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GV woman aims to save aquifer
By Tim Hull
GREEN VALLEY--Nancy Freeman is on a mission.
Concerned about what the Phelps Dodge Sierrita Mine is doing to the local aquifer, the Green Valley resident has over the past couple of years been searching and digging in the labyrinthine corridors of Western water policy.
On the way she's learned enough to stay worried about Green Valley's water supply, and to attempt to form a group dedicated to cleaning up the Santa Cruz aquifer.
Her new Web site (which she constructed herself) contains a litany of concerns and reams of data about the mine's impact on the local water supply, and now she's going straight to her neighbors to enlist them in her quest.
This month Freeman held two very successful meetings at the Joyner-Green Valley library in an effort to gather citizens to her cause.
Nearly 100 people attended the two meetings, during which Freeman explained the processes of hard rock mining and its impact on sub-surface water.
Freeman has been trying for at least two years to excite interest and concern in the high levels of sulfates and Total Dissolved Solids that have contaminated the local water, the result of a sulfate plume spreading out underground in west Green Valley that Phelps Dodge has admitted is caused by the Sierrita mine's tailing fields.
She has lobbied Community Water of Green Valley to shut down at least two of its wells that have registered sulfate and TDS levels more than twice that recommended by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
She has gone to the Green Valley Community Coordinating Council, whose environmental committee issued a report last year that confirmed Freeman's worries, saying that the quality of the water in some parts of Green Valley has been noticeably deteriorating for nearly a decade.
Very little has changed, however.
Community Water and Phelps Dodge have been working for more than a year to switch out the utility's most contaminated wells with ones that register levels of sulfate and TDS closer to the recommended levels.
Temporary solution
That effort is expected to be completed sometime in 2005--not fast enough for Freeman. And, because of the plume, switching out wells is at best a temporary solution, Freeman says.
"Community Water Company is in negotiations with Phelps Dodge," said Art Gabald—n, manager of Community Water. "We continue to look for a well site outside the influence of the sulfate plume, but we have not yet determined the best well site."
The trouble is, while high levels of sulfate and TDS in water are known to cause diarrhea in the elderly and the infant, and to cause water to be overly hard and bad-tasting, there is no enforceable law that can spur the mine to act.
Sulfates and TDS are listed only as secondary recommendations by the EPA, not enforceable unless a state's Legislature adopts them as primary standards.
Undeterred, Freeman is asking local citizens to contact state legislators to change this-- a tall order in a state still dedicated to and proud of its hard-rock mining heritage.
Gabald—n said that if the state were to adopt the secondary standards as law, "it would put us into bankruptcy court, and most other small water utilities too."
Applying for permit
Right now Freeman's top concern, and the one that has prompted her to go before the community and plead for help, is the Aquifer Protection Permit (APP).
The Sierrita mine is currently in the process of applying for an APP, which is issued by the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.
That process has been going on in one form or another since about 1985, and yet still the mine has no permit.
According to the ADEQ, the APP is put in place to insure that any contaminants discharged into the aquifer by the mine are fully accounted for, and that they do not exceed acceptable levels set down by the permit.
Freeman wants those levels set at what they were in 1985 --the standards that existed when the Sierrita mine (under different ownership at the time) began the APP process.
"The mining company should not be rewarded with lower standards of water quality just because they avoided the permitting process for 19 years," Freeman says.
Freeman urged those who attended her meetings this month to join her fight, and she warned that if the levels and details contained in the APP (which is expected to be issued sometime in February) are not acceptable as regards sulfates and TDS, she will move for public meetings to be held on the matter in Green Valley.
"We can file for public meetings if the APP does not contain what we want," she says.
She urged citizens to call the ADEQ, the governor, state Legislators: "Ask for some resolution to the damage already done," she says. "Ask for assistance in having Phelps Dodge keep their promises to remedy the present over-mineralization problem in the aquifer."
Freeman has two more meetings planned for Jan. 10, 10 a.m., and Jan. 12, 6 p.m., both at the Joyner-Green Valley Library.
For more information on Freeman's concerns about what the mine is doing to the aquifer, visit her Web site at www.savethesantacruzaquifer.info.
(See related story, 3A.}
thull@gvnews.com | 625-5511 x 22
Concerned about what the Phelps Dodge Sierrita Mine is doing to the local aquifer, the Green Valley resident has over the past couple of years been searching and digging in the labyrinthine corridors of Western water policy.
On the way she's learned enough to stay worried about Green Valley's water supply, and to attempt to form a group dedicated to cleaning up the Santa Cruz aquifer.
Her new Web site (which she constructed herself) contains a litany of concerns and reams of data about the mine's impact on the local water supply, and now she's going straight to her neighbors to enlist them in her quest.
This month Freeman held two very successful meetings at the Joyner-Green Valley library in an effort to gather citizens to her cause.
Nearly 100 people attended the two meetings, during which Freeman explained the processes of hard rock mining and its impact on sub-surface water.
Freeman has been trying for at least two years to excite interest and concern in the high levels of sulfates and Total Dissolved Solids that have contaminated the local water, the result of a sulfate plume spreading out underground in west Green Valley that Phelps Dodge has admitted is caused by the Sierrita mine's tailing fields.
She has lobbied Community Water of Green Valley to shut down at least two of its wells that have registered sulfate and TDS levels more than twice that recommended by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
She has gone to the Green Valley Community Coordinating Council, whose environmental committee issued a report last year that confirmed Freeman's worries, saying that the quality of the water in some parts of Green Valley has been noticeably deteriorating for nearly a decade.
Very little has changed, however.
Community Water and Phelps Dodge have been working for more than a year to switch out the utility's most contaminated wells with ones that register levels of sulfate and TDS closer to the recommended levels.
Temporary solution
That effort is expected to be completed sometime in 2005--not fast enough for Freeman. And, because of the plume, switching out wells is at best a temporary solution, Freeman says.
"Community Water Company is in negotiations with Phelps Dodge," said Art Gabald—n, manager of Community Water. "We continue to look for a well site outside the influence of the sulfate plume, but we have not yet determined the best well site."
The trouble is, while high levels of sulfate and TDS in water are known to cause diarrhea in the elderly and the infant, and to cause water to be overly hard and bad-tasting, there is no enforceable law that can spur the mine to act.
Sulfates and TDS are listed only as secondary recommendations by the EPA, not enforceable unless a state's Legislature adopts them as primary standards.
Undeterred, Freeman is asking local citizens to contact state legislators to change this-- a tall order in a state still dedicated to and proud of its hard-rock mining heritage.
Gabald—n said that if the state were to adopt the secondary standards as law, "it would put us into bankruptcy court, and most other small water utilities too."
Applying for permit
Right now Freeman's top concern, and the one that has prompted her to go before the community and plead for help, is the Aquifer Protection Permit (APP).
The Sierrita mine is currently in the process of applying for an APP, which is issued by the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.
That process has been going on in one form or another since about 1985, and yet still the mine has no permit.
According to the ADEQ, the APP is put in place to insure that any contaminants discharged into the aquifer by the mine are fully accounted for, and that they do not exceed acceptable levels set down by the permit.
Freeman wants those levels set at what they were in 1985 --the standards that existed when the Sierrita mine (under different ownership at the time) began the APP process.
"The mining company should not be rewarded with lower standards of water quality just because they avoided the permitting process for 19 years," Freeman says.
Freeman urged those who attended her meetings this month to join her fight, and she warned that if the levels and details contained in the APP (which is expected to be issued sometime in February) are not acceptable as regards sulfates and TDS, she will move for public meetings to be held on the matter in Green Valley.
"We can file for public meetings if the APP does not contain what we want," she says.
She urged citizens to call the ADEQ, the governor, state Legislators: "Ask for some resolution to the damage already done," she says. "Ask for assistance in having Phelps Dodge keep their promises to remedy the present over-mineralization problem in the aquifer."
Freeman has two more meetings planned for Jan. 10, 10 a.m., and Jan. 12, 6 p.m., both at the Joyner-Green Valley Library.
For more information on Freeman's concerns about what the mine is doing to the aquifer, visit her Web site at www.savethesantacruzaquifer.info.
(See related story, 3A.}
thull@gvnews.com | 625-5511 x 22
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