Benson is split over proposed recycling plant. Now 4 out of 6 council members face recall

In the small town of Benson in southern Arizona, four of the six members of their City Council are now facing recall elections. A group of residents called Committee for a Better Benson gathered enough signatures to force the recall vote last week.

It all goes back to 2024, when the Benson Planning and Zoning Commission issued a variance to a company that wants to build an aluminum recycling facility in the area. Proponents said the big project could bring jobs to the region. But when residents in the area caught on to what had been approved — many were outraged.

They raised concerns about environmental hazards, health impacts and more. And they said the city hadn’t informed them the facility was coming.

But, council members say they followed all of the proper procedures to greenlight the project — and there’s nothing they can do to change it.

Residents aren’t taking that lying down. And they started gathering signatures for a recall.

Terri Jo Neff is a reporter with Herald/Review Media who’s been covering the controversy.

Herald/Review Media

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Full conversation

TERRI JO NEFF: Folks just decided, Lauren, that, you know, if, if the council is not going to be receptive to our concerns, maybe it's time to get some of those council members out of there a few years early and they initiated the recall process.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so this is in direct response to this proposed aluminum plant that's coming to Benson that we've had you on The Show to talk about before, which has been very controversial. Why go after the City council? Like is this kind of the only thing that residents can do?

NEFF: Well, it is at this point. They can perhaps try to challenge Arizona Department of Environmental Quality if, and when, the necessary permit is issued. But as far as getting local officials to pay attention, you know, part of the problem that we have here, Lauren, is that is from the city's perspective, and they've had a lot of lawyers review this, they don't see that anything was done wrong in the process of getting the variants, the special use permit and all of that done.

And, you know, all of the checklist was followed, so to speak. But the majority of the community that could be impacted if there is a health public safety issue at the facility knew nothing about it.

There's already a lawsuit against the planning and zoning process that's going to be heard in court early 2026. So the recall, I think, was part frustration and also just part hoping that if they could get the mayor and enough of the six City Council people out of office, maybe they could get some folks in there who would be a little bit more responsive to some of the concerns.

GILGER: So let me ask you just to paint a picture for us. Like if and when this plant is built, what will this look like do to this very small community in Benson?

NEFF: So it's, it's a 200-acre property. The, the building sites themselves are less than 10 acres. The problem though is lying to the east is the San Pedro River. To the immediate west of the property, like literally a hop, skip and a jump across a highway, you have a nursing home, you have a lot of low-income housing that's there.

And so even though it's not right in the heart of downtown Benson, it's a big facility. It's one, just one of the buildings is 88 feet tall. It's then going to have a couple of 100-foot tall cooling stacks. The building itself is not going to be that much different in, you know, in structure.

We have a lot of industrial buildings, but it is big. It's going to bring in semitruck traffic. Then again, a lot of businesses cause semitruck traffic. And it's going to be very interesting to see who chooses to run against these four council members, because somebody has to run against each person.

And you don't know, we may end up with the same four council members in the end, they could end up with four brand new council members who would take office right in June.

GILGER: OK, so have we heard any response from these four City Council members who are now going to either have to choose whether to run or just resign?

NEFF: We haven't yet. There's a lot of moving parts to this story and again, it's gonna be interesting to see who happens to step up and say, "all right, I'm willing to put my name in the hat and I wanna get on the council."

GILGER: Yeah, that'll be interesting. So I mean this though, this issue over this aluminum plant has really, it sounds like divided this community in Benson. You live there in Benson and have been covering this all along. What's this done to the, to the, to the town, to the community, to this, you know, to people?

NEFF: You know, it, it is caused friction within families, it has caused friction within churches. Longtime friends, you know, in some cases are on opposite ends here. Very interesting that ranchers, farmers, who are typically not eager to embrace kind of the radical environmentalists, are all coming together on this issue. Unfortunately, as with a lot of things like this, a lot of controversies, you do have folks that are on really the extremes who sometimes get a lot of the attention.

Just last week, one of the very vocal opponents was like, "hey, we need to get rid of the developmental plan. So that we have the community votes on who gets to build any business in town." Which just totally had the other side throwing up their hands.

The other part too, as I mentioned, there's the lawsuit. There is still the chance slim as it is that a court would say, "hey Benson, you really did things wrong." But what happens if that judge happens to say yeah, Benson did everything right. They followed the law."

And then what are those, let's say four new council members are on there. What are they going to do? They're going to have to abide by the judge's order. So it is, there's so many different parts to this. We're probably looking at another two months before we really have a clearer idea.