27-02-2025
'C' is for copper: If it isn't still king, it remains a royal growth industry in Arizona
FIVE C's OF ARIZONA
Origins| Climate| Citrus | Cotton | Copper (coming soon) | Cattle (coming soon)
MORENCI, Ariz. — The night crew returned to the motel parking lot just after 7 a.m. and assembled the booze and the ashtrays on a wooden picnic table.
Some of the traveling mine maintenance workers sipped brown liquor or vodka from plasticized paper coffee cups while others lined up cans of hard seltzer and Clamato-tinged light beer. It was mid-June, 10 days into the job, and the men were guzzling toward lights-out before the triple-digit heat baked eastern Arizona's copper belt, home of some of the most productive holes in North America.
'Nights are better in the heat,' said Bob Correll, grateful to be on the 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift instead of the other way around. His crew of specialized bricklayers from around the country was here on a two-week contract, relining a copper-leaching autoclave with fresh acid-resistant bricks.
He described the machine as a big blender laid on its side, resembling a cylindrical semi-truck trailer, its purpose to churn and separate copper out of crushed rock. Correll and colleagues had built it about a decade before, and he returns occasionally to restore it. He was glad not to be laboring in its sweltering belly during the day.
The workers are among legions who have made copper one of the linchpins in Arizona's economy since territorial days, one of the fabled Five C's along with cattle, cotton, climate and citrus. Although world economic cycles and shifting technologies such as the recent rise of electric vehicles make the copper sector anything but stable, it's a 'C' that continues to drive both rural economies and environmental consternation as the backbone of what the Arizona Mining Association pegs as a $20 billion mining industry.
Correll's colleagues smoked and swilled drinks, chattering about their upcoming job at a Nevada mine, or the next one after that, in Papua New Guinea. A newer crew member said he wanted to accept that overseas assignment, but that his partner back home didn't want him going.
'Wait till she sees the check,' a coworker responded.
The work is hard, Correll said, often with 12-hour shifts, seven days a week for a couple of weeks, followed by 20 days back home before the next job. On this assignment, they had enjoyed a 'fatigue day' off after the first six on, but Correll showed a swollen eye and scuffed temple as evidence that there was little real rest to be had. The wound had come when he tumbled down the levee behind the motel while tending a barbecue grill there.
'That's what happens on fatigue day,' he said. 'You drink and fall down. You don't get no rest.'
The men form their own kind of family unit while away on a job, he said. In their home lives between jobs, though, readjusting to family life can be tough, and divorces are common. Correll, a grandparent, recently went through his own divorce back in Pocatello, Idaho.
'But we make a lot of money,' he said, 'so you've got a choice.'
It's a choice that lures thousands of Arizonans to the copper fields, and that brings some to live full-time in the company town of Morenci or in private dwellings in its adjoining sister town of Clifton, where Correll's crew was staying at a no-frills motel with a parking lot full of work trucks.
Copper is the color of money, from the coating on U.S. pennies to the greening of the global energy economy. Arizona produces three-quarters of America's copper, valued at around $6 billion a year, according to the University of Arizona's Lowell Institute for Mineral Resources.
Morenci is the biggest haul of all in the state, and the biggest nationwide in many years. Freeport-McMoRan, the Phoenix-based company that runs it, employs 4,200 workers in Morenci alone. Their median pay last year was $85,700. Morenci also uses 1,500 contract workers. The mine has produced more than 43 billion pounds of copper since converting from underground to pit mining in 1937 and is estimated to hold at least 13 billion more — enough to operate through 2051.
Statewide, the company says, it employs more than 10,000 people and generates $2.2 billion in direct economic activity.
If copper isn't Arizona's king, it still looks to be a royal growth industry. Major new mines are in various stages of development or environmental haggling, all intended to exploit the metal's conductive properties to meet an expected world-changing demand wave as electrification fuels more of the world's transportation and energy needs. Electric vehicles, data centers, grid expansions and defense applications are expected to help boost world copper demand by up to 350% by 2050, Arizona Mining Association Director Steve Trussell said.
So are Morenci and other copper deposits likely to remain among Arizona's keystone moneymakers?
Just in the next decade, Freeport-McMoRan CEO Kathleen L. Quirk told The Arizona Republic in a written statement, the new demand will equal the output of the world's eight largest copper mines.
'Yes, copper is still a core part of Arizona's economy,' Quirk said, 'both now and in the future.'
The night crew members started trickling away from the picnic table around 7:45 a.m. By 8, the sun blazed against the canyon wall across the street, where a locomotive hauling chemicals up to the mine would soon be blasting its horn and rumbling the ground under their beds. Later it would rumble back down-canyon.
'See you guys,' one of the men shouted down from the motel balcony. 'Good night.'
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Pit mining for copper profoundly alters the landscape. At Morenci, it's on a scale that's hard to imagine without standing before it.
From a distance, the rising dust resembles smoke from a wildfire in the surrounding mountains. From a roadside viewing platform above a pit, the source becomes clear as a drill rig bores into a hillside to make way for explosives that bust up the ore. Morenci workers drill 400 of them a day. Rock and gravel slide down the cut banks, sending dust skyward.
Giant loaders dig into the rubble and pile it onto massive dump trucks that can hold 240 tons apiece or the weight of 53 full-size pickups. The same thing happens in four active pits. The trucks line up in convoys that ferry hundreds of loads each day to a conveyor belt that moves it across a public highway and then piles it next to the factories where it is further ground and stripped with chemicals.
The resulting copper grains are either shipped to a smelter in Miami-Globe or mixed into a solution where days of electrolysis in a local plant will cause the metal to glom onto a steel plate and create a cathode, a 99.9% pure copper shingle that's 3.5 feet by 3.1 feet and weighs 80 pounds, ready for sale to mills that shape them into rods and then wires.
The whole awesome mess, from pit to plant to pile of pulverized waste rock, covers 80 square miles, a footprint twice the size of the Phoenix suburb that hosts Arizona State University, Tempe. Since the formerly underground mine daylighted in 1937, its operations have moved mountains — and much of the company town itself.
Arizona's and America's continuing drive for minerals and money are signs of a sickness that is disrupting more basic needs, according to Wendsler Nosie, a San Carlos Apache activist who has essentially relocated his life to a camper at Oak Flat, a site that another copper company has targeted for mining.
Oak Flat, a scrubby expanse of boulders and ridges east of Superior on metro Phoenix's eastern shoulder, is the site of springs that bring life to the desert. It's also a sacred site for Apaches, one where Nosie says God touched the Earth and placed guiding spirits, much like angels in the Bible.
Resolution Copper proposes to mine under it, where the land would eventually subside to leave a crater 2 miles in diameter. No amount of money, from the company or the government, could then restore the land or the aquifer under it, he said. It's why he has become the public face of a religious freedom case that seeks a U.S. Supreme Court ruling to protect Oak Flat.
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He considers large copper mines and the 'greed' that drives them as self-inflicted wounds by a country that doesn't value air, water, land and wildlife as highly as 'critical minerals,' he said.
'We see America destroying all the places that give life,' Nosie said.
Digging more minerals for the sake of electrifying the economy to ostensibly ameliorate climate change won't actually solve Americans' problems, he argued. Their increasing reliance on computers, smartphones and anything that needs batteries or circuitry only compounds the demand.
'As long as you continue to be greedy for more and more power, they won't stop,' Nosie said. 'All you have to do is realize we have enough.'
Trussell, of the Arizona Mining Association, applies a different metric in advocating for more Arizona copper: security.
'The U.S. should strive for mineral independence,' he told The Republic. 'Just as we should not outsource our food production, we should aim to minimize our reliance on foreign minerals. This approach not only strengthens our economy but also ensures that we maintain control over the environmental and social standards of our mining operations.'
At Morenci, historic operations led to wildlife habitat losses, and air and water pollution around the San Francisco River caused the state and federal governments to sue Freeport-McMoRan for environmental damages. Much of the contamination had come from previously dismantled smelters and underground operations that Phelps Dodge Corp. and its predecessors had operated before Freeport-McMoRan acquired that company and its mine in 2007. The lawsuit also pointed to a continuing threat from acidic water pooling on the mine's massive tailings pond. The complaint alleged that wildlife including migratory birds had been injured.
The company settled that lawsuit for $6.8 million, a small sum compared to billions in revenue.
'Mining has long been, and continues to be, an important part of Arizona's history and economy,' Acting U.S. Attorney for Arizona Ann Birmingham Scheel said when announcing that settlement in 2012. 'Likewise, protecting Arizona's environment has long been, and continues to be, a priority for the U.S. Attorney's Office and the Department of Justice. This settlement strikes a balance between mining and protecting the environment and will allow the natural resources trustees to focus on restoration efforts rather than on litigation.'
The company told The Republic it now has 'extensive water management systems and other controls to prevent impacts from its operations to the San Francisco River.' The tailings pile, and much of the rest of the mine have a spider web of pipes that move and recirculate water for dust suppression, processing and other operations. The company says it recycles 90% of its water for multiple passes through the system. When it needs more, it draws on sources including the Salt River Project, local surface and groundwater sources, and the Colorado River via the Central Arizona Project.
Before federal environmental controls like the Clean Water Act were enacted starting in the 1970s, locals recall, electric blue water would flow downhill from the mine and pool in Clifton lots. Josephine Lunt recalled playing with a cousin in that water, immersing rocks in it and waiting for them to change color like Easter eggs in dye.
'I'm 93,' she said, 'so it must've not been too bad.'
Lunt still lives in her family home, a widow after 66 years of marriage to Donald Lunt, a welder who worked up to foreman. She displays a locally produced copper bowl in her living room, dedicated by the company to her husband for lifelong support of mining. Both of them grew up here in mining families, and she returned after graduating from the University of Arizona to teach music in the schools.
The mine has given a good life to many, even if it was at the cost of degrading the mountains and forcing beloved Morenci neighbors to move out of the way, she said.
'Our landscape is gone, but you can still go up the Coronado Trail,' she said, referring to the mule train route that explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado's expedition followed in 1540 when searching for fabled cities of gold. It's now a steep stretch of U.S. Highway 191 that winds past the pits and up ridges toward the Blue Range, with sweeping views of the Rim Country and back across the desert toward towering Mount Graham. She spoke of progress and earthmoving in terms of equating the changes to a rising sea.
'It's a livelihood, and I know that. It's just that you have to adjust to the tide.'
Lunt has seen a lot of adjustments in both Morenci, where she plays piano at Holy Cross Catholic Church, and in Clifton, where she lives. Two of the hardest knocks came in 1983.
First, mine workers struck against Phelps Dodge after a copper price collapse that had caused the company to rein in labor costs. Her husband worked through the strife, but stayed nights at the mine to avoid hostile strikers. From her porch at the time, she watched National Guard troops riding up the hill toward Morenci in troop trucks, called out by then-Gov. Bruce Babbitt.
'I never thought I'd see that coming through Clifton,' she said. 'It was a sad time.'
Eventually, the company broke the strike, and over time people either left or went back to work without union representation. It caused rifts, Lunt said. 'They're still divided, the families.' Those who didn't go back had to leave their company housing in Morenci, and some settled downhill in Clifton.
That same summer, the San Francisco flooded, wiping out homes and businesses and chasing many residents off to Safford or other communities. But many of Lunt's lifelong friends remained, and she has resisted requests to join her daughter's family in Tucson. She said she relishes meeting 'handsome young men' who she taught during her career, and telling them that she can remember when they wet their pants.
'There's a special friendship in the area,' she said. 'I've had a wonderful, wonderful life. What would I do in Tucson?'
Just downhill from Lunt's house is Chase Creek, a street that can double as an actual creek when monsoon rains fall. Like historic main drags in other Arizona mining towns, Chase Creek features curbs that rise a few feet from street to sidewalk, effectively forming a funnel for floodwaters and serving as a reminder that much of the infrastructure here, at the mine or in town, is in a floodplain hemmed by cliffs.
Down Chase Creek is where Lunt's friend Tammie McWhinney greets visitors in an old brick storefront that serves as the Greenlee County Museum. She's 81 and has lived in Morenci and Clifton since age 4.
McWhinney hands out coloring books featuring local scenes and trivia, including about how the twin towns of Clifton-Morenci boasted 18,000 residents in 1910 and rivaled Tucson to be the largest community in Arizona at that time. Such was copper's dominance just before statehood.
These days, the county that the two towns anchor is home to about half that many. The industry is humming along, McWhinney and a museum colleague said, but it's more automated and needs fewer workers. Many of those workers have families who prefer the larger town of Safford, with its Walmart and restaurants, and they commute 47 miles from there.
The museum displays mining equipment and one of the cathode plates of copper. It features a contour map showing the layout of copper tunnels from before pit mining started, and it has an extensive catalog of historic photos. Some of the monochrome shots show long-gone Morenci neighborhoods, like a terraced one called Stargo where McWhinney's family lived during her youth before moving to make way for a pit that's now producing. Others show buildings that came and went in rapid succession, including a school.
The current site of Clifton's Circle K convenience store had hosted a smelter before the Clean Air Act made their smokestacks problematic in this narrow valley, she said. She recalled school days when everyone knew what time to expect a belch of smoke to drift in through windows that remained open for lack of air conditioning.
'We were prepared for the smoke,' she said.
And what did they do about it?
'Just cough.'
The Clean Air Act plagued the community until the company came up with a smelter-free process for much of its ore, McWhinney said.
'It put a lot of people out of work,' she said. 'Then when we got the SX plant, they went back to work.'
That would be the SX/EW plant, short for Solvent Extraction-Electrowinning.
At the SX/EW plant today, steel plates hang in rows, suspended for a week in an acidic solution containing impure copper. During that time an electrical current causes the dissolved copper ions to migrate onto the steel plates, which they coat to a depth of about a quarter-inch.
At that point, a worker manipulating an overhead crane lifts them and delivers them above two others who are wearing protective suits and masks as they wield steel bars to scrape away and collect any impure copper nuggets clinging to the cathode plates. An airway-stinging acid mist wafts along behind the plates as the workers load them into an automated line that jostles them until the two copper sides loosen from the steel host then drops a wedge to split them off and stack them for shipping.
Morenci is a Freeport-McMoRan property where the company controls all of the housing and many of the services while sharing some responsibilities, such as public health, with Greenlee County. The company leases property to businesses such as a Basha's supermarket and a few eateries and runs its own bowling alley. It built a modern recreation center with gym, jogging track, pools and water play features for employees and their families. These amenities help attract and retain employees in a remote part of the state, according to the company, while giving them a sense of camaraderie and pride in the community and the company.
The biggest enticement of all may be the homes and apartments, with a sliding scale for rent based on when a worker started and moved in. Freeport-McMoRan maintains 1,949 housing units in Morenci and 42 in Safford. The company also provides a $750 housing stipend for those living in private homes elsewhere.
Estevan Mesa is a mine worker who has taken full advantage of the Morenci housing program. After a brief stint playing baseball at Eastern Arizona College in Safford, he went to work driving ore trucks when his wife was pregnant. After seven months of that, he apprenticed as a diesel mechanic and now works on the mine's heavy equipment. It's a trade that makes him feel secure in his future, even if copper prices fall and the mine cuts jobs.
'Having a trade like that could possibly take me to other places if I need to,' he said.
Until then, though, the tug of his Morenci rent is strong. His family pays just $200 a month, the same as when he signed on.
Life is good in Morenci, Mesa said. In June, he was coaching Estevan, Jr.'s, Little League all-star team, preparing them for a district tournament. He enjoys the mountains of eastern Arizona as a hunter and angler. He volunteers as a firefighter, and he's glad to be around generations of mining families, including his own.
'It feels secure,' he said. 'Everybody knows everybody.'
The work is always top of mind, from the scarps and rock piles visible around town to the assistant coaches who show up in high-visibility coveralls because they're on call.
The mine operates 24/7, 365 days a year. Administrative and town employees work four weekly shifts of 10 hours, but many mine workers put in 12-hour shifts for a week at a time, totaling 14 out of every 28 days.
Derek Waltrip, 24, showed up to help with his nephew's practice on Mesa's team after coming off his shift at 4 p.m. and remained on call for the evening. He started as a laborer at 18 and now works as a mechanic on the SX/EX plant.
'It's not bad," he said. "Money's where it's at up here.' He hopes to stay at it.
'I got a little boy," he said. "I want him to graduate up here. Just depends. You never know. Freeport could shut down right now and everybody's gotta go.'
The housing situation down the hill in Clifton is different, and something of a challenge, Mayor Laura Dorrell said. People who have moved away cling to family homes that might otherwise be open to newcomers, entrepreneurs or mine workers. Some homes on the canyon sides appear abandoned and dilapidated. Those canyon walls make it hard to secure land to build new places.
Likewise, a number of absentee commercial property owners cling to attractive buildings along Chase Creek, a place where newcomers might set up shop if they could. The town has two thriving, taxpaying marijuana dispensaries — almost as many as its restaurants. Property taxes are low, and people don't sell to make way for something new. It gives many young people no option but to leave town unless they want to follow their parents to work in the mine. Dorrell herself grew up here and returned from the University of Arizona as a nurse, and married a mine electrician. But she has seen many young graduates scatter for good.
'We need to really work hard to encourage our kids to come back here and have a reason for them to return once they go to school,' she said.
Meantime, copper remains Greenlee County's calling card.
As the sun went down on Chase Creek, late enough for Correll's crew of traveling bricklayers to have left the motel and returned to work, several laborers coming off their own shift pulled up in a parking lot and unloaded a couple of iced-down boxes of Modelo beers for an evening's chat.
A few of them declined interviews. One, who called himself Eddie but didn't want to be identified for fear of running afoul of his new employers at the mine, said he was grateful to be here.
Eddie had just arrived from El Paso, Texas, where he had worked in a restaurant kitchen and struggled to support kids aged 16, 14 and 8. He missed them and wasn't sure when he'd see them, but he was thinking of staying on at the mine. The work — shoveling sludge out of ball mills in which baseball-size bearings pulverize rock dust — hurt his back but paid four times what he had made back home.
He felt at once small and energized by the opportunity here.
'This place is humongous,' he said. 'I feel like an ant.'
Brandon Loomis covers environmental and climate issues for The Arizona Republic and Reach him at
Environmental coverage on and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: As demand for copper remains high, mining still drives economy
