Eastern Sandoval Citizens Association

The ES-CA Board of Directors held its monthly meeting on January 5, 2015. Attending were: Bob Gorrell; Ed Majka; Susan Fullas; Chris Daul; Lynn Koch; Jerry Saxton; and, Joan Fenicle (who was representing Tony Hull). New officers were elected as follows: President – Bob Gorrell; Vice President – Ed Majka; Treasurer – Susan Fullas; and, Secretary – Lynn Koch.
Orin Safier gave his last report as Treasurer and as a Board member or ES-CA. Orin is moving to Denver and ES-CA, as well as the entire Placitas community, will miss him and the time and service he has given to the community. Orin also reported that the ES-CA website has been updated and improved through the work of an outside consultant.
Dick Ulmer reported for the Land Use Planning Trust that the judge is reviewing ES-CA’s petition to intervene in the County’s lawsuit against Vulcan (formerly Lafarge). The LPT is continuing to raise money for legal fees for the lawsuit and all residents are encouraged to contribute. We cannot let the mining companies operate outside of the law.
Ed Majka, Chris Daul and Bob Gorrell reported on the Fisher Sand and Gravel proposed ordinance for annexation to the Town of Bernalillo and mining in general. Bob has prepared two pieces of legislation that would strengthen the State’s control of sand and gravel mining and give counties more enforcement power over these operations. ES-CA will be meeting with State representatives to have this legislation introduced in the upcoming Legislative session.
ES-CA representatives have been assisting the Placitas Library in attempting to restore water to the building. We have been working with County officials and hope to have a short term fix within the month.
The next Board meeting is scheduled for Monday, February 2, 2015, beginning at 6:30 pm at La Puerta Realty, located on Rt. 165. All are welcome to attend.

Radio Free Placitas!

The FCC has given permission for Las Placitas Association (LPA) to construct KUPR, a community FM radio station to serve Placitas, Algodones, Bernalillo, and San Felipe and Santa Ana Pueblos. At 99.9 on your FM dial, KUPR will air locally originated, non-commercial programming – news, emergency alerts, community calendars, music, spoken word, history, children’s programming and much more.

ES-CA has been approached for support of the building phase of this community resource. A studio location and tower have already been secured – the next step is the purchase and installation of antennas, transmitter and microwave connections, so they can begin sending out a signal. This is scheduled to happen by the end of the year. Phase Two will be to equip the studio and begin live programming.

The ES-CA Board of Directors believes the radio station would be an important communications tool and would help us inform the community about breaking ES-CA news and issues. The Board has looked at our mission statement and feels that the goals of the station are complementary to those of ES-CA. The Board is proposing a contribution of $1,000.00. This will be considered by ES-CA membership vote and a ballot question will be sent to all members by e-mail. LPA has pledged to match ES-CA’s donation to make $2,000 for the new radio station.

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)

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 .

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.