Water concerns temper elation over Big Bend silver mine Houston Chronicle Copyright 2012 Houston Chronicle. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Updated 10:52 p.m., Sunday, November 11, 2012 SHAFTER - More than seven decades after its glory days as one of the richest silver mines in the Southwest, La Mina Grande is roaring back to life in a remote corner of the Big Bend. Huge Terex and Volvo trucks are rumbling two shifts a day, hauling away waste rock and bringing ore to a new on-site processing plant where the sparkling gray material is pulverized and then treated with cyanide to extract precious metals. Alarms are being raised by several landowners who worry about the mine's plan to pump vast quantities of water from deep, flooded tunnels. In recent weeks, the Texas General Land Office and Texas Parks & Wildlife Department also have raised questions and objections about the mine's plans to remove as much as 1,000 acre-feet of water from flooded deep tunnels. "The decisions regarding this project may have long-lasting impact to critically important aquatic resources in arguably the driest region in Texas," wrote Scott Boruff, a Parks & Wildlife director. A clutch of political figures, including state senators Carlos Uresti, D-San Antonio, and Jose R.