New Mine Owner, What Now?

By Dick Ulmer, Chairman, ES-CA Land Use Protection Trust Board
LPT.ES-CA@comcast.net

The Lafarge holdings in NM—operations at the Placitas Mine, Albuquerque and Santa Fe—have been sold to Vulcan Materials (a company based in Birmingham, AL, that has prior history here in NM). Vulcan’s new signs are up at the local mine—but “the beat goes on” with no visible change in terms of the mining operations and the impact to Placitas residents.

1) Study Groups
We’ve had two different study groups looking at different aspects of the mining issues in the Placitas area. We’ve have some top talent volunteer their expertise in hydrology, geology, chemistry, astronomy, environmental engineering and more—to help us look at various areas of concern and how we might ascertain if the condition exists and actions to mitigate.

Two issues are getting the highest attention—high arsenic discharge water and carcinogenic small particulates in the mine’s fugitive dust. We have found that the Lafarge water that they use to wash the mined materials and control dust is taken from a high arsenic level well and that the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) Water Quality Bureau has no record of Lafarge having received the proper permit for the discharge ponds on the mine property—we have been told that the current operator (Vulcan) has been contacted to provide sample for NMED analysis. We are still waiting to hear the final disposition of violations identified by the NMED Air Quality Bureau (AQB) during their inspection of the mine (which included fugitive dust issues). We are also looking at possibly contracting to a qualified environmental monitoring service to get a more thorough evaluation as we have other states (e.g. California) moving strongly to limit such gravel mining operations due to the distance these fine particulates (10 µm or less) can travel (10’s of miles) and the potential for impact on surrounding residents.

2) Legal Activity
Legal activity has been slow but may be about to pick up. The lawsuit filed by the County in District Court has thus far been a case of musical chairs with the 5th Judge assigned in 4 months due to challenges by the parties to the suit. The case is now assigned to the Chief Judge McDonald. In discussions between our lawyers (Myers) and the County Attorney, there is a high expectation that this could be assigned for mediation, so the LPT Board has requested our lawyers to prepare a motion for intervention in order that we might have direct representation “at the table” should that occur. Also, based on discussions with our counsel, we will be looking for the opportunity through our intervention to challenge any attempt to extend the lease beyond 2015 and the clear level of expansion in level of mining activity over that which was evident when the nonconformance was initially granted.

3) Financial Status
Our stakeholders have provided just under $40K ($39,150) and we’ve spent just over $7K for legal support. As reported above, we will now likely increase substantially our spend rate—not only due to the active participation in the County lawsuit through intervention (and potentially, mediation), but also due to the need to invest in environmental monitoring services to enable us to objectively quantify the damage being done to Placitas residents by mining operations. This was anticipated when the LPT was formed and the objective was set at $100,000 for our funds drive. While the gifts to date have been substantial, we still are well short of what will be required to avoid having to leave our future to our County officials—not an outcome that many of us want to contemplate.

As can be seen from a review of the contributions to date (LPT 2014 Progress Report  at www.es-ca.org), we have a low percentage of Placitans who have contributed—the best way to change that is through your efforts (we know you “get it!”). We would request that each of you reach out to your contacts and neighbors and help them to understand that this is impacting them and encourage them to also send a check to help in the fight. If there is anything we can do to provide you or your neighbors with information to improve understanding, please contact me. This is important and the next few months will be key to deciding if Placitas can provide the quality of life that we moved here to gain, or will become the gravel mining capital of New Mexico.

We much appreciate your continued help.