Sandoval County has filed suit against the mining operation and seeks to enforce the terms of the 1988 Nonconformance Certificate issued by the now defunct Sandoval County / Bernalillo Extra-territorial Commission. The Lafarge lawyers seek to have the District Court set aside the terms of the certificate and allow them to continue mining with no restrictions. Given the other active mining operations, and those being proposed (Fisher, BLM, etc), it is important that the County demonstrates that it is willing and able to enforce the protections put in place for our communities. These operators, if allowed to run unchecked as Lafarge is arguing that they should be allowed to do, will continue to degrade our health, life styles, and property investments. The ES-CA Land Use Protection Trust (LPT) is considering filing to intervene in the lawsuit.
LPT is not funded by ES-CA memberships. LPT was formed to ensure the protection of our communities, and will fund the legal action by contributions from those in the community who have recognized the ongoing threat posed by these mega-mines. Several ES-CA surveys indicate that the majority of Placitas residents have increasing concerns about gravel mining in our area.
If you have not heard, Lafarge is now Vulcan; different operator, same mode of operation. The Lafarge lease expires in 2015, and despite many attempts to dissuade the property owner, Mount Adams Investment, with Bill Gates as a major shareholder, they have told us they are negotiating a new lease with Vulcan that would continue mining for many years beyond the stated intent of the property owners at the time they were permitted to operate as a nonconforming use.
LPT believes that Lafarge/Vulcan and other mining operations generate dust particulates that can impact health and well-being more than 30 miles away from the site, that the amount of water being used is excessive and depletes this precious resource, and that having these sites close to our neighborhoods has shown substantial impact to the value of our properties. It was recently uncovered that the highest concentrations of arsenic from water wells center at the Lafarge gravel mine that used 96,000,000 gallons of water in 2013, pumped out of the main aquifer serving Plactias, the Town of Bernalillo, and other nearby communities. Everyone in Placitas has to deal with the heavy truck traffic and broken windshields (their current permit allows an average of 44 trucks per hour).
The LPT has retained one of New Mexico’s best Land Use attorneys to review the County’s case, and their recommendation is that the LPT Board members (both as the representatives of ES-CA and as individual property owners who are directly impacted), and ES-CA as the incorporated non-profit representative of the broader community, should be the named interveners. This intervention would include ES-CA as a party to and in support of the County’s suit. The LPT’s attorney has recommended several legal arguments that, if we intervene, could be added to strengthen the case against the operator. ES-CA’s intervention will greatly increase the risk to the mining operators of continuing to do business as usual, which will increase the probability of success for our communities. If the judge should send this case to mediation, only by having a “seat at the table” will ES-CA be able to influence the outcome. The alternative is to just leave it to the County, but our community experience with this option has not been positive.
However, the ES-CA Board does not want to take this step without asking our membership if they concur with entering the suit. Please cast your vote for or against ES-CA intervening in the lawsuit when the ES-CA Board sends the survey question out to members.
If you would like to find out more about LPT and the lawsuit, contact LPT Chair Dick Ulmer at (505) 404-0416 or dick.ulmer@comcast.net .
We believe this is one of the most important issues facing Placitas today. We must prevail to set the tone for all future efforts to ignore existing agreements and the will of the residents.
I concur with entering the suit.
Michael Sare
We agree. Going through the courts is the best plan of action to get anything done.