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PUBLIC LANDS: Rare earths mining firm eyes New Mexico's Otero Mesa
(03/10/2011)
April Reese, E&E reporter
For the past decade, environmental groups have fended off oil and gas drilling on New Mexico's Otero Mesa. Now a new threat has emerged: A Denver-based mining company has filed more than 60 claims to mine rare earth minerals underlying the mesa's unique grasslands.
Since November, Denver-based Geovic Mining Corp. has staked a total of 68 claims on 1,500 acres in the Wind Mountain area of the mesa, said Bill Childress, district manager of the Bureau of Land Management's Las Cruces Field Office, which oversees the lands.
Calls to Geovic officials were not returned by press time.
Environmental groups, sportsmen's groups and other veterans of the battle to protect the mesa are worried that if those claims are developed, Wind Mountain would become unrecognizable.
Otero Mesa, a 1.2-million-acre expanse of rare Chihuahuan grasslands in southern New Mexico, could hold significant deposits of rare earth minerals. Photo courtesy of Nathan Newcomer/New Mexico Wilderness Alliance.
"Depending on the type of development, you could see the complete removal of Wind Mountain," said Nathan Newcomer, associate director of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance.
The 7,280-foot mountain, part of the Cornudas range, is one of the most visited areas on the remote mesa, he said.
"It's a very popular area, because that's where you have thousands of petroglyphs, archaeological sites," he said. "It's basically right in the heart of the area."
Otero Mesa, which encompasses 1.2 million acres in southern New Mexico, also holds extensive groundwater supplies. The Salt Basin Aquifer, which stretches beneath the mesa, is considered to be one of New Mexico's largest untapped freshwater resources.
Rising demand
Rare earths -- 17 related minerals that are used in high-tech products ranging from nuclear weapons to hybrid vehicle batteries -- are in high demand, but the United States currently produces very few of them. According to Geovic's website, demand for cobalt could outstrip current supplies as soon as 2016.
The market has been dominated in recent years by China, whose restrictive export policies have prompted U.S. firms to push harder to identify and mine domestic reserves (
Land Letter, July 22, 2010).
Recent studies by the U.S. Geological Survey and others suggest Otero Mesa could hold about 200 million tons of minerals.
A 2010 USGS study found that Wind Mountain, which was formed by a large alkaline intrusion, might hold considerable quantities of rare earth metals, including lanthanum, neodymium and yttrium, although more sampling needs to be done to determine the extent of those deposits. The mountain also may contain "anomalously high concentrations" of beryllium, lithium, nickel, tin and zirconium, according to USGS.
The country's sole rare earth mine, at Mountain Pass, Calif., is an open-pit mine, but it is unclear how an Otero Mesa mine might be developed -- if at all.
BLM's Childress said that so far, the company has only staked claims on the mountain; it has not submitted a mining plan. While the General Mining Act of 1872 gives companies the right to develop staked claims, BLM would conduct an environmental review of any proposed operation, Childress said.
"Whether or not they take that next step remains to be seen," he said, noting that many mining claims never get past the staking stage. "We just don't know a whole lot at this particular stage about the company's intent."
And depending on the design of the operation, BLM could impose certain restrictions to reduce the mine's environmental impact.
"They have to demonstrate that what they're proposing is necessary [to extract the minerals]," he said. "If they're proposing to do some kind of practice that is unnecessary, we can actually disapprove the mining using that technique. But without seeing a mining plan, it's hard to say what kind of stipulations we could put on extraction that would protect all the resources that are out there."
Rare landscape
Otero Mesa, whose black grama grasslands provide habitat for hundreds of species, including the endangered northern aplomado falcon, is the largest publicly owned expanse of undisturbed Chihuahuan Desert grassland in the United States. BLM has designated part of the grassland as an area of critical environmental concern, but mining could still occur there, Childress said.
Meanwhile, BLM is working on a new resource management plan for Otero Mesa and surrounding lands after a federal appeals court ruled in 2009 that the current plan did not adequately consider the potential impact of oil and gas drilling on the grassland and underlying groundwater (
Land Letter, May 7, 2009). The revised plan will be out early next year, Childress said.
"We're evaluating our options there, still trying to figure out the best way to respond to the ... court decision," he said. In the meantime, BLM is not issuing any new leases on the mesa.
While BLM puts its finishing touches on the new management plan, environmentalists, sportsmen's groups and others are pressing the Obama administration to designate Otero Mesa as a national monument, which would permanently protect the area from most threats. But achieving a new monument designation would not come easily.
One of the proposal's most powerful supporters, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D), is no longer in office. The state's new governor, Susana Martinez (R), has not taken a position on the monument proposal, but she has been sympathetic to extractive industries such as oil, gas and mining.
Some ranchers in the area also oppose such protections, which they fear could lead to restrictions on grazing, and local officials are wary of having a new monument designation handed down from Washington, D.C., without local input. Last May, the Otero County Commission passed an ordinance opposing the designation of Otero Mesa as a national monument. The Obama administration has said it would gather local feedback before designating any new monument.
If Otero Mesa did become a national monument, Geovic's claims would be "grandfathered in," meaning they would still stand because they predated the designation, Childress said. But the designation would trigger a "validity analysis" to make sure the operation would be economically worthwhile.
"It can be a very complicated and lengthy process if there's language in the monument designation saying it's closed for those uses," he said.
Reese writes from Santa Fe, N.M.