A federal judge appears split on a bid to stop the expansion of a pit mine in eastern Arizona that has reduced the flow of a nearby creek by more than 90% in the last decade. The Pinto Valley Mine uses more than 5 trillion gallons of water per year, extracting copper from the Tonto National Forest east of Miami, Arizona, and consequently reducing subflow of Pinto Creek, home to at least two species of endangered birds. Because the mine extracts most of its water from privately owned wells on private land outside Forest Service jurisdiction, the government claims it has no authority to limit how much water the mine can pump. In a Phoenix courtroom Tuesday afternoon, Thomas Delehanty said the federal government can and should regulate activity on private land if the result of that activity materially harms conditions on nearby public land.