So, this is a bit convoluted, but... I'm writing a YA western set in 1880s Arizona. The villain has gotten rich through silver mining, but I want her to be doing some of that good ol' fashioned "push the little farmers off their land" western stuff. And I want the final climax to involve the good guys blowing up a small dam or something in order to keep her goons from chasing them, and for her to be all dismissive in a "we'll just get you tomorrow" sort of way... but I want the water from the blown up dam to actually run down and fill her mine, meaning she's got a serious cash flow problem until she can get it drained out. Hydrodynamic fun! Anyways, I want at least part of her earlier land grab to involve water rights, just to increase the poetic justice of the climax. As I understand the history of Arizona water rights (based mostly on http://www.azwater.gov/azdwr/watermanagement/History/History_of_Water_Management_in_Arizona7.htm), once someone has started using water for something they have the right to keep using it, even if they aren't riparian landowners. But the person would need land to get the water to the place of use, I suppose - a pipeline or at least a ditch. So that would mean I could have the villain buying up/forcing out farms along the path she wants to use to get the water where she wants it. But... why does she want it? Irrigation, I suppose, but also for mining operations... apparently water is useful for the ore recovery process (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_mining_in_Arizona). Does anyone have any details of how the water would be used for that? And that same wikipedia article mentions water being used to drive the mills that stamp and process the ore, but... I don't really know what that means. Would the mills be grinding down rough ore and then sorting the silver out from it, or...? Anyone know anything about water, old-time silver mining, or, ideally, water AND old-time silver mining? And does anyone see any holes in the general framework of all this? Thanks for any help...
As far as why water is useful in mining, that sounds like the sort of dry, technical knowledge that would really slow down the story. Imagine if Death of a salesman contained the complete Material safety Data Sheet for whatever it was Willy Loman sold. Just a couple quick sentences to establish its necessity should be fine, I would think. It's a desert, saying you want a near-monopoly on water rights seems like a pretty easily understood evil plan to get wealthy. As far as acquiring the water rights, now we're talking. This is where you can have all manner of bribes, extortion, assassinations, fixed elections, crooked sheriffs, foreclosures by the bank the villain owns, etc.
Yeah, it's one of those things I think the author should know, just to be sure I don't say anything absurd, but I wasn't really planning to include a treatise on it in the book itself!
When the lion feeds and goldmine, both by wilbur smith have a reasonable amount of mining detail without being silly about it...okay it's a goldmine not a silver one but the techniques are similar...smash the rock into powder then seive it with water to separate the metal from the rock....the run off is likely to be toxic, so she'd also be poisoning the water downstream which could contribute to the running the ranchers off their land thing. Also see good articles on onlinenevada.org
