By BEN NEARY
NMWF Conservation Director
ALBUQUERQUE — A veteran environmental attorney will give a presentation on how the public can help to oppose an Australian mining company’s plan to explore possible new mining operations near the headwaters of the Pecos River.
The Terrero Exploration Project is proposed by a Colorado subsidiary of New World Cobalt, an Australian company. The company has applied to the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department for permission to drill 30 test wells as deep as 4,000 feet on U.S. Forest Service land in the vicinity of Jones Hill, on the west side of the Pecos watershed. It’s looking for gold, silver, zinc and other metals.
In response to strenuous public opposition, the department’s Mining and Minerals Division has agreed to hold a public hearing on the permit application. It hasn’t set a date yet.
Charles de Saillan, a staff attorney with the New Mexico Enviornmental Law Center in Santa Fe, represents the Upper Pecos Watershed Association – a group of area residents opposing the company’s exploration plans.
Conservation groups including Trout Unlimited and New Mexico Wild have been fighting the mining project. The New Mexico Acequia Commission and members of the New Mexico Acequia Association also have expressed strong opposition.
De Saillan will discuss the mining proposal at the February meeting of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation. His talk starts at 5:30 p.m., Feb. 19, at Marble Brewery’s Northeast Heights location at 9904 Montgomery Blvd., NE, in Albuquerque. He will be encouraging people to get informed about the company’s plans and to get involved in opposing its permit application.
The upper Pecos watershed has seen intermittent mining since the late 1800s and experienced large-scale mining for lead and zinc in the early 20th century. Pollution from past mining operations caused a massive fish-kill at the state’s Lisboa Springs Fish Hatchery in the early 1990s, helping to prompt a $28-million cleanup effort.
De Saillan said the cleanup that started in the 1990s didn’t completely address problems in the area. The work included erosion and water control projects to reduce the runoff of mining waste materials.
“It’s not permanent,” de Saillan said of the work that’s been done in the area. Given the potential for erosion, he said piles of waste materials will have to be maintained forever to keep them from spreading.
The area’s history of problems with mining makes the current proposal that much more alarming, de Saillan said.
“For us as a society to trash that area again — we’ve got plenty of other mines around the state around the country and around the world that are producing copper and these other base metals,” de Saillan said. “We don’t need to open a copper mine here. I think it would be really devastating to a really beautiful, wonderful place that serves a lot of purposes, a lot of people, for recreation and just getting out in the outdoors. I think it would be a terrible, terrible mistake.”
The upper Pecos provides public fishing and also access to the Pecos Wilderness and receives heavy public use.
“There’s a rich sort of cultural history there,” de Saillan said of the area. “The town, the settlement has been there for a long time. It’s sort of the gateway to the Pecos Wilderness. There are a lot of trailheads up there. People go up there all the time.”
De Saillan said he’s been to several public meetings in the Pecos area about the current mine proposal said and local residents are outraged. Unlike some other areas of the state where people have embraced mining projects, he said he hasn’t seen anyone express support for mining in the Pecos area because of the promise of jobs.
Over the past 35 years, de Saillan’s legal experience has included stints at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C., as well as work at the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office, the state Environment Deparment and Interstate Stream Commission and the State Office of the Natural Resources Trustee.
De Saillan has worked on legal issues involving the Molycorp mine near Questa, large copper mines in southern New Mexico and is currently working to oppose the proposed Copper Flat Mine near Hillsboro.
De Saillan said it’s unusual for the Mining and Minerals Division to hold a public hearing on an exploration permit. Once the date for the hearing is set, de Saillan said his clients will try to rally a lot of people to speak against the application.
The U.S. Forest Service has issued a scoping letter stating the it doesn’t intend to require an environmental study in advance of the exploratory drilling. “If the company proposes to do actual mining up there, they will definitely have to do a full-blown environmental impact statement,” de Saillan said.
The company’s mining claims are on the Forest Service land.
De Saillan said he’s spoken to mining experts who say they believe it’s unlikely the company will find anything through its exploration that makes a full-blown mine in the area feasible.
“It’s not going to be a real easy area to mine in,” de Saillan said. “This area has already been mined, and it’s kind of a crapshoot for them as to whether they’re going to find anything.”
Building a mine would require constructing a mill on site and require the company to obtain rights to large amounts of water required for ore processing, de Saillan said.
“That road is not conducive to a lot of truck traffic, so they would have to completely redo the road,” he said. “There would be a tremendous amount of opposition. I just think there are a lot of hurdles to mining. And all of those hurdles have expenses associated with them, and as those expenses go up, the value of the ore body and the ability to make money off of that ore body goes down.”
Public opposition to the mining operation also can play an important role in protecting the area, de Saillan said. He said it’s critical that people become educated about the mining proposal and attend permit hearings.
Government agencies pay attention to public comment, de Saillan said. “I think this administration certainly is more sensitive and more willing to listen to the public than the previous administration, so I think that makes it all the more important for members of the public to get out there and talk to people and voice their concerns,” he said.
Strong public opposition to a mine will alert the company it faces more expense in terms of fighting lawsuits and doing detailed environmental studies, de Saillan said.
“The company’s going to look at it and think, ‘ok, we’re going to have to hire more lawyers, we’re going to have to hire more consultants, we’re going to have to go through a legal process and hearings,’” de Saillan said. “That’s all going to cost them money and that makes the profit that they potentially can get out of a mining operation decrease. And so, if the ore body is economically marginal to begin with, and it looks like they’re going to have to spend a lot of money just to get their permits, they might decide that it’s not worth it.”