Alexander Heilner "Intrepid Potash Mine"

My name is Alex Heilner, and I made this image as part of my ongoing series, Draining the Colorado. It’s an open-ended project documenting the impending water crisis in the Colorado River Basin.

In the fall of 2022, I was flying my drone over these enormous evaporation ponds, and I was immediately struck by how perfectly this place represents the entirety of the modern Western landscape. When one pictures the American West, some of the most iconic elements are the imposing red ridges and buttes that dominate the otherwise open skyline. And they really are everywhere if you’re traveling through southern Utah. 

But the reality is that the western landscape was long ago given over to massive public and private infrastructure projects. These are usually built in places people think of as “empty”, where there was little local resistance. Many people consider extraction of natural resources to be the obvious best use of these wide-open spaces; but the true ecological costs are never fully accounted for. 

This is the Intrepid Potash Mine, which sits next to the Colorado River, just south of Moab, Utah. River water is pumped into the ground at high pressure, and nitrogen-rich potash is pushed out, into these evaporation ponds. After about a year, the potash is collected and sold, mainly as fertilizer. As mines go, this one isn’t all that toxic, but it’s hard not to see it as part of the larger project of human incursion and domination of the West.