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Mayday mine
Regulators right to worry about compliance
If the guy cannot behave during the courtship, what will the marriage be like?
State regulators have to be thinking along those lines when looking at Wildcat Mining Corporation’s proposed reopening of a gold mine in La Plata Canyon. In failing to comply with various legal requirements, the company has done little to inspire the confidence of neighbors or state officials.
Officials with the state Division of Mining and Reclamation have recommended Wildcat be denied a permit to operate the mine. A decision about the company’s application is expected to come at a November hearing before the Mined Land Reclamation Board in Denver.
The board should make its determination with great care. Wildcat has not demonstrated it takes state regulations seriously, which casts serious doubt on its willingness or ability to operate the mine in a responsible fashion.
In 2006, Wildcat bought the old Idaho mine near Mayday in La Plata Canyon, and the next year was granted a permit to reopen the mine. The state revoked that permit in 2008 after the company failed to post a required bond.
Then, in January of this year, the Mined Land Reclamation Board fined Wildcat more than $10,000 for operating a mine without a permit. The company had violated state mining law by building an unstable and overly steep road to the mine without permission.
An inspection conducted Sept. 3 reportedly turned up more violations. A new portal had been blasted into the mine, although the company still lacks a mining permit. And the road still was being used, contrary to a cease-and-desist order.
All that led the regulators at the Division of Mining and Reclamation to recommend against approving Wildcat’s permit. The company says it is not in violation of state requirements and will introduce evidence to that effect at the November hearing.
One has to think evidence will have to be overwhelming and conclusive. Not only do people living near the mine have legitimate concerns about issues such as water pollution and noise, but the state may well have lost patience with Wildcat.
And of all people, officials at the Mined Land Reclamation Board have to know the repercussions of irresponsible mining. Colorado has paid a high price for the attention its mineral wealth has attracted, in fouled waterways and ruined land. Its mountains are dotted with potentially polluting and dangerous mines abandoned when commodity prices dropped or the ore ran out.
Nor was that limited to the state’s early years. In the 1980s and early ’90s, mining resumed at Summitville, a site 25 miles south of Del Norte that had been thought mined out decades earlier. Within just a few years the company responsible declared bankruptcy and abandoned the operation after a cyanide leach pit was discovered to be leaking.
Dubbed the “Exxon Valdez of the mining industry,” runoff from the mine killed all life for miles in the Alamosa River. A longtime Superfund site, the Summitville cleanup continues with funding this year augmented by as much as $25 million in stimulus money.
A worst case, of course, but even one such episode justifies careful monitoring of any mining operation. And one that starts out with problems sticking to the rules warrants particular attention. The Mined Land Reclamation Board should look carefully at the Mayday mine.
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