the issue.

Water quality

In October 2003 the Green Valley Community Coordinating Council's Environmental Committee released a report that concluded "the water received by at least some people in the Community Water service area has had noticeably poor aesthetic properties since 1995, and these aesthetic properties have continued to degrade."

That report listed levels of sulfates and TDS in at least two Community Water wells near the Sierrita Mine at more than twice the recommended background levels.

During the last year, Phelps Dodge and the water company have worked on several different solutions to the contaminant problem, but nothing has changed.

Early on, Phelps Dodge officials said the mining giant was working on both a "short-term solution and a long-term solution" to the problem, but Gabald—n said this week that "we believe the time for the short-term solution has passed."

So, onward with the long-term solution--the construction of a replacement well outside the contaminant plume.

"The development of a new well has been on the table for a long time, and our goal will be to avoid the sulfate plume," Gabald—n said.

But Phelps Dodge's Vaughn said that a short-term, temporary solution is still in the works.

He said that Phelps Dodge is still working on a plan to connect one of the wells with low sulfate levels at the mine's Esperanza Well Field to the Community Water system by the first quarter of 2005.

"That will improve the water quality sooner and will be an interim step until the new well is operational," Vaughn said.

The interim well can only be just that, however, because the Esperanza Well Field is located on the edge of the sulfate plume.

Therefore, the interim well is expected to become contaminated within a few years, although it isn't at the present time, Vaughn said.

Vaughn said that the mine will file for permits within the next few weeks that will allow them to hook their well into Community Water's system.

But the only long-term permanent solution to the problem is to construct a new well outside of the reach of the sulfate plume, he said.

And it appears that all parties agree that it will be another year until that happens.

thull@gvnews.com | 625-5511 x 22