Bridge 2000

The social regulation of resource access and environmental impact:production, nature and contradiction in the US copper industry

Gavin Bridge

Department of Geography, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA

Received 30 September 1998

Abstract

The ecological processes underpinning commodity production have been largely overlooked by theories of social regulation and

governance. Conventional applications of regulation theory, for example, often reduce the complex interactions between the en-

vironment and processes of accumulation to an homogenous surface on which the institutions of social regulation are inscribed. By

contrast, this paper illustrates how the metabolism of production the flows of raw materials, energy, and wastes central to the

production of commodities from the natural environment can provoke its own set of contradictions for particular industrial

sectors. These contradictions can emerge to challenge accumulation in specific industrial sectors when existing practices and in-

stitutions fail to ensure continued access to resources and/or to eectively regulate the impacts of production on the environment.

This paper describes how historical patterns of using nature in one primary commodity sector copper mining and processing

contributed to declining profitability in this industry during the early 1980s. The process of copper production is analyzed to identify

a series of underlying ecological contradictions that have the potential to impact profitability. The expression of these con-tradictions is then examined in the specific context of the US Southwest during the 1980s, with particular attention paid to conflicts

over the environmental impacts of mining and the accessibility of land to mining firms. The emergence of social conflict over land

access and the environment is interpreted in terms of the historical specificity and obsolescence of the framework of institutions,

legislation and customary relations between corporations, the state and activist groups that had formerly contained and regulated

these contradictions. 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Regulation theory; Political ecology; Commodity production; Mining; Arizona and New Mexico

1. Prologue

In 1987, the Phelps Dodge copper smelter at Douglas,Arizona closed after 85 years of operation. Prior toclosure, the Douglas Reduction Works was the largestsingle source of sulphur dioxide emissions in the UnitedStates. The industry press denounced the demise of thesmelter as murder, an unnatural death at the hands ofincreasingly well-organized Green Bigots intent onundermining US competitiveness (see Fig. 1). Environ-mental activism and costly environmental regulations, itwas said, would be the death-knell of the entire industryand would bring to an end a way of life that had definedthe US Southwest through the formative years of thetwentieth century. Yet by the early 1990s, the death ofDouglas was a distant memory: gone were the cries ofdespair at rising costs, excessive regulatory burdens, and

the invective against environmentalists. The US copperindustry had apparently re-invented itself as a lean, low-cost producer, a clean, even green environmentalsteward embracing regulatory compliance and therhetoric of sustainability.1

This paper contends that the significance of thesmelters closure goes beyond its immediate impact onPhelps Dodge the operating firm or even its impacton the community of employees and service workerswhich had developed in southeastern Arizona to servethe smelter. The story of Douglas is one of obsolescence,but not simply the obsolescence of a technologicalprocess (reverberatory smelting) or a pugnacious man-agement style which rejected environmentalism as irra-tional and subversive. Rather, the passing of Douglas issymptomatic of the obsolescence of a set of reciprocal

Geoforum 31 (2000) 237256

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E-mail address: [email protected] (G. Bridge).

1 For an analysis of the discursive aspects of restructuring in the US

copper industry, see Bridge (1998).

0016-7185/00/$ - see front matter 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.PII: S 0 0 1 6 - 7 1 8 5 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 4 6 - 9

relationships that had developed between copper pro-ducers, eected communities, and the state over theprevious three decades. Institutionalized through cus-tomary routine and often codified into law, the stabilityand ritual of these relationships served to regulate po-tential conflict. Conventional interpretations of thesmelters closure isolate single causes: failure to invest innew technology; managements underestimation of theresolve of the US Environmental Protection Agency toimplement the National Ambient Air Quality Stan-dards; or unconstrained environmental activism. Incontrast, it is argued here that closure of the smelterwas symptomatic of institutional exhaustion. In short,closure of Douglas demonstrated that the institutionswhich had developed during the post-war years to fa-cilitate profitable production of copper from the naturalenvironment of the desert Southwest were no longerviable.

2. On nature, production and contradiction

As the capitalist appropriation of nature is com-plex and contradictory, as well as mediated by allother processes of society, there is a real possibilitythat crises of capitalism can emerge out of ecologi-cal problems Vlachou(1993, p. 40)

The primary objective of this paper is to explore thepossibilities for integrating nature into recent institu-tional approaches to political economy by examining a

specific instance of environmental conflict through thelens of regulation theory. To pursue this objective, thepaper adopts two parallel lines of inquiry: first, it askshow the use of nature in the process of producing cop-per- as both raw material input and receptacle for wastes might generate potential conflicts which undermineprofitability in the copper industry; and second, itidentifies those institutions which have historicallyemerged to facilitate profitability by regulating thesetendencies towards conflict. A central claim of this paperis that the process of recruiting nature for mineral pro-duction gives rise to a set of ecological contradictions inwhich the short-term actions of individual mining firmstowards nature undermine the long-term pre-conditionsfor accumulation in the mineral sector. The paper il-lustrates how, in the US Southwest, these contradictionsare manifested in the depletion of high grade ore bodies,and in the emergence of organized resistance to the ac-quisition of new reserves and historic practices of wastedisposal.

The concept of contradiction is central to dialecticalanalyses of capitalist development and has a long lin-eage within Marxist and neo-Marxist accounts of thehistorical evolution of capitalist societies (Marx, 1967;Althusser, 1969; Colletti, 1975; Harvey, 1982; Resnickand Wol, 1987; Wilde, 1989). The venerability of theterm nonetheless poses a challenge since, as Habermas(1973, p. 26) observes, the concept of contradiction hasundergone such attrition that it is often used synony-mously with antagonism, opposition, or conflict.In contrast to these weak applications of the term,contradiction is used here in a strong sense, to cap-ture the structural and logical as opposed to the con-tingent and empirical nature of the relationshipbetween commodity production and the naturalenvironment.

In the process of producing commodities, investmentcapital and technology are articulated within a divisionof labor to develop and transform raw materials drawnfrom the natural environment. This articulation pro-duces commodities that can be sold at a profit, yet theinteraction between technology, labor and the environ-ment in such a way as to generate profit is neither nec-essarily stable nor easily maintained. It is subject torecurring tensions caused by an incompatibility betweenthe dierent imperatives governing the technologicalforces, social relations, and environmental conditions ofproduction (see e.g., Altvater, 1993). Contradictionsinherent to the use of nature are a trans-historical fea-ture of commodity production, yet they are frequentlylatent and only occasionally are expressed through so-cial conflict of a sucient intensity to directly challengeprofitability. While contradiction is a constant feature ofcommodity production, the social form in which con-tradictions are expressed as conflict demonstrates his-torical and geographical variation.

Fig. 1. An epitaph for Douglas, as it appeared in Southwestern Pay-

Dirt (1987). Reproduced by permission of Magazine PayDirt.

238 G. Bridge / Geoforum 31 (2000) 237256

This distinction between structural contradictionsand contingent conflicts is more than mere pedantry. Byresisting an elision of the structural dimensions of con-flict and their particular geographical and historicalform, it becomes possible to recognize how not all socio-political conflicts over nature are expressive of under-lying contradictions. Conversely, by acknowledging thatstructural contradictions do not always find expressionin overt conflict, and often go unrecognized or unre-marked, it becomes possible to inquire after the mech-anisms by which these contradictions are kept fromrupturing the surface. In other words, how are thesestructural contradictions in the relationship to natureregulated over time and space?

2.1. Locating the contradiction

To support this claim that contradiction is a funda-mental condition of commodity production, it is neces-sary to explain how this contradiction arises in theprocess of producing goods from the natural environ-ment. In other words, it is necessary to locate the con-tradiction within the metabolism of commodityproduction.2 Recognition that the material interchangebetween the economic system and nature can provoke atendency towards crisis within capitalist economies canbe traced to Marxs discussion of declining soil fertilityas a result of intensified production, as Habermas(1973), Schmidt (1971), Leiss (1972), and others haveidentified. In recent years, however, several researchershave sympathetically critiqued these historical anteced-ents to develop a theoretical approach internalizing theecological crisis of natural resource depletion, envi-ronmental degradation, and increased impacts on hu-man health within the dynamics of capitalist and statesocialist industrial systems (Altvater, 1990, 1993; Beck,1990, 1992; Grundmann, 1991a,b; Benton, 1989, 1992;OConnor, 1988, 1990, 1998). The common objective ofthese theoretical approaches is to move beyond con-ventional, dualistic interpretations of separate economicand ecological crises by providing an explanation forhow ecological problems might emerge from particularways of organizing production and how ecologicalconditions might in turn influence the rate and form ofgrowth. Focussing, for example, on either the expan-sionism inherent within capitalist societies (e.g., Altv-ater, 1990, 1993) or the production and distribution ofrisk (e.g., Beck, 1990, 1992), attempts have been made toexplicate the ways in which industrial production can

also generate bio-physical and socio-political conditionsthat are antithetical to further accumulation by ex-ceeding the regenerative and assimilative capacities ofthe environment.

Recent theoretical developments share a commondialectical approach, yet they dier in their account ofhow contradictions emerge from the use of nature.While both OConnor and Altvater, for example, oeran ecological critique of political economy grounded inan analysis of commodity production, they locate theorigin of environmental degradation within dierentparts of the capitalization process. OConnor (1988,1990, 1998), Benton (1989) and Le (1994) theorize en-vironmental degradation in terms of an ecologicalsecond contradiction of capitalism. To do this, theyexpand the conventional analysis of contradiction be-tween forces and relations of production to also includeconditions of production, defined as encompassing hu-man health, the environment, and communal infra-structure (see e.g., Toledo, 1992). This allows them tothen locate the contradiction centrally within the processof commodification: contradictions arise from the con-frontation between forces and relations of productionwhich commodify nature and the ecological conditionson which production depends but which nonethelessresist commodification. They argue that since ecologicalprocesses are not actively produced as commodities yetare treated by capital as if they are commodities theseecological processes are eectively underpriced (if pricedat all) by the market. Over time, under-pricing and re-lentless externalizing of environmental costs cause en-vironmental goods and services to become increasinglyscarce, resulting in an underproduction crisis for cap-ital.3

In contrast to OConnor, Altvater focuses not on theunderproduction of environmental goods and services asa result of commodification, but on the conflict betweenthe economic process of valorization and the physicalecological laws governing the transformation of matter.4

To Altvater, it is the dual character of the labor processthat lies at the root of the contradiction. This is not,however the conventional dual character of exchangevalue and use value, but refers instead to the way inwhich the process of work is governed simultaneously

2 The concepts of a metabolism or interchange (Stowechsel) describing a reciprocal flow and transformation of materials between

the economy and ecology during the process of production are drawn

from work over the last decade within ecological marxism (e.g.,

Grundmann, 1991a,b; Benton, 1989, 1992; Le, 1994; OConnor,1998).

3 This second contradiction is distinct from the classical firstcontradiction of capital overaccumulation. Whereas the first con-tradiction expresses itself through the demand side as a realizationcrisis, the second contradiction is expressed as a liquidity crisis. Theunderproduction of environmental services, and the increased resourc-

es necessary to clean up and/or repair these services, causes costs to rise

and negatively impact profitability.4 In his analysis of how economic growth is based on a transforma-

tion in the quality of material and energy resources and results in a net

increase in entropy, Altvater draws on the pioneering work of

Georgescu-Rogen (1971) and later developments in the field of

ecological economics (see, e.g., Martinez-Alier, 1987).

G. Bridge / Geoforum 31 (2000) 237256 239

by two dierent rule structures: the creation of use val-ues from nature, and the thermodynamic transforma-tion of matter. As a result of this dual character, there isan inherent tension between the expansionary require-ments of capitalist growth and the necessary increase inentropy (decline in free energy) that expansion involves,given the celestial constraints of a closed system. InAltvaters account, therefore, ecological contradictionscan be traced to the material conditions under whichuse-value is created and are rooted in the fundamentalincompatibility between the laws of entropy and thelogic of the economic system.5

In addition to attributing the origin of ecologicalcontradictions to dierent facets of the metabolismbetween the economic system and the natural environ-ment, these two approaches also dier in their inter-pretation of the relationship between capital and itssocial context. In contrast to OConnors analysis withits emphasis on the emergence of contradictions fromthe interplay of forces internal to capitalism, Altvateremphasizes the social context of the labor process.Rather than reducing social context to the status ofshadow-lands surrounding capital, his account identifiescapitalism as a social fabric in which contradictionsemerge from the interplay between dierent parts of thisfabric rather than from within capital alone. It is thissocialized account of contradiction one that ac-knowledges that capitalism is constituted by its socialcontext rather than forces internal to itself (Gibson-Graham, 1996, p. 30) that opens up the possibility foranalyzing contradictions using the tools of regulationtheory. In asking why structural contradictions in therelationship to nature have emerged only recently as apotentially conflictual issue, Altvaters analysis illus-trates how the eruption of contradiction into socialconflict is contingent on the social form taken by ex-pansionary waves of growth (Altvater 1993, p. 215).Altvaters analysis, therefore, represents an importantbridge between theorization of ecological contradiction

and regulationist concepts of a crisis-prone techno-eco-nomic system (the regime of accumulation) whose crisis-tendencies are mediated by a framework of institutionsand social practices (the mode of social regulation).

3. From contradiction to regulation

This paper advances the claim that regulation theoryprovides a set of conceptual tools with which to examinehow the metabolism of production the flows of rawmaterials, energy, and wastes central to the productionof commodities from the natural environment cancontribute to an accumulation crisis in particular placesand at particular historical moments. In developing aregulationist perspective in the rest of this paper, thispaper recognizes and adopts the distinction made byPeck and Miyamachi (1994) between regulation theoryas theorized history on one hand, and regulation the-ory as a distinctive politico-economic method on theother. The latter is adopted here in that the regulationapproach is used primarily as a methodology for ex-amining ecologically-based contradictions within thecopper industry and the institutional form and socialpractices by which these tendencies towards crisis arecontained.

The regulation approach emerged as a reaction toboth the equilibrium theories of neo-classical economicsand the lack of contingency and dynamism in structuralaccounts of the historical development of capitalism(Peet, 1989; Jessop, 1995). The central question ad-dressed by regulation theory is the remarkable persis-tence of capitalism in the face of inherent contradictions.To explain this persistence, researchers have sought tointegrate the technical and organizational aspects ofproduction systems with the social and political rela-tions of capitalist reproduction. The regulation ap-proach argues that social relations codified asinstitutions or cultural norms serve to regulate periodsof macro-economic growth by providing coherence tothe basic processes of production (Boyer, 1990; Dun-ford, 1990; Tickell and Peck, 1992; Jessop, 1995; Tickelland Peck, 1995; Goodwin and Painter, 1997). To date,regulationists have focussed primarily on the temporaland spatial variability of capitalisms institutional formsand on how these institutions simultaneously expressand mediate contradictions arising from the labor rela-tion (Lash and Urry, 1987; Peck and Tickell, 1992;Painter and Goodwin, 1995). In its ability to understandinstitutional forms as codified social relations whichtemporarily guide and sustain accumulation, however,the regulation approach may also oer a promisinganalytical method to examine how contradictionsemerging from the use of nature have been stabilizedhistorically and geographically (see also Bridge andMcManus, 2000).

5 Altvater (1993) identifies five dimensions to this incompatibility, all

of which relate to the dierent logics governing the economic systemand the physical transformation of matter and energy: (1) the

quantitative nature of the capitalist dynamic (expansion) is contradic-

tory to the qualitative nature of the ecological system where quantity

of energy and matter does not change yet its form and quality do;

(2) the concrete nature of the environment in time and space

contradicts the tendency towards the annihilation of space and timein the economic system; (3) the reversibility of the economic system

contradicts the irreversibility of an ecological system based on

thermodynamic constraints; (4) profits follow a circular logic in that

they can be re-invested, which is contradictory to the irreversible

increase in entropy as a result of the accelerated throughput of

materials and energy on which profit is based; and (5) the rationality of

an economic system which requires growth is contradictory to the

rationality of an ecological system based on a dynamic equilibrium

between entropy intake and entropy discharge.


Despite the literatures identification of ecologicalcontradictions within capitalism, and relatively frequentdiscussion of these contradictions capacity to provokeperiodic supply crises or crises of legitimation, fewstudies have attempted to use the regulation approach asa way of explaining how contradictions may be man-aged and stabilized over time. Lipietzs (1992) intro-duction of ecological crises as a set of tensions withinFordist accumulation made an overt link between reg-ulation theory and ecology, but this theoretical devel-opment was necessarily brief given his primary focus ondeveloping a practical politics of solidarity, individualautonomy and ecological responsibility. ReviewingLipietzs work on regulation and ecology, Whiteside(1996) again situates ecology firmly within the sights of aregulationist approach but, like the exploratory inte-grative theorization of Drummond and Marsden (1995),his high level, abstract use of regulation theory remainsto be grounded in the specific processes of institutionaland environmental change at the local and regionallevel. Whiteside (1996) and Drummond and Marsden(1995) exemplify early applications of the regulationistapproach towards nature which have attempted to buildbridges between the concepts of regulation theory andequally top-level abstractions like sustainable develop-ment. Similarly Gibbs (1996), while calling provoca-tively for a research agenda which analyses recentpolitical, social, and economic moves towards sustain-able development . . ..as part of an emergent mode ofsocial regulation, nonetheless underplays the linkagebetween his analysis of regulatory institutions and theways in which crises emerge from historically and geo-graphically specific ways of organizing production inrelation to nature.

These preliminary attempts to situate sustainabledevelopment within a regulationist framework aresomewhat limited in their usefulness by a preoccupationwith regulation theorys early and rather crude periodization of economic transition. More instructive,however, is empirically-grounded research which usesregulation theory as a method for analyzing the impli-cations for resources and the environment of socio-economic restructuring (e.g., Goodwin et al., 1995;Gandy, 1997; Haughton, 1998). Drummond (1996), forexample, adopts a regulationist approach to explainhow economic and political imperatives have histori-cally conditioned the emergence of unsustainable en-vironmental outcomes in the Australian sugar industry.To do this, he examines the articulation between theinstitutions of commercial sugar production and theenvironmental conditions of agriculture, and draws adistinction between formational sustainability definedas the overriding object of regulation in capitalist so-cieties and the condition which ensures the viability of aparticular mode of social regulation and materialsustainability which describes the socio-ecological ob-

jectives of sustainable development (Drummond 1996,p. 347). This distinction makes it possible to identifyhow the unsustainability of particular economic formsis continually deferred (rather than being realized ascrisis) via increasingly severe forms of exploitation ofnature.

Ultimately Drummond overstates this argument,tending to interpret the trajectory of (un)sustainabilityin the Australian sugar industry as a necessary, lineardescent into worse forms of exploitation as a result ofregime shifts and the emergence of new modes of regu-lation. The problem here is not in the empirical analysisof regime shifts or the findings of increased environ-mental exploitation, but in the rather undialectical in-terpretation of the way contradictions within eachregime are worked out in the landscape. Thus, there is atendency to view accelerated environmental degradationas the necessary result of a deferral of regime instabilitiesonto nature. Not only does the argument for the ne-cessity of this relationship between economic regimesand nature go unexplained (there is, for example, nodiscussion of the incompatibility between the expan-sionary logic of capital and the entropy of physicalsystems as in Altvater), but empirically there are in-stances and geographical and historical contingency issignificant here where new regulatory forms not onlyrestore formational sustainability, but also contribute toimprovements in material sustainability. Work byCoombes and Campbell (1998) on dependent repro-duction in the organic sector of New Zealand horticul-ture, for example, identifies how the restructuring ofagricultural production has not led to the wholesalepenetration of simple commodity production by capi-talist relations but has actually created a space for thereproduction of organic agriculture.

Further, the burgeoning literature on ecologicalmodernization argues (but more often simply avers)that ecological conditions have been emancipated fromtheir formation domination by economic rationality,and that ecological processes are being increasinglyvalued and incorporated within regimes of accumulation(see e.g., Mol, 1995). To point to recent work on eco-logical modernization is not, however, to suggest thatnew modes of regulation will inevitably resolve envi-ronmentally-based contradictions and will lead to morematerially sustainable outcomes. Rather, it is to rec-ognize that environmental consequences attendant tothe construction of new modes of regulation are neithernecessarily better nor worse. The objective, therefore,is to address the heterogeneity of regulatory modes andtheir environmental outcomes and to identify the role ofcontext in determining whether new regulatory modesare not only more formationally sustainable, but mightalso be considered more materially sustainable.

Despite these limitations, Drummonds analysis isuseful because it implicitly recognizes the existence of


contradictions within particular economic forms andexplains environmental outcomes by reference to the waythese contradictions are worked out in concrete circum-stances. Further, in its focus on economic restructuringin a specific industrial sector it contrasts with most reg-ulationist research on nature which has generally con-fined itself to either a high level of abstraction and/or todiscussion of contradictions at the level of the macro-economy. For example, although he situates the me-tabolism of production in a strong social context,Altvater (1993) does not describe the specific social orinstitutional form taken by this context in dierent his-torical periods or places. Thus contemporary accounts ofecological contradiction often include anecdotal evi-dence at the regional or local scale yet, for the most part,systematic analyses of sectoral and geographical varia-tions in the expression or regulation of these contradic-tions remain to be undertaken. This paper takes up theseideas in the context of copper production in the USSouthwest, seeking to make explicit contradictions be-tween the institutional imperatives of copper productionand the environmental and resource constraints of cop-per mining regions. Specifically, it illustrates how thesecontradictions arise out of the way nature is incorpo-rated within a particular techno-economic system forcopper production, and identifies the institutions andsocial practices through which these contradictionshave been historically negotiated or stalled (see Jenson,1989, p. 76 and subsequently Gibson-Graham, 1996,p. 30).

In the sections that follow, specific contradictionswithin the production process for copper are first iden-tified. These concern the depletion of high-grade orebodies, and the emergence of organized resistance to theacquisition of new reserves and the disposal of wastematerials. The expression of these contradictions in thecontext of the US Southwest during the 1980s is exam-ined, with particular attention given to conflicts over theenvironmental impacts of mining and the accessibility ofland for mineral producers. The institutional frameworkregulating these contradictions is outlined. The emer-gence of social conflict over land access and environ-mental impacts is then interpreted in terms of thehistorical specificity and obsolescence of this insti-tutional framework.

4. Producing copper from nature

Central to this discussion is an understanding ofthe process of mineral commodity production, andspecifically, the ways in which the natural environmentis incorporated into the production process. To dothis, the paper now focuses on the production ofcopper from copper ores such as those found in the

US southwestern states of Arizona and New Mexico.6

Although copper is produced in 11 states in the US,four states Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Ne-vada account for over 95% of annual production.US production of the red metal in 1998 totaled 1.85million metric tons and was valued at $3.3 billion. Inthe same year copper was recovered from 35 minesin the US, with 15 mines accounting for 97% ofproduction. Arizona and New Mexico alone repre-sent 75% of the US copper output and are thelocation of 11 of the 15 largest US mines, includingthe first-ranked Morenci mine in Greenlee County,Arizona (475,000 tons annual capacity), Ray Mine inPinal County, Arizona (160,000 tons) and Chino Minein Grant County, New Mexico (160,000 tons).

Copper is traded in a variety of forms related to thedegree of processing. These include concentrates frommilling (1840% copper content), precipitates (up to 90%copper content) or semi-finished products such as matte(around 65%) or blister (around 98%) copper. Copper ismost frequently traded, however, in the form of highpurity (99.99%) cathodes. The complex chemical andphysical processes by which cathode is produced fromcopper ore can be categorized into two broad groups:pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy. Pyrometallurgicalprocesses often subsumed under the popular term ofsmelting utilize heat and oxygen to separate out thecopper component of pre-concentrated, copper sulphideores. In contrast, applications of hydrometallurgy tocopper typically involve solutional leaching of oxide orsulphide copper ores and the isolation and purificationof the copper component via ion-exchange and elec-trowinning. Pyrometallurgical processing currentlyaccounts for around two-thirds of all copper producedfrom copper ore in the US. To facilitate clarity in ex-planation, only the pyrometallurgical route is consideredfurther here. It should be noted however, that similarcontradictions arise from the processing of copper by thehydrometallurgical route, and that in practice hydro-metallurgy is less an alternative process to pyrometal-lurgy than a complementary method for optimizingtotal metal recovery from dierent types of ore. Fig. 2describes the production process for copper in the formof a flow diagram. It illustrates how the entry of natureinto the process can be conceptualized in two ways: as asupply of raw material to the process, and as a receptaclefor a diverse set of waste streams.

Fig. 2 demonstrates how the complex process of pro-ducing copper cathodes from copper ore can be broken

6 The copper ores of Arizona and New Mexico are principally low-

grade, porphyry deposits. The term porphyry describes a rock

containing two distinctively dierent size mineral crystals and a copper

porphyry refers to the association of copper mineralization with a

porphyritic host rock in which the copper is finely disseminated

throughout the host (Anthony et al., 1977; Clemons et al., 1980).


into five broad stages: exploration, mining, concentra-tion, smelting, and refining. Taken together, this sequenceof processes can be characterized as one of segregationand concentration, since each of the five stages progres-sively increases the copper content per unit weight bysegregating the valuable mineral component from thewaste component. Copper ore mined in the US during the1990s has an average concentration (or grade) of lessthan 0.5% copper, so that for each unit of copper pro-duced, over 200 units of copper ore must be extracted andprocessed. By the end of the sequence of processes de-scribed in Fig. 2, the copper content of each unit of pro-duction has been increased to over 99%. As a result ofprogressive concentration, the weight of material handledper unit of copper content decreases at each stage ofprocessing. Since each stage involves the segregation ofvaluable material from waste with only the valuableportion passing on to the next stage of processing, copperproduction is an exemplary weight-loss industry. Even

without considering the weight of other material inputs such as water used in processing, energy supplies formining and mineral processing, or reagent inputs Fig. 2illustrates how the production of one ton of coppercathode typically requires 400 tons of host rock (ore plusoverburden) to be mined at the outset.

Fig. 2 links the processes of segregation and con-centration to waste generation. By definition, the 99.5%of copper ore that does not contain copper is considereda waste product from the perspective of a copper pro-ducer. A series of waste streams containing the non-valuable portion of the ore are generated at each stage ofprocessing as copper is concentrated and the weight perunit of copper decreases. For example, the input to theconcentration phase of production consists of 200 tonsof ore, containing 0.5% copper. Concentration increasesthe copper content to around 30% and in the process awaste stream comprising 98% of the input material byweight 196.5 tons, Fig. 2 is generated. It is important tonote that unlike manufacturing an additive or com-binational process where the volume of many wastestreams can be decreased through improvements toprocess eciency7 the production of waste in mining isintegral to the process of segregating and concentratingvaluable mineral ores. At least one industry analyst hasobserved that, since the conventional technologies ofmining necessarily produce large amounts of wastematerial, mining should be considered primarily awaste-disposal business (Navin, 1978).

Storage or disposal options for these waste streamsare not influenced solely by their size, but also by theirchemical and physical complexity. The waste streamfrom the concentration phase, for example, consists ofcrushed rock, water and small amounts of process re-agents and is collectively known as tailings. Tailings aretypically disposed in large impoundments or dams inwhich the liquid fraction separates from the solid overtime. Similarly, the waste stream from the smelter phaseconsists of particulate matter (dusts), gases (such asoxides of sulphur and nitrogen) and a solid slag recov-ered from the furnace. Each component has the poten-tial to impact a dierent environmental media andpresents a distinctive set of challenges for treatment anddisposal. The chemical complexity of waste streams isrelated to both the addition of process reagents and themineralogy of naturally-occurring ores. One of the morecommon environmental concerns at active and aban-doned mines, for example, is acid rock drainage (ARD).ARD occurs where sulphide-bearing ores are exposed toair and water, causing sulphides to oxidise, releasingsulphates, acid, and heavy metals into solution (Bankset al., 1997; Moore and Luoma, 1990; US Bureau ofMines, 1994; ASSMR, 1995).

7 See, for example, the lean and clean arguments put forward by

Porter and van der Linde (1995), Romm (1994) and others.

Fig. 2. Production of one ton of copper cathode (only the pyromet-

allurgical route is shown). This figure is based on a set of assumptions

about average ore grade and processing eciency which approximate

typical pyrometallurgical copper processing in the southwestern US. It

draws on a preliminary materials balance of pyrometallurgical and

hyrometallurgical production conducted by the author (cf. Bridge,

1997) and supporting documentation provided by others (e.g., Young,

1992).


5. Identifying contradictions within the copper productionprocess

To state that the use of nature in production is con-tradictory is to recognize that production processes areof necessity based on the transformation of raw mate-rials, but that the conditions under which nature is in-corporated into production can nonetheless underminethe bio-physical and socio-political conditions necessaryto sustain future profitability. These ecological con-tradictions can be expressed along a temporal dimension for example, short term actions to generate profit-ability undermine the preconditions for accumulation inthe longer-term; and/or between dierent organisationalscales for example, the individual actions of specificfirms to generate profits preclude the formation ofconditions conducive to profitability within the sector aswhole. Drawing on the description of the productionprocess in Fig. 2, it is possible to identify three centralcontradictions in the way that nature is utilized withinthe process of producing copper.

Contradiction 1. Mining actively consumes existing de-posits and, in the process, generates socio-political oppo-sition to the acquisition of new deposits. Yet, access tomineral deposits is an essential precondition for growth.

Mining is a primary activity which, unlike manufac-turing, some forms of agriculture, or renewable forestry,actively depletes its stock of natural capital in the pro-cess of generating profits.8 For any given mineral de-posit, production today reduces the opportunity forproduction tomorrow, leading some observers to labelmining a robber industry (Mumford, 1934).9 Thiscontradiction has been formally recognized within

mineral economics in the form of the depletion allow-ance available to mineral producers as part of taxationlaw in many countries. Since the ore in a producing mineis a wasting asset, mineral producers can recoup thecapital invested in that asset when calculating tax lia-bilities by deducting a portion the depletion allowance from total mining income before determining total tax.In the US where, for example, copper, gold, and silverproducers can claim a depletion allowance of 15%, courtrulings have confirmed the role of the allowance in o-setting the impact of depletion on profitability and fur-ther, that in practice it overcompensates for thecontradiction, undergirding profitability in the mineralsector by providing a special incentive for engaging inthis line of business (Committee on Natural Resources,1994, p. 36).

Expression of this contradiction through resourcedepletion and raw material shortages at the scale ofnational or global economies has famously not occurred(see e.g., Simon, 1981). That the long-term average priceof most non-renewable mineral commodities has re-mained flat or fallen over time indicates that investmentin new sources of supply through technological inno-vation in production and exploration has historicallyout-run the contradiction by providing an eectivespatial fix to the challenges of local depletion.10 At thelocal level, however, the contradiction is visibly ex-pressed in corporate strategies which mandate mineclosure at sites which can no longer provide sucientprofitability to meet optimal operating criteria, and inthe associated agonies of adjustment within extractivecommunities built around these mines (see e.g., Neil etal., 1992). While in popular parlance these deposits havebeen mined out, this terminology conveys a false im-pression. The point of economic depletion often occurswell in advance of any physical exhaustion of a mineraldeposit, as was argued most forcefully by miners duringclosures in the British coal fields throughout the 1980s.The distinction between physical and economic ex-haustion be-labored by mineral economics textbooks isof political significance: the decision to withdraw in-vestment and close a mine is not immutably driven bymineralogy alone, but by its intersection with economicand political considerations, particularly those about the

8 Popular accounts of mining often recognize this auto-consumptive

nature of mining. Kingsolver (1986) for example, in her account of the

Arizona Miners Strike of 1983, uses the metaphor of Prometheus

who stole fire from heaven for the benefit of humankind and whose

punishment was to be chained to a rock and repeatedly disemboweled

in describing how miners work in the belly of a beast, gutting it a

little more deeply every day (Kingsolver, 1986, p. 3)9 Mumfords (1934) allegation which draws on his reading of Tryon

and Berquist (1932) refers to the observation that the mine owner is

constantly consuming his capital. This should be distinguished from

the more familiar robber metaphor applied to mining - that of robber

barons (see Smith, 1987) - which captures the asymetric relations of

power between mining firms and the communities in which they

operate and how these relations have historically provided a means for

accumulating great wealth while leaving impoverished communities in

minings wake. Both represent contradictory aspects to mining, in thatboth scenarios can threaten future profitability, one through depletion,

the other through socio-political strategies of resistance. The distinc-

tion is that one use of the metaphor focuses on how mining steals

from the firm itself through the depletion of its physical assets, while

the other addresses the theft of value from the local community. This

distinction is preserved throughout this paper.

10 This should not be taken to suggest that the spatial fix is the only

response at the level of the economy as a whole to the contradiction

caused by depletion of specific deposits. Localized mineral depletion

and short-term shortages of supply (new deposits) represent an

expression of the contradiction for mine owners, but at the level of

economy as a whole their expression can be postponed through

material substitution (including recycling) and changes in consumption

patterns. For example, depletion of local timber supplies as fuel to

power mining and processing equipment at gold mines in Grass Valley,

California did not make gold mining unprofitable but instead

promoted a backward industrial revolution towards the direct useof water power.


rate of profit that can be obtained from a particulardeposit in comparison to opportunities for profitabilitythat may exist elsewhere.

Depletion is not the only expression of the auto-consumptive contradiction inherent to mining. In somesituations mining and the industrial application ofmineral products can eectively remove existing depositsfrom production without extracting them. Urbangrowth, for example, represents a strong demand foraggregate resources like sand and gravel. The spatialexpansion of urban areas, however, can sterilize exist-ing sand and gravel deposits which are necessarily lo-cated on the urban fringe as a result of their hightransport costs. Eschewing the language of contradic-tion, Poulin et al. (1994) nonetheless term this a para-dox of the industry and describe how sterilization canoccur either as the result of direct physical placement ofurban infrastructure houses, utilities, roads on de-posits, or as the result of re-zoning of the land as resi-dential. They report, for example, that urbandevelopment in Maryland has precluded the opportu-nities for further aggregate extraction, despite the richgeological endowment of the state (Stearn, 1980).

So far, the contradiction has been discussed only interms of the physical eects of depletion on a firmscapital base. The process of mining, however, can pro-voke resistance and opposition to further mineral de-velopment which, at times, can seriously threaten theopportunities for maintaining (or increasing) profit-ability through expanding mining activity at existingsites or opening up lower-cost, greenfield deposits tomineral development. Contrary to the popular repre-sentation of campaigns against mining, the basis foropposition to mineral development is diverse and ex-tends beyond the physical impacts of mining on theenvironment to include: aesthetic impacts on commu-nities (and associated changes in property values); socio-economic impacts induced in those communities aectedby mining; the obliteration of historic features from thelandscape; and a deep-seated spiritual and psychologicalresistance to the animus of mining, a set of relation-ships among people, and between people and nature,which permeates industrial capitalism but which miningseems to exemplify (Mumford, 1934, p. 158).11 As theinstrumentalism and reductionism of modernitys ap-proach to nature has encountered increasing oppositionin the last two decades so mining, as the apogee and

nadir of that instrumentalism, has met with increasinglydiverse and organized opposition.

Socio-political opposition to mining can be consid-ered an expression of an underlying contradiction sinceit occurs consequent to the actions of mineral producersyet is antithetical to their interests. Organized protestcan delay permitting, tie up capital unproductively, raisecapital and operating costs, reduce operating flexibilityby increasing regulatory oversight, and underminepopular support for, and the legitimacy of, mining ac-tivities. Much of the current protest against strip-miningin the US, for example, draws on the collective historicalexperience of mining communities with environmentaldegradation, non-sustaining cycles of boom and bust,and long-term environmental liabilities, experiences re-sulting to a significant degree from the strategies pur-sued by mining firms to facilitate profitability duringprevious decades. For example, decisions made in the1960s to reduce haulage costs at open-pit copper minesin Arizona and New Mexico by dumping overburdenand waste rock in unlined canyons close to the mine helpto explain current local groundwater contamination.Groundwater contamination is continually cited by en-vironmental and other interest groups opposing newmine development in Arizona and New Mexico and, aspart of a comprehensive package of issues, can be suf-ficient to delay or even prevent permitting decisions.

Although the mining industry increasingly argues and with considerable justification that a distinctionshould be made between the practices of the past andthose adopted by present day producers, contemporaryoperating practices can also provoke resistance. Thevery technologies that are essential today in generatingprofits from ores of declining grade and which havetherefore successfully postponed the impact on the firmof high-grade ore depletion- can exacerbate politicalopposition. The open-pit mining techniques that havemade possible the profitable development of low-gradecopper and gold ores in the US, for example, continue toprovoke opposition when mine expansion or new minesare proposed. In this way, the introduction of ever-bigger machinery (e.g., a 320-ton dump truck was in-troduced in 1997) and the earth-moving feats (e.g., 1.3million tons in one day) celebrated by the industry as ademonstration of its ability to defy nature and overcomethe contradiction of declining ore grades, have becomethe rallying point for protest at the intensity and scale ofthe landscape transformation they promote.12

As OConnor (1990, p. 124) points out, technologiesthat purportedly function as a means of producing

11 Mumford describes this animus as a reckless, get-rich-quick,

devil-take-the hindmost attitude. He continues, explaining how the

attitude of the mining rushes spread everywhere: the bonanza farms

of the Middle West in the United States were exploited as if they were

mines, and the forest were gutted out and mined in the same fashion as

the minerals that lay in their hills. Mankind behaved like a drunken

heir on a spree (Mumford, 1934, p. 158).

12 On 26 May 1996, Phelps Dodge mined 1,327,800 tons of material

at its Morenci mine in Arizona, setting a world record for a 24-h

period. The eort involved 1000 employees and 94 trucks (Phelps

Dodge, 1998).


values and surplus value may be self-negating in thesense that their destructive eects on nature indirectlyhelp to raise costs of production and create economiccrisis, not to speak of engendering social and politicalopposition to the dominant production and propertyrelationships. Recent events at the Chino copper minein New Mexico exemplify how the practices adopted bycopper producers to overcome declining ore grades andmaintain profitability can provoke de-stabilizing politi-cal alliances which threaten the opportunity for accu-mulation. The Chino operation, which produced 340million pounds of copper in 1997, is located in the SantaRita district of Grant County, where copper has beenmined since the 18th century. An open-pit was begun byDaniel Jackling (1910), the pioneer of low-grade, openpit operations, and it was among the first to demonstratethe huge increases in productivity made possible byharnessing steam power and economies of scale. Fol-lowing its purchase by Kennecott (1933), expansion ofthe mine and smelter complex increased productionfrom 33 million pounds in 1933 to 152 million in 1942,securing Chinos position as one of the leading copperproducers in the US into the post-war years (Huggard,1994).

Kennecotts ability to tap high profits from itsAndean operations during the 1950s and 1960s,however, led to chronic under-investment in processtechnology at Chino. By the time of the copper bust inthe early 1980s, Chino was ill-prepared to ride outsustained, low prices for copper and production wassuspended temporarily. As part of both Kennecottscorporate restructuring and a general shake-out withinthe industry as a whole, Chino was sold to Phelps Dodgein 1986 for the bargain-basement price of $88 milliion.Over the next two years, Phelps Dodge invested over$110 million in modernization, including theconstruction of a leaching operation using solventextractionelectrowinning technology to process low-grade ores and waste-piles that had been generated bythe expansion of mining activity in the post-war years.The success of this initial leaching plant led to theconstruction of additional leaching capacity in 1993. Bythe mid-1990s, Phelps Dodge had requested permits toexpand the mine to realize further economies of scale.As part of this expansion, the company proposed a landexchange enabling it to acquire mineral depositsadjoining the pit but currently on public lands. Thisincluded copper ores underlying a prominent pillar ofrock which overlooks the pit. This local landmark ispopularly known as the Kneeling Nun, on account ofthe profile it presents and its apparent beneficencetowards the mine and the miners which lie below herfeet.

To some local residents, it seemed as if the miningcompanys plans for mine expansion called for the nunssacrifice, something that many people equated to a

sacrilegious act.13 A Coalition to Save Our NunMountain was formed, protesting the companys ac-tions which had already raised leach dumps to heightsobscuring or eliminating some public views of KneelingNun Mountain, and setting out a three-point plancalling for the protection of Nun Mountain as a publicspace. A petition gathered 8000 signatures, protestingthe further impairment of the Nun as a result ofblasting and other mining operations potentiallythreatening to weaken the slopes of the Mountain,and. . .increas(ing) the risk of damage to the NunMonolith itself (and) potentially aggravating and failingto repair existing damage to groundwater (Coalition toSave Our Nun Mountain, 1998). If accepted by thefederal Bureau of Land Management, the Coalitionsproposal would have prevented the company frommining the ore body directly under Nun Mountain, andwould have considerably increased the costs of mineexpansion. The Kneeling Nun case exemplifies howchanging mining practices do not solve the ecologicalcontradictions inherent to mining but cast them in adierent form. Thus, increasing the scale of operationsto maintain profitability from low-grade ores is a stra-tegic response to localized depletion, yet it simulta-neously risks provoking resistance and opposition ofsucient intensity to prevent its implementation.

Contradiction 2. Mining firms preferentially select thehighest grade (richest) ore bodies that can be processedprofitably using current technology. Yet depletion of high-grade ores over time means that, without innovation toreduce unit costs, production costs will rise.

Ore grade is one of the most important factors de-termining production costs and hence profitability ofa deposit since it establishes the volume of material thatmust be mined and the extent of processing necessary toproduce a unit of copper (Crowson, 1992; Sousa, 1981).The influence of ore grade on profitability is particularlysignificant since competitive strategy in copper, likeother commodity industries, is directed primarily ateconomizing through cost-control since there are rela-tively few opportunities for influencing price throughproduct dierentiation or product innovation. For agiven set of production technologies, the production ofcopper from an ore body of fixed mineralogy and spatialextent yields diminishing returns as higher grade por-tions of the ore body are exhausted and the costs ofextraction increase with depth.

13 Local 890 of the United Steel Workers of America joined the

coalition opposing the mine managements plans. The president ofUSWA Local 890 stated that the land grab would be a sacrilege to

all those who have believed and still believe in the sacredness of

Kneeling Nun Mountain (United Steel Workers of America, 1997).


The rising costs associated with the development ofprogressively lower grade ores represent a potentialsupply crisis for individual producers. Although lowgrade ores are present in physical abundance, thehigher production costs associated with low gradecopper ores reduce the amount of profit that can beobtained from the development of an ore body usingexisting technology. If unchecked through technologi-cal innovation or the location of higher grade ores,production costs can rise to the point that they preventaccumulation. Describing this contradiction in themore managerial (and obscurantist) terms of naturaldiculties, Tryon and Berquist (1932, pp. 1517) ob-serve dryly that increasing cost is the nemesis of themining enterprise.

As a result of the long history of copper mining inthe US, the average grade of copper ore has declinedover time (Sousa, 1981). As higher grade, small de-posits have been worked out, relatively low-grade andmineralogically complex ores have become the focus ofproduction. Early mines in the US, such as the Cli onthe Keeweenaw Peninsula of Michigan which operatedfrom 184570 directly mined native (metallic) copper.The huge seam of chalcocite (a copper sulphide ore)which transformed Butte, Montana into the richesthill on earth after 1881 graded around 30% copper,while early Arizona mines of the 1870s initially gradedover 20%. The commercial development of the large,low grade (1.52% copper content) porphyry reservesof Arizona and New Mexico was made possible at theturn of the century by the adoption of economies ofscale in mining and processing, such as open-pit miningtechniques and column and froth flotation, a periodknown in the annals of mining history as the porphyryrevolution.14 A geographical shift in copper produc-tion within the US followed, as the high grade deposits(2030% copper) of Montana became economicallydepleted and the success of open-pit mines like Bing-ham Canyon, Utah where open-pit mining was pio-neered in 1906 confirmed the profitability of miningand processing the low grade ores (around 1% copper)of Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. Since the por-phyry revolution at the turn of the century, declines inthe average grade of porphyritic ore have occurred tothe point today where, as illustrated in Fig. 2, themining of ores with less than 0.5% copper content iscommonplace.

The continued commercial success of US copperproducers in the face of declining ore grades suggeststhat ways have been found to postpone the impact of

this contradiction on profitability.15 As Tryon andBerquist (1932, pp. 78) observed earlier this centuryfollowing the success of the porphyry revolution incopper, modern life is a sort of Oliver Twist, asking formore and more metal and more and more power, andpaying a little less for the second helping than for thefirst. The management of the contradiction has beenachieved principally through exploration and the de-velopment of new deposits overseas, technological in-novation, improved process control and optimization,and the application of economies of scale at existingsites. For example, mine haulage trucks which wereintroduced in the mid-1930s typically had a capacity of15 tons, but by the mid-1950s had increased to 30 tons.By the 1970s, 180 ton trucks were standard, and a 320ton truck is now available (Silver, 1996, p. 7). In thisway, the introduction of large capacity grinders, columnflotation, and earth moving equipment (itself dependenton advances in rubber technology for tires and conveyorbelts) have underpinned the continued competitivenessof mining regions like those of Arizona and New Mexicowhich have relatively low-grade deposits.

The development of overseas deposits and increasedeconomies of scale which together have been able tothwart the nemesis of rising costs in the US have,however, only temporarily stalled the contradiction andin turn have generated their own contradictory tenden-cies. On the one hand, overseas investment risked pro-voking a backlash from both organized labor in the US which identified a trade-o between corporate strate-gies to access high-trade ores overseas and investment inplant modernization at existing domestic mines- andfrom overseas governments concerned at excess profit-taking by US multinational mining firms.16 On the otherhand, the application of scale economies to mining in-creased the intensity of impacts, their spatial extent, andmade more complex the task of waste disposal. For

14 See footnote 6.

15 This is the foundation for the heroic version of US copper mininghistory, a quintessentially modern narrative about the triumph of

mans ingenuity (gender implied) over nature. Finding its expression incompany histories (e.g., Marcosson, 1957), mine engineering text

books (e.g., SME, 1985), mining museums, and personal memoirs (e.g.,

Wilson, 1980), this is a story of exploring a fickle yet ultimately

bountiful nature, organizing labor power, energy, and finance to win

riches from the earths crust, and developing technologies of explora-tion and production able to beat natures odds. Shawn of its heroicrhetoric, and situated in a political-economy rather than managerial

context, the story can be re-told in terms of regulating the contradic-

tions arising from depletion, declining ore-grade, and increased

environmental degradation.16 The nationalization of the copper industry in Chile and Peru in the

late 1960s and early 1970s was a dramatic assertion of this contradic-

tion and came about in response to the perceived exploitation of South

American reserves by US copper producers. Further, the Allende

government in Chile initially denied compensation for the national-

ization of Anaconda and Kennecott on the basis of excess profit taking

(Mezger, 1980, cited in Rees, 1990).


example, although mined for several centuries, strip-mining techniques were applied to the extraction ofAppalachian coal in the post-war years in an eort toreduce costs to the point at which owners of the depositscould compete with alternative fuel sources and withforeign coal suppliers. In the process, strip mining pro-voked a set of antagonistic political and social rela-tionships which at times has threatened to impedeaccumulation in localized parts of the coal industry.

It was in response to this uncertainty that the federalgovernment developed the Surface Mine Control andReclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA) and established theOce of Surface Minings oversight responsibilities.Subsequent to SMCRA, however, the continued ex-pansion of scale economies within the Appalachian coalmining industry has now made possible a mode ofmining known as mountain-top removal in whichmountain peaks are removed (and not replaced) to gainaccess to the coal seams. The extensive aesthetic trans-formations caused by this technique are again provok-ing socio-political opposition to mining in WestVirginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Tennessee, andthreatens to hold up permit applications for new mines(Loeb, 1997).

Contradiction 3. Mining and mineral processing are seg-regative processes that necessarily generate large andcomplex waste streams: the continued availability andlegitimacy of low-cost waste disposal options are thereforeessential for growth. Yet, the conventional disposal ofmining wastes depletes existing disposal options andgenerates resistance and opposition from non-mininginterests.

The wastes generated by mining are large in size andoften chemically and physically complex. The volume ofthe waste stream places a premium on low-cost wastedisposal, while the chemical and physical complexity ofwastes can increase the cost of designing and imple-menting disposal facilities that meet legal standards andsocial norms regarding levels of environmental risk.Wastes are a contradiction for mining firms since theyare an essential part of production, yet disposing ofwastes can increase the costs of production throughincreased haulage costs, regulatory requirements to treatand manage wastes, and as a result of organized oppo-sition to many low-cost waste disposal options to theextent that they potentially undermine profitability.

During the planning and development of a mine,space needs to be allocated for the disposal of wastesgenerated during mining including overburden, waste-rock, and tailings. The location and areal extent allo-cated to these waste dumps can be critical to projectfeasibility, since disposal sites close to the mine arenecessary to minimize haulage costs yet a location im-mediately proximate to the mine risks sterilizing part of

the ore body by preventing future mine expansion. Atsome mines, lack of cost-eective waste-disposal sitespresents a limit on further expansion. At the CrippleCreek and Victor Gold Mine in Colorado, for example,expansion of the heap-leaching facility is not held backby the nature of the ore-body but by the need to identifyand acquire potential heap-leach sites which are closeenough for cost-eective haulage but are located outsidethe mineralized zone (CC&V, 1998).

Mining companies have historically externalizedmany of the costs of managing waste streams by emit-ting them to common-property resources such as rivers,lakes, and the atmosphere (see e.g., Smith, 1987). Dis-posal of tailings into rivers, for example, reduces theneed to tie up land and capital in storing and treatingtailings by making use of the natural sediment transportservices provided by the river. Use of these free envi-ronmental services has historically decreased the costs tomining firms of waste-disposal and has been funda-mental to determining the rate of accumulation in themineral sector and the technical conditions of mineralprocessing during the twentieth century.17 In certainplaces, however, the accumulation of wastes over timeand the specific toxicity of some of the waste productsprovoked challenges from other business interests aswell as interests not allied to any particular industry.Documentary evidence from the nineteenth century, forexample, indicates that the disposal of mining wastesinto the common environment could at times generatesucient political opposition to undermine the potentialfor accumulation. Noxious fumes from heap roastingand smelting in Butte, Montana, for example, created astorm of protest from real estate interests, ranchers, andultimately the city-fathers who required copper pro-ducers to undertake pollution reduction measures in1890. Similarly, Oakland, California rejected plans for asmelter to treat lead and silver ores in 1872 on the basisthat deteriorating air quality and health implicationswere not worth the potential economic gains (Smith,1987).

The expansion of mineral production in the post-waryears, the continued development of lower grade ores,and the progressive deepening of scale economiesresulted in increased volumes of mineral waste and arelated increase in the incidence (and political signifi-cance) of protest at the conventional practices for wastetreatment and disposal. The contradiction expresseditself most forcefully as ever-larger volumes of waste had

17 For example, one explanation for the belated adoption by US

copper producers of flash-smelting techniques that had been proven

in Europe and Japan for over 20 years and that provided superior

economic as well as environmental performance was the availability

of the atmosphere prior to the Clean Air Act as a low-cost option for

disposing of gaseous wastes and the relatively low cost of energy inputs

to the smelting process.


to be stored and disposed in the context of a socio-po-litical environment that was ever-more skeptical ofstandard industry practice and increasingly hostile toestablished disposal plans. In response, the state stroveto resolve this contradiction by introducing regulationsthat facilitated the continued use of the natural envi-ronment as a disposal option but under a set of specificconditions designed to reduce the most acute impacts.18

That this was only a partial and temporary resolution tothe contradiction, however, is seen in the failure oflegislation governing the management of wastes andreleases to the environment to suciently corral protest.The continuing political potency of the waste volumecontradiction and the failure of real regulation tocontain it is expressed each year in popular protestsand more narrowly focussed legal challenges to mineraldevelopment which take place throughout the westernUS. These challenges use the contradictions of wastedisposal as a means of delaying, modifying and occa-sionally preventing mine development.

6. Regulating contradictions in US copper

The simple identification of these contradictionswithin the mineral production processes is, perhaps,only of limited interest. Their existence, however, takeson considerable significance when juxtaposed againstthe relative infrequency with which they emerge as visiblechallenges to profitability in the minerals sector. The co-existence of structural contradictions with profitableproduction raises the question of how these contradic-tions, inherent to the process of producing mineralcommodities from the natural environment, are eec-tively regulated over time such that they seldom emergeas a fully-fledged crisis.

While mining and mineral processing are most com-monly analyzed as technical processes, the developmentof natural resources and the commodification ofnature which underpins any such productive utilizationof the natural environment is a complex organiza-tional task. It requires, for example, the formation ofrules and norms to co-ordinate the quality, quantity,and flexibility of labor, the availability and accessibilityof raw materials and options for the disposal of wastes,and the creation of a social milieu which accepts levels ofprofitability that provide the requisite return on invest-ment. A combination of legal rules, customary agree-ments, and routines guide dierent actors to achieve thisorganization of the production process. Institutionalizedthrough legislation or tradition, these norms and rou-tines reduce uncertainty and maintain order in the face

of underlying contradictions which threaten to impedeaccumulation.

The next section takes a closer look at the regulationof the ecological contradictions that are inherent toproducing copper from the environment of the USSouthwest. It illustrates how during the 1980s, ecologi-cally-based contradictions increasingly found expressionin ways that contributed to declining profitability. Theappearance of conflicts over land access and waste dis-posal, for example, are interpreted in terms of the pro-gressive failure of existing institutions to containunderlying contradictions stemming from the historicalways in which copper production has been organizedwith respect to the environment.

6.1. The copper crisis and copper production in thesouthwestern United States

During the 1970s, copper producers in the UnitedStates experienced rising costs for extracting copper ore.Profit margins were eroded as ore-bodies at existingmines and the technologies used to mine, concentrate,and refine copper were unable to provide sucientproductivity gains to counter rising costs. By the early1980s, a supply-crisis (or crisis of underproduction) hadengulfed most US copper producers as mining firmswere unable either to bring ore-bodies into productionthat had suciently high-grades to oset their risingcosts, or to develop technologies or mining practicesrapidly enough to reduce the costs of mining existing orebodies. Between March 1981 and June 1983, 28 coppermines in the United States closed or had production cutback. The US Bureau of Mines warned in 1984 that theUS was in danger of losing over 75% of its copperproduction capacity if new ways could not be found toreduce production costs or bring more productive ore-bodies into production.

This so-called copper crisis has been interpreted byothers as the result of sub-optimal strategies of verticaldisintegration which precluded rationalization oftransaction costs (OhUallachain and Matthews, 1994,1996) or more generally as a result of a long-term fail-ure to invest in cost-reduction compounded by a seriesof external events that either reduced prices or raisedcosts (Crowson, 1992). It is argued, here, however, thatthe origin of the crisis can be traced in part to rela-tionships established between copper producers and thenatural environment during an expansion of productionin the post-war years. In particular, the descent intocrisis can be explained by reference to the obsolescenceof the institutions which had successfully regulated theissues of land-access and environmental impact over theprevious decades. In brief, by the early 1980s many ofthese institutions which had supported accumulation inthe mineral sector by ensuring the availability of su-ciently high-grade ores or enabling the externalizing of

18 For copper producers in the US Southwest, the passage of the

Clean Air Act Amendments, 1977 is especially pertinent here.


environmental costs were no longer eective. In arguingfor an ecologically-rooted explanation of the crisis, thispaper is not seeking to reject more traditional, eco-nomic explanations for the cost-price squeeze in the UScopper industry during the 1980s. Rather, the objectiveis to understand how rising costs emerged from thehistorical ways in which nature has been incorporatedinto the process of producing copper.

7. Institutions regulating land access and raw material

supply

The preceding sections have shown how contradic-tions are inherent to a production process predicated onthe extraction of copper from copper ore of variablegrade. Yet, for most of the post-war period these con-tradictions have been regulated to the extent that po-tential supply crises in the mineral sector those arisingfrom a failure to secure sucient new, low-cost ore-bodies have been largely averted. Regulation of supplycrises within the copper industry has typically beenachieved through the acquisition of new sources of high-grade supply overseas, a manipulation of profit marginsvia oligopoly, applications of existing technologies atincreasing scales and, to a lesser extent, technologicalinnovation. Thus, while the grade of copper mined inthe US during the early 1970s was 30% lower than thatof the world average, and over 60% lower than somecompetitors, the institutional framework within whichUS copper producers operated enabled them to continueto post profits. By the late 1970s, however, there weresigns that some but not all of these institutions hadbegun to fail US copper producers in that the costs ofproduction were rising to the point that their impact onprofitability could not be contained. By the end of thedecade, operating costs in the US had risen from 89% ofthe world average to 97%, and would rise further to112% of world average by the early 1980s.

The institutional framework that has historicallyregulated the contradictions inherent to acquiring landsfor mining is complex. It comprises customary and legalrelationships which have evolved over time betweencopper producers, the local and federal state, and thepublic which directly or indirectly influence the avail-ability and accessibility of mineral deposits. Rather thanexhaustively review each institutional component of thisregulatory framework, this section identifies key insti-tutions which during much of the post-war period reg-ulated the contradictions of depletion and declining oregrade such that they did not threaten the profitability ofcopper producers. The regulatory codes and routinepractices of federal land agencies such as the BLM andForest Service, which promoted mineral production onfederal lands at minimal cost, have been an historicallysignificant element in facilitating access to new copper

deposits. Legislative frameworks such as the GeneralMining Law of 1872 which encouraged the conversionof federal lands to private mineral holdings at nominalcost until as recently as 1996, when a moratorium waspassed pending revision of the law were central to thisinstitutional framework. They both provided producerswith access to mineral deposits at low cost, and subsi-dized the profitability of low-grade production on fed-eral lands by not requiring mineral producers to payroyalties or production bonuses to the government.

Equally important in regulating access to deposits onfederal lands were the routinized practices of the federalland agencies such as the Bureau of Land Managementand Forest Service in interpreting federal land law. Sincethe sole purpose of the General Mining Law was topromote domestic mining, mining companies remainedunencumbered by restrictions on access or use of federalland until the passage of the Federal Land Policy andLand Management Act (FLPLMA) in 1976, whichprovided federal land agencies with limited controls toprevent environmental degradation on federal land(Findley and Farber, 1992, p. 323). Even thoughFLPLMA was designed to institutionalize the manage-ment principles of multiple use and sustained yield bybalancing recreational and extractive uses of federalland, local branches of federal agencies in New Mexicoand Arizona (and other states) continued to implementland-use decisions which in practice made federal landreadily available to mineral producers.19 However, thesetraditional land-use decisions and customary decision-making processes were increasingly challenged duringthe 1970s. The introduction of citizen suit provisionsinto US environmental law, for example, provided avehicle for environmental groups to oppose land usedecisions and challenge agency discretion, introducinguncertainty and delay into land access decisions.20 Asthe established mechanisms for accessing federal landbegan to erode and the risk of investing in domestic orereserves increased, problems for copper producers as-sociated with the structural underproduction of low-costdomestic ores were exacerbated.

19 Recognition of, and frustration with, the traditional productivist

orientation of federal land agencies lies behind the standard joke that

BLM stood not for Bureau of Land Management, but Bureau of

Livestock and Mining (Smith, 1995).20 Citizen suits provisions, allowing an interest group to file a law suit

against a state or federal agency charging it with violation of legal

requirements, were first incorporated into US environmental law in the

1970 Amendments to the Clean Air Act. They have been incorporated

into almost every major piece of federal environmental legislation since

then. Citizen suit provisions in the Endangered Species Act (1973) for

example, provide a way for environmental groups to file suit against

federal land management agencies for failing to provide for the

protection of threatened and endangered species. Since much mineral

development occurs on federal land, these provisions have proved

particularly eective at halting or delaying the issuance of permits for

mineral projects (Eblen and Eblen, 1994).


The system of taxation and corporation law in the USenabled firms to either out-run the contradiction throughexploration and investment overseas, or to o-set it byreducing their tax liabilities and total costs. Having ex-plored, located, and developed deposits in South Ameri-ca, corporate law enabled US copper producers tosubsidize low-grade operations in the United States fromthe surplus made on high-grade, low cost mines overseasthrough the mechanism of transfer-pricing. This made itpossible to keep prices high enough to guarantee profits atrelatively high-cost US operations, while reaping super-profits from low cost mines overseas. For example, An-aconda made after-tax profits of 7% on its total sales in thelate 1960s, but was making only 3.5% from its domesticoperations compared to 20% on Chilean operations.Similarly, Kennecott was making 16% on total sales, with12% from the US, and 35% from Chile (Navin, 1978).

A secondary eect of overseas investment by USproducers in new deposits was the re-direction of re-sources away from the development of low-cost do-mestic mines via investment in modernization of plantand equipment and exploration for new reserves in theUnited States. The spatial expansion of production intoSouth America had not only made it possible for USproducers to avoid the need to address declining gradesand rising costs at domestic mines but also tied up thefinancial and technical resources necessary to do so. Forexample, it is commonly asserted that rising labor costsin the US during the late 1960s and 1970s contributed tothe copper crisis of the early 1980s by compounding thecost-prize squeeze (Sousa, 1981; Oce of TechnologyAssessment, 1988; Porter and Thomas, 1988; Hilde-brand and Mangum, 1992). Nonetheless, the cost oflabor is not independent of the way in which productionis organized: increases in labor costs of 10% per yearduring the 1970s were the result of pattern bargainingagreements in which mining companies conceded higherwages to labor in exchange for the productivity im-provements necessary to produce copper from progres-sively lower grade ores. For much of the post-warperiod, therefore, higher labor costs and the associatedimprovements in labor productivity were a principalway in which mining companies dealt with the con-tradiction of progressively declining ore grades. By thelate 1970s, however, postponed expenditures in the USon technological innovation, plant modernization, anddomestic exploration had eectively underproducedlower cost domestic ores so that increases in laborproductivity began to slow, from an average annual rateof increase of 2.5% in the 1960s to just 1% in the 1970s(Congressional Research Services, 1986).

Established relationships between individual copperproducers, and between producers and consumers, are afurther significant component of the institutionalframework regulating the contradictions of depletionand access. By influencing the supply and demand for

copper, they influence price and the margins of profit-ability. Up until the early 1970s, the US copper industryoperated as an oligopoly with prices set not throughmarket exchange via the London Metals Exchange ofthe Commodities Exchange in New York, but throughthe use of a domestic pricing structure known as theproducer-pricing system. Although prices were fixedindependently by mining firms, in practice prices werevirtually the same for all producers. By reducing vola-tility in price, producer pricing enabled US producers toprotect profit margins and thereby postpone the impacton profitability of declining ore grades and rising costs.That a domestic producer-pricing system could be sus-tained in the face of increasing international trade incopper reflected the dominant position of the US copperoligopoly. The international expansion of the US copperindustry since the 1920s has been associated with thedominance of a few multinational, vertically integratedcorporations controlling a high proportion of marketshare (Radetzki, 1992; Malone, 1986). For much of thisperiod, the substantial market share held by these fewproducers provided a considerable degree of controlover price, while their hemispheric reach prevented theemergence of cheaper, regionally-based competitors.International trade in copper, including the importationof copper to the United States, largely took place withinthe structure of the multinational. The higher-gradesand lower-production costs of mines in Chile and Peruwhich were operated by US producers prior to theirnationalization in the 1960s, provided sucient profit-ability to allow US producers to cherry-pick only therichest ores at domestic operations and postpone mod-ernization and innovation that would be necessary toprocess lower-grade domestic ores. The nationalizationof copper mines, mills, and smelters by Chile (196471)and Peru (197274) eectively cut-o the roots of thetransnational mining firms, reducing their ownershipand control over the flow of copper onto the market(OhUallachain and Matthews, 1994). Not only did thisremove the immediate sources of profitability for UScopper, but it also exposed the chronic underproductionof profitable domestic ore reserves.21

8. Institutions regulating the environmental impacts ofproduction

As copper production in the Southwest boomed inthe post-war years, legislative constraints on emissions

21 OhUallachain and Matthews (1994, 1996) study of restructuringin US copper argues that the crisis of the US copper industry in the

1980s stemmed from this nationalization of production and the

collapse of oligopoly. This paper concurs with, and draws on, this

assessment, but unlike OhUallachain and Matthews (1994, 1996) itasserts that the origins of the crisis can be traced back still further, to

the way nature is appropriated and organized during production.


and waste disposal initially were relatively few. Throughemission of sulphur dioxide from smelters, the pollutionof surface and ground water from poorly-sited wastedumps, and the condemnation of land as storage pilesfor increased volumes of waste rock, copper producerswere able to eectively externalize many of the costs ofenvironmental control. Over a period of time, increasedmine output together with the economies of scaleadopted by mineral producers to oset declining pro-ductivity from progressively lower grade ores over-whelmed the local capacity of the natural environmentto absorb pollutants. This was especially the case atlocales in the southwestern US where emissions weresustained and intense. Where emissions and waste dis-posal practices conflicted with other economic interests such as at peach farms around the Douglas smelter, orreal estate interests in Wyoming aected by deteriorat-ing air quality from Arizona and New Mexico smelters copper producers encountered opposition to their es-tablished practices, and to the established relationshipsbetween producers and the state which legalized theiremissions.

The eect of sustained opposition to traditional wastedisposal practices was to call into question the authorityof the state to adjudicate land use and permitting deci-sions, an authority which had been drawn on success-fully by the mineral sector for several decades to supportits need for land access and limited internalization ofenvironmental costs. Agency decisions over specificmine expansions or water quality permitting were sub-ject to increasingly vocal and powerful pressures fromemerging economic sectors (such as real estate, hightechnology, and tourism) as well as from social move-ments demanding that mining internalize some of itsenvironmental costs. As a result, new environmentallegislation was proposed, and in some cases introducedat both the state and federal level, specifically to modifylong-established practices of externalizing environmen-tal costs through emissions to air and water. In NewMexico, for example, environmental groups particu-larly those active in Santa Fe County succeeded ingetting their concerns over minings impact on waterquality and land degradation normalized through in-creased representation at the state level. The capitalexpenditures necessary to comply with this legisla-tion and the coincidence of the regulatory mandateswith a period of lack luster performance in thecopper sector, had the eect of accelerating the crisisfor the domestic copper industry. As the director oflabor relations at Phelps Dodge put it in 1983,copper is very sensitive to price, thats what hurtsus, and were faced with millions and millions ofdollars in environmental costs. We have wastedisposal problems and these problems are bad enough,but so are the costs (Jack Ladd, cited in Rosenblum,1995, p. 75).

Court cases and protracted litigation during the 1970sand 1980s demonstrated that mining firms could nolonger rely on the administrative states authority at ei-ther the federal or state level to provide the conditionsfor long term profitability. In particular, court actionsincreasingly convinced southwestern copper producersthat they were less and less able to externalize their en-vironmental costs with impunity. Phelps Dodge, forexample, was the subject of several citizen suitsthroughout the 1970s and 1980s filed by environmentalinterests in an eort to enforce state and federal pollu-tion control standards relating to air quality (White,1987). The impact of this transformation on the mineralproducers of the Southwest is neatly captured by thehistorian Michael Malone (1986, p. 461): the miningcompanies looked less and less like the behemoths ofdays gone by, more and more like other western cor-porations, fretting about tough new environmental laws,advertising to court public opinion, and lobbying hardin Washington and state capitals. As institutionalframeworks which once successfully had regulated landaccess and the environmental impacts of mining inArizona and New Mexico began to erode, the tradi-tional methods adopted by copper producers forresolving or containing crises were no longer eective.These had depended on successfully ignoring (andsometimes silencing22) critical voices, buying the rightsto pollute, or drawing on political support in the state inorder to disenfranchise, obstruct, or otherwise de-legit-imate potential opposition through the rule of law. Atone level this reflected a legitimation crisis for the min-eral sector as a whole as a result of decades of exter-nalizing environmental damage costs, a generalizedcrisis for mining but one that was particularly acute forsome operators in particular locales such as PhelpsDodge in Douglas which had a track record ofsignificant, localized environmental impacts. At anotherlevel, however, this legitimation crisis expressed itself asan exacerbation of the supp

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