Truth or Consequences Daily Digest Tuesday, September 15, 2026
Ty's Take
The Copper Flat Mine hearings keep circling back to the same two things, and not always at the same time. One side sees jobs, the kind of steady work that keeps young families from having to leave for Las Vegas or El Paso. The other side sees risk to the Rio Grande, and around here, that's not some abstract argument. That river is how Elephant Butte fills, and Elephant Butte is how we live. The dollars make sense on paper until they don't, and that's what these hearings are really about: whether we're willing to bet our water supply on a company's promise to do it different this time. Nobody's wrong for wanting either one.
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Sierra County Citizen
Hearing on Copper Flat Mine, X: The dollars and sense of mining
A Sierra County analyst argues the proposed Copper Flat mining operation is economically unsound, calculating that water costs alone would exceed the value of copper produced even at current market prices. The critic contends that if the county's water were allocated to bottling and sale instead,...
Hearing on Copper Flat Mine, VII: Talking about jobs on Labor Day
A resident recalls how the original Copper Flat Mine, which opened in 1982 with hundreds of jobs, laid off all workers within months when copper prices collapsed, leaving Sierra County's economy devastated through the late 1980s with empty homes and displaced families. The writer warns that...
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