The Planet Ranch was once a busy agricultural operation, its 8,000 fertile acres devoted to growing alfalfa and raising cattle. Today, the land is silent, the fields covered with knee-high grass, weeds and willow saplings, while irrigation wheels stand rusty and unused. Stacks of hay lean crazily, half-dissolved by rain and wind. Rows and rows of tractors, trucks and farm equipment, a reminder of the ranch’s more productive days, sit with peeling paint and flat tires in a mechanical graveyard. An eerie silence hangs over the land and buildings, punctuated only by the chirping of birds and the whistling wind.

John Rudolf/News-Herald Photo An irrigation wheel sits in a field at the idle Planet Ranch.

About 20 miles east of Parker, and hidden behind the rugged Buckskin Mountains, Planet Ranch is remote�”so remote that in the late 1970s the U.S. Defense Nuclear Agency used part of the area to simulate the explosion of low-yield nuclear weapons.

Yet despite its isolated location, the ranch has been a source of intense interest for more than 20 years, and for one simple reason: water.

The Bill Williams River flows west from the Alamo Lake through the ranch and into Lake Havasu, charging the land with thousands of acre-feet of water each year. Currently the ranch is owned by the city of Scottsdale, who tried�”and failed�”to divert the water into the nearby Central Arizona Project canal.

Now the ranch has a new suitor: the world’s largest copper-mining corporation, Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold, Inc.

“We’re very confident that this transaction is going to close,” said Beth Miller, water resources advisor for Scottsdale. “I think there’s been some agreement reached among the various agencies.”

The prospect of the ranch, which lies directly adjacent to the Bill Williams River National Wildlife Refuge, falling into the clutches of a giant mining consortium might seem to be an environmentalist’s worst nightmare. Yet paradoxically, the purchase of the ranch by Freeport may ultimately double the size of the refuge, extending critical habitat for endangered species such as the Yuma Clapper Rail by thousands of acres.

“We just see this as a real win-win situation for everybody, and our effort is to move it along and get it done,” said Robert Walsh, a spokesman for the Bureau of Reclamation, which must ultimately approve the deal.

In 1984, the city of Scottsdale bought the ranch for $11 million, with dreams of piping the land’s nearly 20,000 acre-feet of water to the city through the nearby Central Arizona Project canal. When the water-transfer project proved financially unfeasible, the city attempted to recoup their losses by growing large amounts of alfalfa on the land. Yet the ranch continued to lose money, and deals to sell the land repeatedly fell through. Ultimately, it was estimated that the city has lost around $34 million on the deal.

Only in 2006 did the Scottsdale City Council finally approve the sale of the ranch, for $24.6 million, to Phelps-Dodge, a large copper-mining corporation that was soon acquired by Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold, Inc.

Freeport has no interest in the land�”only the water underneath it. But according to an agreement still in the negotiation phase, the company will only acquire “paper rights” to the ranch’s water.

The copper company pumps a vast amount of groundwater from wells in the Wikkiup area, for use at its Bagdad copper mine. Yet those water rights may be threatened, as Arizona recalculates its definition of surface flow and groundwater.

Were the state to change its water definitions, the company’s water supply might be endangered, threatening its multi-billion dollar Bagdad operation.

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