The La Plata County planning staff has recommended the Planning Commission deny the application for a land-use permit from King Coal Mine II until the county and the mine can come to an agreement on road improvements. The planning commissioners should follow that advice. The situation with the roads to and from the mine needs to be resolved.
Coal mining in Hay Gulch, near Hesperus, began in 1938. When the family that ran King Coal Mine I sold it to Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua, or GCC, the Mexican cement producer wanted to expand.
In 2006, GCC sought to move to King Coal II. County officials then thought they had no jurisdiction over the mine because it is on federal land leased through the Bureau of Land Management. The mine expanded in 2007 and production has almost quadrupled to nearly 1 million tons per year.
In 2010 GCC wanted to add another 960 acres to the mine, bringing its total to 3,000 acres. At that point the county realized it had erred earlier and a land use permit was required. By then production had been ramped up and truck traffic radically increased.
That traffic has become an issue. Neighbors complain semis are rumbling past their homes every few minutes, 24 hours a day. With hundreds of trucks every day traveling on roads that were never built to handle such traffic, dust, noise and safety are real concerns.
And it has been more than five years since the county knew a land use permit was needed. As one neighbor asked last fall, “What liquor store or rafting company would be operating without a permit for that long?”
Supporters of the mine argue that it is a valued employer and economic driver. Closing it, they say, would be bad for the region.
And that is all true. Except, of course, that no one is talking about closing the mine. The only issue is how to improve the roads and access to the mine so as not to impose too much on nearby residents.
For the Planning Commission to deny the mine’s land use permit until the road issue is worked out would signal to the mine and its neighbors that the county takes those residents’ concerns seriously. They deserve that much.
