You can make a lot of money with water. At the proposed Copper Flat Mine, the mine will withdraw over 46,000,000,000 gallons of groundwater over its 10 years of mining and 3 years of reclamation. Unlike agricultural or domestic use, that water is never returned to the soil to be reused. It will be a permanent shortfall for us locally but producing an enormous profit for the Australian family who owns the mine.
But, still, water is life, and when there isn’t enough water, you get what we see in Iran, public protests. America media like to parade the demonstrations in Iran as a political show of freedom. Today, for once, we have a real news reporting on the role water scarcity plays in these outcries: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/15/how-day-zero-water-shortages-in-iran-are-fuelling-protests. The problem is global warming and an easy, unthinking acceptance of the arrogant water management idea of building dams to irrigate fields in the desert in order to create the garden of Eden. Sunshine and water are all that is needed for perfection.
We in the Southwest, like the Iranians, bought into this idea that water in the desert will bring us untold fruits and profit, and like the Iranians, we have a history of ignorant mismanagement and overuse while drying up the groundwater for the sake of profit. Water use at Copper Flat Mine is a case in point. The loss of 46,000,000,000 gallons is only a beginning. The mine plans to harvest an additional, unspecified amount of run-off storm water (perhaps doubling the 46 billion gallons), thus further reducing the water going into our usable water system of streams and aquifers.
We had to be sued by Texas in order to embrace the fact that we overuse our share of water, not just in the Rio Grande but in the aquifers that merge underground with the river. Two years ago, an agreement was struck on future partitioning of Rio Grande water, but that agreement was objected to by the federal government because it did not address its interest in interstate and international issues. The Supreme Court rejected that agreement because it lacked specifics on how New Mexico will address its continuing problem of overuse.
The new agreement announced last month has corrected that failure. Its terms will require both belt tightening on all our parts as well as the expenditure of lots of our tax payer moneys. And, depending on how we manage the intrastate negotiations, that financial cost may be very steep.
For an overview of this agreement and our obligations, see the analysis by Norm Gaume of Water Advocates: https://nmwateradvocates.org/lower-rio-grande-settlement-who-pays-how-it-works/?utm_source=New+Mexico+Water+Advocates&utm_campaign=e938ba1e86-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_Dec_News_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-80e190cc1c-297445425. A must read.
Meanwhile, our local politicians, in T or C and in the County, are pushing for development, as if they can’t believe deserts are dry by definition. They all seem to think losing water permanently at Copper Flat Mine makes Sierra County great again; though, I doubt any of them remembers what was greater about the county when the mine ran for 3 months in 1982 than it is today. Of course, now, they have a new ally, a real estate development company in Staten Island, where the average rainfall is around 48 inches a year.
Perhaps it will help for someone to give our elected officials Norm Gaume’s explanation of what is coming down the line in the real world rather than in the hyped world of “bigger and better.”
A sincere thank you for this article, Mr. Yeh. As one of the original litigants against the copper mine east of Hillsboro reopening, your insights are more than appreciated. I only wish the civic leaders in TorC would understand the real problem. W A T E R.
Worth study for us who look ahead at NM’s water future. Just correct that “trillion” to “billion” though.
Thank you, Mr. Nelson. Billions, it is.
Is it simply greed that blinds policy makers to think realistically about the future? And how ‘bout the massive AI complex being pushed in Santa Teresa?
We must block Project Ranger in Rio Rancho and a proposed data center on the Los Alamos Lab’s campus.. What is constructed upstream from Sierra County may doom us to perpetual shortfalls here.
I think mining is very bad, but manufacturing electronic gadgets and armaments is far worse for our water security.
You’re absolutely right, Mr. Wilks, about upstream development affecting our water supply when we think of actual water, but you have to add to that the “flow” of paper water, that is, water rights. You can’t use water without the right to use water, and those rights are limited. With the Texas v. NM agreement, those rights will be further reduced.
That is what Gaume is talking about when he says that the state has to spend our money to buy water rights and retire them (take them out of circulation). We have been caught with our hands in the cookie jar. It is now payback time. We have given people too much water rights, and to reduce the amount of rights, we have to pay the owners of the rights to buy them unless right owners give up some rights voluntarily. In either case there has to be fewer rights.
Fewer rights in the state means everyone is affected no matter what the flow of actual water is. So, Mr. Hogg’s concern with the Jupiter project down south of us is just as real as your concern for wet water. If the Jupiter project goes into effect, it will only be by sucking up a huge amount of dry water.
I very much appreciate this post and your work on this issue, Max. Thank you.