Pine-Strawberry
By||
Rob O’Dell
Ryan Randazzo
Mark Henle
Michael Braga
The small desert town of Ajo, one of the last stops on State Route 85 before the Mexican border, was once a “company town” largely built by the owner of the nearby copper mine.
To this day, residents like to say they live in “miner’s shacks” — compact houses erected for the workers who toiled in the open pit mines. Bigger more desirable homes in town once were occupied by mine supervisors or coaches of the high school sports teams, residents say.
But for more than 1,000 of the town’s residents, the mine’s legacy now stands not in the places where they rest their heads or the perpetually sputtering economy since the mine closed, but from exploding utility bills.
Residents hadn’t had an increase in their electric rates since 2000 and their water and sewer rates were last raised in 2004.
While the absence of rate increases sounds great in theory, the utilities were dying without maintenance and investment – residents complained about dayslong power outages from storms and poorly constructed 100-year-old sewers allowing open sewage to pool in places.
Robert Sorrels’ utility bill for his residence in Ajo on Sept. 22, 2022. Water rates in Ajo had not increased since 2004. Residents faced a steep increase as the utility sought to fix infrastructure issues.
