Item 3. Legal Proceedings.

Below is a discussion of our material pending legal proceedings not otherwise required to be disclosed in our Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements. Refer to Note 12 for a discussion of other material pending legal proceedings.

In addition to the material pending legal proceedings discussed below and in Note 12, we are involved periodically in ordinary routine litigation incidental to our business and not required to be disclosed, some of which may result in adverse judgments, settlements, fines, penalties, injunctions or other relief.

United States (U.S.) Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations require us to disclose environmental proceedings involving a governmental authority if we reasonably believe that such proceedings may result in monetary sanctions above a stated threshold. Pursuant to the SEC regulations, we use a threshold of $1 million for purposes of determining whether disclosure of any such environmental proceedings is required.

Management does not believe, based on currently available information, that the outcome of any currently pending legal proceeding will have a material adverse effect on our financial condition; although individual or cumulative outcomes could be material to our operating results for a particular period, depending on the nature and magnitude of the outcome and the operating results for the period.

Water Rights Adjudications

Our operations in the western U.S. require significant secure quantities of water for mining and ore processing activities, and related support facilities. Continuous operation of our mines is dependent on, among other things, our ability to maintain our water rights and claims and the continuing physical availability of the water supplies. In the arid western U.S., where certain of our mines are located, water rights are often contested, and disputes over water rights are generally time-consuming, expensive and not necessarily dispositive unless they resolve both actual and potential claims. The loss of a water right or a currently available water supply could force us to curtail operations, or force premature closures, thereby increasing and/or accelerating costs or foregoing profitable operations.

At our North America operations, certain of our water supplies are supported by surface water rights, which give us the right to use public waters for a statutorily defined beneficial use at a designated location. In Arizona, where our operations use both surface and groundwater, we are a participant in an active adjudication in which Arizona courts have been attempting, for over 45 years, to quantify and prioritize surface water claims for the Gila River system, one of the state’s largest river systems. This Gila River adjudication primarily affects our Morenci, Safford (including Lone Star) and Sierrita mines. The Gila River adjudication is addressing the state law claims of thousands of competing users, including us, as well as significant federal water claims that are potentially adverse to the state law claims of both surface water and groundwater users. Groundwater is treated differently from surface water under Arizona law, which historically allowed land owners to pump unlimited quantities of subsurface water, subject only to the requirement of putting it to “reasonable use.” However, court decisions in the adjudication have concluded that some subsurface water constitutes “subflow” that is to be treated legally as surface water and is therefore subject to the Arizona doctrine of prior appropriation and to the adjudication, and potentially unavailable to groundwater pumpers, including us, in the absence of valid surface water claims. Any re-characterization of groundwater as surface water could affect the ability of consumers, farmers, ranchers, municipalities, and industrial users like us to continue to access water supplies that have been relied on for decades. Because we are a user of both groundwater and surface water in Arizona, we are an active participant in the Gila River adjudication.

In Re The General Adjudication of All Rights to Use Water in the Gila River System and Sources, Maricopa County, Superior Court, Cause Nos. W-1 (Salt), W-2 (Verde), W-3 (Upper Gila), and W-4 (San Pedro). This case was originally initiated in 1974 with the filing of a petition with the Arizona State Land Department and was consolidated and transferred to the Maricopa County Superior Court in 1981. The principal parties, in addition to us, include: Arizona Public Service Company, ASARCO, LLC; BHP Copper, Inc; the state of Arizona; various cities and towns and water companies; the Gila Valley Irrigation District; the Franklin Irrigation District; the San Carlos Irrigation and Drainage District; the Salt River Project; the San Carlos Apache Tribe; the Gila River Indian Community; and the U.S. on behalf of those tribes, on its own behalf, and on behalf of the White Mountain Apache Tribe, the Fort McDowell Mohave-Apache Indian Community, the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, and the Payson Community of Yavapai Apache Indians. Prior to January 1, 1983, various Indian tribes filed separate suits in the U.S. District Court in Arizona claiming superior rights to water being used by many other parties, including us, and claiming damages for prior use in derogation of their allegedly superior rights. These federal proceedings have been stayed in favor of the adjudications pending in Arizona state courts, and some of the federal suits have since been settled.

In 2005, the Maricopa County Superior Court directed the Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) to prepare detailed recommendations regarding the delineation of the “subflow” zone of the San Pedro River, a tributary of the Gila River. Subsurface water within the subflow zone is presumed to constitute appropriable subflow rather than groundwater. Although we have minimal interests in the San Pedro River Basin, a decision that re-characterizes groundwater in that basin as appropriable subflow may set a precedent for other river systems in Arizona that could have material implications for many commercial, industrial, municipal and agricultural users of groundwater, including our Arizona operations. In 2017, the court approved ADWR’s proposed subflow zone maps; water pumped from wells located inside the mapped subflow zone is now presumed to be appropriable subflow. No party has appealed that decision.

ADWR is now in the process of preparing subflow delineations for the applicable watercourses in Verde River watershed. In December 2021, ADWR issued a report proposing a delineation for the Verde River mainstem and Sycamore Creek and objections to that report are due in May 2022. We do not have any active mining operations in the Verde watershed that would be impacted by this phase of the adjudication.

In 2014, ADWR submitted a proposal for the development of procedures for “cone of depression” analyses to determine whether a well located outside of the subflow zone creates a cone of depression that intersects the subflow zone. Based on these cone of depression analyses, wells outside of the subflow zone could be subject to the adjudications pending in Arizona state courts. In the absence of a valid surface water claim to support the pumping, owners of wells deemed to be depleting the subflow zone through their cones of depression may be subject to claims that they must refrain from pumping subflow or must pay damages. In January 2017, ADWR issued a report containing its recommended cone of depression test, and a trial was held in March 2018 concerning ADWR’s recommended action.

On November 14, 2018, the Special Master for the Gila River adjudication issued a final decision rejecting ADWR’s recommended cone of depression test, instead adopting our position that a numeric model capable of accounting for complexities of the aquifer system should be used. The Special Master also confirmed that the cone of depression test instead would be an initial test for determining which wells are subject to the adjudications, rather than proving that a well is pumping subflow or establishing how much of a well’s water production is subflow. Such matters will be determined by a subsequent “subflow depletion test,” which has not yet been formulated. Some of our adversaries objected to the Special Master’s final decision, and the Arizona Superior Court heard oral argument on the objections in February 2020. This issue remains under advisement with the Arizona Superior Court.

In response to the Special Master’s decision, in December 2018, ADWR submitted its initial report on the “subflow depletion test,” which will specify the methodology a well owner must use to quantify the portion of the water drawn from a well that is subflow as opposed to groundwater; however, ADWR remains in the process of developing its proposed subflow depletion test. We, along with the other parties, will have the opportunity to provide input throughout the process.

The first issue litigated concerned whether for the subflow depletion test the subflow zone should be represented in the numeric model as extending only as deep as the bottom of the floodplain alluvium or extend all the way down to bedrock. In August 2021, the Special Master issued an order recognizing our position that if the vertical extent of the subflow zone is extended below the floodplain alluvium, it would result in overstated depletion calculations. Accordingly, the Special Master ordered that the vertical boundary of the subflow zone be restricted to the floodplain alluvium. To date, our adversaries have not taken steps to appeal this ruling.

In proceedings separate from the development of the depletion test, in June 2020, the Special Master designated legal questions to be resolved concerning a well owner’s ability to obtain a surface water right for subsurface water that, while initially believed to be non-appropriable groundwater, is ultimately determined to be appropriable subflow. In April 2021, the Special Master ruled that, for uses initiated after enactment of the 1919 permitting statute, a well owner may not pursue a surface water right unless the well owner filed an application for a permit to appropriate.

As part of the adjudications, the U.S. has asserted numerous claims for express and implied “reserved” surface water and groundwater rights on Indian and non-Indian federal lands throughout Arizona. These claims are related to reservations of federal land for specific purposes (e.g., Indian reservations, national parks, military bases and wilderness areas). Unlike state law-based water rights, federal reserved water rights are given priority in the “prior appropriation” system based on the date the land was reserved, not the date that water was first used on the land. In addition, federal reserved water rights may enjoy greater protection from groundwater pumping than is accorded to state law-based water rights.

In multiple instances, the U.S. asserts a right to all water in a particular watershed that was not effectively appropriated under state law prior to the establishment of the federal reservation. This creates risks for both surface water users and groundwater users because such expansive claims may severely impede competing uses of water within the same watershed. Because there are numerous federal reservations in watersheds across Arizona, the reserved water right claims of the U.S. pose a significant risk to multiple operations, including Morenci and Safford (including Lone Star) in the Upper Gila River watershed, and Sierrita in the Santa Cruz watershed. Because federal reserved water rights may adversely affect water uses at each of these operations, we have been actively involved in litigation over these claims. Because federal reserved water rights have not yet been quantified, the task of determining how much water each federal reservation may use has been left to the Arizona Superior Court handling the Gila River adjudication. Several “contested cases” to quantify reserved water rights for particular federal reservations in Arizona are currently pending with only one resolved at this time. That case, In re Aravaipa Canyon Wilderness Area, was to resolve the U.S.’s claims to water for the Aravaipa Canyon Wilderness Area. The case was tried in 2015 and the court issued a decision in December 2018 supportive of our position on almost all issues, including rejection of U.S.’s core argument that wilderness areas are entitled to all water that was not appropriated

at the time the reservation was created. We believe the rulings in this case will support our positions in other pending federal reserved water right cases, including these: In re Fort Huachuca, which involves the U.S.’s claims to water for an Arizona army base and is awaiting a decision following a trial which concluded in February 2017; In re Redfield Canyon Wilderness Area, which involves the U.S.’s claims to water for another wilderness area and is awaiting a decision following a trial which concluded in May 2017; and In re San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area, which involves the U.S.’s claims to water for a national conservation area and is awaiting a decision following a trial which concluded in May 2018.

Given the legal and technical complexity of these adjudications, their long history, and their long-term legal, economic and political implications, it is difficult to predict the timing or the outcome of these proceedings. If we are not able to satisfactorily resolve the issues being addressed in the adjudications, our ability to pump groundwater could be diminished or curtailed, and our operations at Morenci, Safford (including Lone Star) and Sierrita could be adversely affected unless we are able to acquire alternative water resources.