Mining Water in Sonora: Part One
(Map of principal mining operations / Dirección General de Minería.)
Grupo México is likely single largest water consumer in
Sonora. The mining giant almost certainly contaminates more surface water and
groundwater than any other private entity.
But no one – except Grupo México executives -- knows how
much water the company uses and how much it contaminates.
That’s because Grupo México and the entire mining sector in
Sonora operate behind a shield of government secrecy, favors, and corruption.
The public guardians of water in Sonora -- the State Water
Commission (CEA) and the National Water Commission (Conagua) – don’t regulate
the company’s water use and don’t monitor its discharges of contaminated water.
The federal government’s environmental agencies – SEMARNAT and PROFEPA– are
charged with protecting Mexico’s natural resources and assessing the
environmental impact of commercial and industrial operations, but instead
collaborate with polluters to keep money flowing.[i]
But it is not only this shield of governmental collusion
with Grupo México and the mining industry that keeps fundamental facts about
the use and destruction of natural resources a secret. Citizens and researchers
can’t find out the essential facts of the industry’s operations because the
Grupo México mining and metallurgical complexes in northern Sonora are heavily
guarded enclaves. Only in extraordinary circumstances – such as the company’s
massive contamination of the Sonora River in August 2014 or the company’s
heartless disregard for the fate of the 65 mineworkers trapped and dying in its
Pasta de Conchos Mine in Coahuila in February 2006 – do some of the dirty
secrets of the Grupo México – government collusion come to light.
Sonora like its neighboring states on either side of the
international border is caught in a deepening water crisis -- one that is largely its own making but now
made ever more grim by the onslaught of climate change with its more extreme
weather, prolonged droughts, and rising temperatures.
Grupo México is a major player in this crisis because of
massive consumption of water. The virtual absence until recently of public,
media, and governmental scrutiny of Grupo México’s water-use and environmental
practices is a testament to the company’s privileged status in Mexico and
especially in Sonora.
Grupo México's railway company with tanker car carrying sulphuric acid /Photo by Tom Barry
This lack of scrutiny is all the more stunning given that
its two mining complexes are situated in the upper basins of Sonora’s two most
important rivers: the Buenavista del Cobre mine in Cananea in the Río Sonora
basin which feeds the state’s capital and most populous city, and the La
Caridad mining and metallurgical complex at the company town of Nacozari de
García and next to the La Angostura dam and reservoir on Río Bavispe which
feeds the mighty Yaqui River and sustains the state’s most productive
agricultural region in the Yaqui Valley.
Recently, the expansion of Grupo México’s excavation and
processing activities in the Cananea region are also increasingly putting the
San Pedro river basin at risk, underscoring the cross-border implications and
political repercussions of the expansion of this transnational mining company.
Since 2010 a water war has set Sonora on edge. The Yaqui
Water War concerns the historic use and the water rights of the Sonora and
Yaqui Rivers. Yet despite its depredation of the water resources of both
rivers, the central role of Grupo México in depleting and contaminating these
two river basins has been largely unexamined – due to its privileged status
with the state and federal governments and the impenetrability of its guarded
mining enclaves.
Government and company secrets obstruct a complete
accounting of the extent of Grupo México’s depredations of the Sonora, Yaqui,
and San Pedro Rivers. Despite the social, economic, and political tensions of
the Yaqui Water War and despite the company’s responsibility for the worst
environmental disaster in the history of mining in Sonora, there are still only
bits and pieces of information available about the role of Grupo México in
accelerating the water crisis that is threatening the future of Sonora and the
border region.
It is likely that only Grupo México knows how much surface
and groundwater it extracts from the aquifers associated with the Yaqui, San
Pedro, and Sonora Rivers. Even the government, which issues the company
hundreds of permits for water consumption and land use, has only the scantiest
data about the company’s actual water use and environmental impacts.
The involved government agencies pose as regulators, monitors,
protectors of the nation’s natural resources, when in fact, as events have so
starkly demonstrated, the agencies that are charged with controlling Grupo
México serve more as facilitators and enablers. SEMARNAT, PROFEPA, CEA, and
Conagua are in effect (and by choice) bystanders in the plundering and rape of
Sonora’s water resources.
La Caridad Mine,with aqueduct and processing ponds.
(Map of principal mining operations / Dirección General de Minería.)
[i] SEMARNAT is the Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y
Recursos Naturales,
while PROFEPA (Procuraduría Federal de Protección al Ambiente) is a decentralized branch
of SEMARNAT that inspects, monitors environmental agreements, and is charged
with enforcing the country’s environmental regulations.
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