Michael Hearrell worries that a proposed mine two miles from his home will dry up his water well.
Hearrell, a retired pilot, has lived around Roff, a town of just over 600 outside of Ada, his whole life. The town is dotted with a few gas stations, a senior center and a short Main Street that is home to the public school. Roff is also surrounded by mining operations, thanks to the sand reserves nearby.
The international company Covia wants to develop a 380-acre pit about four miles away from its existing 1,400-acre operation outside of Roff, despite a state moratorium on new mining operations above south-central Oklahoma’s Arbuckle-Simpson aquifer.
The mining industry has been embedded in the local economy for years — Hearrell’s dad helped build some of the mining infrastructure. But some landowners worry that the expansion will interfere with the sensitive aquifer beneath their feet that supplies drinking water to towns and private wells. Hearrell said he can’t afford to drill a deeper well if the proposed mine were to cause the local water table to drop.
“If it doesn’t happen, it costs people jobs. But we can’t destroy our water system here for that,” Hearrell said. Hearrell was one of more than 40 individuals or groups who sent protests to the state against the new mine.
“I think you’ve got to look at the bigger picture,” he said
As many as 150,000 people get drinking water from the 500-square-mile Arbuckle-Simpson aquifer, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
But the aquifer is particularly vulnerable to depletion and only recharges a few inches every year, one study estimated. The Arbuckle-Simpson has the smallest amount of water that can be used each year compared to every other aquifer in the state, according to the Oklahoma Water Resources Board.
In 2019, lawmakers approved a moratorium on new mines to protect the aquifer — and the streams and springs that flow from it — from drying up until further studies can be done. There are 19 existing mines that sit over the aquifer.
Covia executives have told state regulators they believe the company is exempt from the moratorium. The company argued the additional 380 acres would be an expansion of the existing operation because the new site would be connected by three water and slurry pipelines and a land corridor.
The company’s existing mine outside of Roff will exhaust sand reserves and have to close in “the near future,” unless officials approve the expansion, according to a letter it sent to the Oklahoma Department of Mines in June 2025. The sand produced by the mine is used to manufacture glass and roofing products, the company told The Frontier.
“The closing of the mine will impact not only the local workers and the tax base, but also the industries that use and depend on Roff’s high-quality sand,” Covia wrote to state officials. Covia said it employs 50 people at its current operation.
The moratorium does allow limited expansions to existing mining permits. Former Sen. Greg McCortney, who co-sponsored legislation that created the moratorium, said that allowing some expansions for existing mines was part of the conversations that allowed the moratorium to be approved. The Department of Mines approved a previous 20-acre expansion for Covia on its existing mine in 2022, according to state records. But Covia’s new proposal seems like a “much bigger deal” than what was originally intended, McCortney said.
The Department of Mines initially denied Covia’s application for a new mine in May 2025, saying the distance between the existing mine and the proposed new site was too far to be considered under the moratorium.
Officials later accepted an updated application from Covia in August after the company provided additional information on why it believed the project should be exempt from the moratorium. The Department of Mines is now reviewing the company’s new application.
Advocates in the area say the company is trying to find a loophole. Shannon Shirley, vice president of Citizens for the Protection of the Arbuckle-Simpson aquifer, wrote to group members in an October email that if the state approves the expansion, it would allow “the nearly unlimited development of new mines throughout the aquifer.”
Shirley said when miners dig deep into the earth to retrieve sand, limestone or other resources, they eventually hit the water table. When this happens, water from the aquifer fills the large mining pits, lowering the water table for others in the area.
Covia told state officials that roughly 85% of the sand reserves at its proposed mine location are above the water table, and the company would limit impacts to the aquifer when digging for the last 15% of reserves below the water table.
Still, community members worry the project could harm the local water resources.
There is some evidence that shows mining below the water table can also negatively impact an aquifer, said Steve Roy, a board member with the Blue River Foundation of Oklahoma, which advocates for the protection of the Blue River. But it’s difficult to prove, and Oklahoma doesn’t yet have a site-specific process for studying what the impact of a mine would be locally, he added.
That was the point of the moratorium, Roy said — to give time to state agencies to create the steps a company would have to follow to determine how they could safely mine without interfering with the health of the local water.
State agencies currently have inadequate “technical resources, analytic tools and regulatory systems” for effectively overseeing mining regulations over sensitive aquifers like the Arbuckle-Simpson, lawmakers wrote when establishing the moratorium. The law tasked these natural resource agencies to finish studying the aquifer so they can determine how to keep the aquifer and its springs and streams healthy.
“Until they get that done, the moratorium will stay in place,” Roy said.
A spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Water Resources Board, which is one of the agencies responsible for completing the updated study on the Arbuckle Simpson aquifer, said work is scheduled to finish in fall 2028.
An informal hearing about Covia’s application for the 380-acre expansion will be held between the Department of Mines, Covia and community members in February.
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Kayla joined The Frontier in 2021. She covers social services, energy and the environment. She can be reached at Kayla@readfrontier.com
