By Dick Ulmer, Chairman, ES-CA Land Use Protection Trust Board
LPT.ES-CA@comcast.net
NM Representative Jim Smith arranged a meeting between representatives of the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) and the ES-CA Land Protection Trust (LPT) that occurred on November 14 at the home of Steve Vaughan. The meeting was led by Rep. Smith and Michael Vonderheide, Director of their Environmental Protection Division.
Richard Goodyear, Chief of the Air Quality Bureau at NMED, outlined the protocol his team follow to manage the permit process for gravel mining operations, and also how the investigation process works when complaints are received. At the meeting, we were given a copy of the formal Notice of Violations to Vulcan Materials. The notice follows a NMED inspection that begun on April 1, 2014 following complaints received from Placitas residents about the Lafarge mining operation. Mr. Goodyear explained that the elapsed time from the inspection to the formal violations notice was unusually long and was because of a staffing shortfall that has now been resolved. We were also told that an additional inspection of the facility was held in October (subsequent to the Vulcan acquisition of the Lafarge operation) and several additional violations were identified. He stated that additional action by NMED against Vulcan can be expected.
Mr. Goodyear responded to many follow-up questions from the attendees and his answers should be of significant help in focusing our future efforts and greatly helped LPT understanding the limitations of the current NMED processes. We were told that the monetary penalties that NMED can assess are substantial, and that in his experience, violators do not repeatedly offend as fines increase should that happen. He later indicated that in extreme cases (intentional misrepresentation) NMED had authority to withdraw a facility’s permit.
When asked about air monitoring (specifically of dust particulates), Mr. Goodyear indicated that the only monitoring done by NMED was under a joint plan with the EPA, and that plan is focused on areas with very large emissions concerns. Gravel mining has not been a priority, and in fact the current plan calls for the only monitoring device in our area to be removed. We shared with the NMED representatives our well-documented concerns about small particulates that are generated by gravel mining and crushing operations and the associated health risks. The NM Health Department reports that our state is 2x the national average in such particulate-related deaths. Directly related to this discussion, one of the actions from this meeting was to continue to work with Representative Smith to gain legislative support and NMED funding to ensure that any gravel mine with more than 5 acres of operating area must have continual monitoring with real-time analysis so that we can know immediately if such a health hazard exists for surrounding residents.
In addition to the Air Quality discussions, Bart Faris, an Environmental Scientist with the Water Quality Bureau of NMED shared with us the initial report on the Vulcan water discharge. Alan Friedman, president of one of the water cooperatives that immediately adjoin the Vulcan/Lafarge mine had raised concerns in September with the Water Quality Bureau about the area’s rising arsenic levels and questioned how the mining discharge was being treated. Mr. Faris explained that NMED had sent an October 2, 2014 letter to Vulcan requiring a Notice of Intent for water discharge. The Vulcan response indicated that the Vulcan well was tested at 50 parts per billion (5x the level permitted in our drinking water), but stated that level was not sufficiently high (needs to be greater than 100 ppb) to be a discharge violation. However, the discussion and the analysis provided has raised several areas of concern for NMED Water Quality Bureau and they will investigate further. Alan is continuing to work with Mr. Faris to determine if there are actionable violations related to water.
This was a very productive discussion and our thanks go out to Representative Smith, NMED, ES-CA and our community volunteers for their continued participation on behalf of this community.
ATTENDEES:
Jim Smith (NM State Representative); Michael Vonderheide (NMED); Stephen Vaughan (LPT); Bob Gorrell (ES-CA); Ed Majka (ES-CA); Tom Ashe (LPT); Dawn Foster (Resident–subject matter expert); Bart Faris (NMED); ‘Robert Byrd (LPT)’; Alan Friedman (Resident–subject matter expert); Goodyear, Richard (NMED); Sondra Sage (NMED); Dick Ulmer (LPT)