A Way of Life Is Tapped Out in Arizona Mining Town

Some are retraining themselves through federal programs, gingerly picking their way around computer keyboards for the first time. Quite a few have enrolled in a truck driver school that set up shop in a local parking lot. Many took 50% pay cuts and are working as guards for the state prison at Florence, following the closing of the largest underground copper mine in the United States.

Since miners here were given the news last summer by the Australian-based Broken Hill Proprietary mining company, anger has turned into panic as laid-off workers, many of them in the third and fourth generations of their families to work the mines, have scrambled to find new jobs.

Economy in Transition

This town’s struggle to adjust to the loss of 3,000 jobs and make the transition from mining, Arizona’s old economy, to its new economy is a laboratory for the entire state. San Manuel’s painful efforts to recover are the subject of a state-sponsored study on coping with a problem that more and more rural communities in Arizona will face.

Plummeting worldwide copper prices and cheaper production costs in developing nations have all but wrecked copper production in North America. Arizona, the nation’s largest copper producer, has been hit hard. A worldwide drop in prices--50% in the last two years--has brought the closing of mines and smelters throughout the state. The layoffs here last summer put one-third of the state’s copper miners out of work.

Copper’s worldwide downturn is etched on the face of this town of 4,500. The strip mall has as many boarded-up businesses as open ones. Some families have left in search of work, and a real estate agent has reported an increase in foreclosures.

Although the use of copper continues to grow--the average American home contains 400 pounds of it in wiring, plumbing and appliances--world market forces have shifted its production to South America and Indonesia, havens from U.S. wage levels and from strict environmental laws. So, while Broken Hill closed a plant in Arizona, its mines in Chile and Papua New Guinea were growing.

Arizona’s economy has long been propped up by a trio of industries, known here as the Three Cs: copper, cattle and cotton. Among them, copper has been preeminent since the turn of the century, commanding railroads to serve the state, bringing jobs to rural settlements and setting the business agenda for the rough-and-tumble territory. So complete was the rule of the mining interests that for decades Arizona was said to be encircled by the “copper collar.” And the unabashed motto of the Arizona Mining Assn., an organization of mining companies, reads: “If it can’t be grown, it must be mined.”

Not anymore. In the last eight years the number of working mines in Arizona has been cut in half, to 10. Once there were more than 20 copper companies operating in the state; through mergers, shutdowns and pullouts, that number could soon be reduced to one, the venerable Phelps-Dodge, whose list of mines is now down to two.

In a state that constantly seeks to redefine itself, some say that computers have replaced copper on the list of Three Cs. Employment in the computer industry more than doubled from 1990 to 1997, and the state forecasts that it will soon be the fastest-growing portion of its economy.

Family Struggles After Layoffs

Rosie Ochoa knows all about copper’s collar: It’s choking her family so tightly that it feels as if she can’t breathe. Her husband was among the workers laid off by Broken Hill. The move also idled North America’s largest copper smelter, also in San Manuel.

Although not all of the laid-off miners lived in San Manuel, it seemed to many that the entire town was out of work. Couples sat at kitchen tables and pored over family budgets. Ochoa, pregnant with her third child, miscarried, which she attributes to stress.

To people in this outpost perched in the foothills north of Tucson, the closing of the mine was more than an abstract economic blip. It meant the termination of a livelihood, the end of a way of life and the erasure of an identity cherished by generations.

Suddenly, the town faced the interconnections of the global economy and worried about how a corporate decision made half a world away decimated its tax base, burdened its social programs and threatened years of environmental problems.

Generations have worked underground and in Arizona’s massive open pit mines, and generations have weathered mining’s cyclical downturns. Dorrinda White, working at a sandwich shop here, laughed and said copper towns are so fixated on the mines that no one ever feels completely secure.

“All of my family’s been in the mine--my father and my brothers,” she said. “For 20 years I’ve heard rumors it would be closed. I always used to tell people, ‘We’ll know when it happens.’ Hey, when it finally did, we all panicked.”

State Sen. Peter Rios, who, like his father, worked for a time in the mines, said: “It was devastating to the community when BHP closed its operation. People in the community still believe there is hope that mining will come back. I hope like heck it will, because we need those jobs. Those of us who come from small mining towns know how mining was the backbone of our communities.”

Copper’s dominance has been receding for at least a decade. In 1998, the industry employed 11,000 workers and added about $9 billion to Arizona’s economy. With the series of closings, copper’s contribution to the economy is expected to drop by at least half.

Broken Hill acquired the San Manuel mine after it bought Magma Copper (known here as “Mother Magma”) in 1996. Miners were heartened when the company poured $40 million into rebuilding the smelter. No one shuts down a smelter after spending that much, the local wisdom went. But in three years Broken Hill had closed nearly all of its North American operations, including mines in Arizona and Nevada. San Manuel still has a skeleton crew of about 225 employees who are either guarding the mine and smelter or mothballing the equipment.

Shrunken Tax Base Affects Services

At the Dyna Cafe, a few locals had brunch recently at the handful of plastic-topped tables. A few steps down the hill is the modest home of the cafe’s owner, Viola Contereas. Viola and her husband, David, bought the cafe four years ago, when the smelter was puffing away 12 hours a day and hungry miners jammed the cafe during shift changes.

Viola, who cares for her 96-year-old mother, said she doesn’t worry only about the miners and their families. She ticked off a list of businesses in town that have gone under, including the bakery and the auto parts store.

“These people are drawing unemployment and food stamps,” she said, shaking her head. “How are they going to make it?”

Indeed, the social costs of the plant’s closing may prove the highest for Pinal County. The county’s tax base has dried up and the public school system is expected to suffer. Statewide, public schools received $41 million in 1998 from taxes paid by the mines.

Lionel D. Ruiz, a Pinal County supervisor, said he is concerned about basic services. Broken Hill operated an emergency medical center, he said, but closed the facility along with the mine. The town now has a small clinic, but medical emergencies require an hour’s ambulance ride to Tucson.

“At one time the mines, because of their remoteness, would make sure there was housing and good medical care,” said Ruiz, himself a third-generation mine employee who worked in copper mines for 38 years. “They cared about the schools because the management people sent their kids there. Now, there’s no commitment to the community, and without their tax money we will be in trouble.”

Ruiz said rural lawmakers have trouble being heard in the Legislature, where attention is fixed on the robust economies of Phoenix and Tucson. The county is trying to make do. Social service agencies have established storefront offices to counsel miners and direct them to federal assistance, some of it earmarked for workers displaced by effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Many are seeking low-interest loans as their nest eggs shrink. Copper miners were among the highest-paid workers in Arizona, averaging $47,000 a year in a state where the average wage is $29,000. Still, many say they weren’t careful about saving.

Norbert Aguirre, 49, had worked at the mine for 27 years. He was three years from retirement when the plant closed. His wife has gone to work in an office to obtain insurance for the family, which is living off retirement savings. Aguirre’s two sons lost their jobs the same day as their father.

“They just up and told us, ‘That’s it,’ ” he said, dragging a rough hand over his face. Open heart surgery precludes his taking a job that involves hard labor. “I’ve got an 11th-grade education. What can I do? I don’t know computers, like some of these kids.”

Dennis Duffy, a 32-year-old college graduate, knows he has it better than most of his co-workers. He can fall back on his degree and will probably land a well-paying job. Still, that will probably mean commuting an hour or more to Tucson and spending less time with his wife and three children.

“As far as I’m concerned, foreign companies have no business owning companies in the U.S.,” said Duffy. “I guess I sound like a protectionist, but it never works out well. These guys don’t care about this town. It’s all about greed.”

The closed mine has the potential to leave another dark legacy: environmental degradation. Closed and abandoned mines plague the West. Here, dried up ponds filled with mining waste create huge white scars against the foothills. The Heap--an oxide-bleached hill of mining byproducts--rises as if to mimic the distant mountains. The smelter dominates the skyline.

Dealing With a Toxic Legacy

In some towns, the failure of mines to reclaim the waste, known as tailings, allows contaminants to leach into ground water, something residents say has happened here. “We used to drink the water out of the tap and it was so good,” said Glenna Hablutzel, who owns a beauty shop. “I’d never drink tap water now.”

Broken Hill says it is in full compliance with state and federal laws, but when mines are closed and tailing ponds dry up, as is common in this part of the state, a dust cloud envelops the town each time the wind comes up. The county supervisors investigated a dust problem here recently and ordered the mining company to reduce the dust for public health reasons.

According to Paul Catanzariti, reclamation specialist for the state mine inspector’s office, it can cost a mining company more than $15 million to reclaim a closed mine. Complicating enforcement of the cleanup: Arizona was one of the last states in the country to enact mine reclamation legislation. Much of its 1997 law won’t affect closed mines for another year.

“People here are proud, hard-working people,” said Larry Nelson, president of United Steelworkers Local 937, the miners’ union. “They have lived and worked here for generations. This action has not only closed the mine but taken away our heritage. If they can do it to steel, they can do it to copper, and they can do it to every single industry in this country.”

Times researcher Belen Rodriguez contributed to this story.