PHOENIX - Faded copper boomtowns in the Pinal Mountains, 85 miles east of Phoenix, are about to boom again.

Soaring copper prices have companies scrambling to open new mines in the mineral-rich Globe-Miami Mining District or restart older operations that were closed when metals prices plunged a decade ago. But the historic Gila County mining towns of Globe and Miami are not prepared to handle the renewed mining activity in the area and the up to 1,000 new jobs it is expected to bring.

“We have not planned for this,” Miami Vice Mayor Ray Webb said. “Nobody expected copper prices to go up so fast.”

Many of Miami's houses and commercial buildings were abandoned years ago and are crumbling and uninhabitable. Neither Miami nor Globe, four miles to the east, has enough dwellings to accommodate the new miners and their families. Miami's aging water and sewer systems can barely handle existing residents.

“We're just getting by now,” said Ed Carpenter, vice president and manager of the Sunstate Bank office in Globe and president of the Southern Gila County Economic Development Corp. “In six months, it will be a real problem.”

Currently, there are about 575 construction workers employed in the area getting Australian mining giant BHP Billiton Ltd.'s closed Pinto Valley Mine ready to reopen this fall. Hundreds more workers will arrive in June to begin work on the new Carlota copper mine near Pinto Valley. And it's possible that Phelps Dodge could reopen its shuttered Miami Mine, putting more people to work.

When BHP and Phelps Dodge Corp. closed their Miami mines in 1998 and 2001, copper was selling for 65 cents a pound. Now, thanks partly to China's burgeoning economy, copper is going for around $3.25 per pound and was as high as $4 last year.

Mark Blakely, project manager for the new Carlota Mine being developed by Quadra Mining Ltd. of Vancouver, British Columbia, said financing is in place for the $220 million mine and that construction is expected to begin in June. About 400 people will be employed during the construction phase, which will last until August 2008, when the mine is scheduled to open with about 200 full-time employees.

“It's going to get pretty busy around here when we both get up and running,” Blakely said.

Workers at Pinto Valley already have gobbled up much of the available housing in the area. Motels, even frilly bed-and-breakfast inns, are booked up with construction workers, particularly during the week,

“Before, we would sell maybe 10 rooms a night,” said Bobby Kapoor, manager of the 40-room Super 8 Motel in Globe. “Now, we're selling 35 to 40.”

The area also is feeling pressure from Phelps Dodge's new Safford mine, 75 miles southeast of Globe. Many of the more than 600 people working on the new mine are living in the Globe-Miami area and commuting to Safford, where there also is a critical housing shortage.

Globe Mayor Stanley Gibson said that the community has formed a housing committee to encourage home construction, but it could be a year or more before new houses are available. Despite the lack of preparedness, residents and businesses that hung on through a decade of tough times after mines closed are jubilant about the renewed mining activity and the prospect of good local jobs.

Maryan Jones, 19, of Globe, was commuting 170 miles round trip to a construction job in Phoenix. Now, he drives five miles to Pinto Valley, where he is on a construction crew getting the mine ready to reopen. But Ed Gardea, manager of Ortega Shoes in Globe, notes, “It's always been feast or famine in Globe.

“Before the mines closed, there were strikes and people were out of work for months at a time.”

Besides Pinto Valley and Carlota, Resolution Copper Co., a limited liability company made up of BHP and another mining giant, London-based Rio Tinto Plc, is developing an underground copper mine about 15 miles west of Miami, near Superior. The project hinges on a land exchange with the federal government that would give Resolution Copper control of the property surrounding the mine site. If it goes through, the project will employ 1,000 people during construction and 400 permanent miners when open, perhaps by 2017.