Jack Llewellyn’s letter (Herald, Feb. 26) implies that there is an effort to shut down the King Coal II mine. That is not my motivation, nor is it the motivation of my neighbors on County Road 120 North. All we are asking is that GCC Energy be subject to the same land-use code that every other business in La Plata County is subject to.

King Coal II is served by 19th Century farm-to-market roads. For the load that GCC Energy is proposing, county code requires a 24-foot-wide paved road with three-foot shoulders and a 60-foot right-of-way with safe road alignment and sight distance. None of the roads accessing the mine approach this standard. GCC property taxes contribute less than $8,000/year to the road and bridge fund – enough to build a few feet of improvements.

Llewellyn mentions the difficult economic conditions faced by coal mines. Coal is highly subsidized at the state and federal levels. It is exempt from the Colorado severance tax. Transportation costs are deductible from the royalty on federal coal, and transfer price schemes are used to pay royalties at or near production cost. In this case, the beneficiary of these shenanigans isn’t even a U.S.-based corporation – it is a Mexican company with a $14.8 billion market cap and profits of $1 billion!

The La Plata County commissioners may ultimately agree that the benefits of GCC Energy are worth the costs. However, those benefits accrue to all the residents of La Plata County, and the BOCC needs to deal with the costs in a way that ensures equal protection under the law to all the residents of La Plata County. Here on County Road 120 North we are willing to accept our share of those costs, but we are not going to accept all of them.

Gary D. Grantham

Hesperus