On Thursday, March 13, Grass Valley City Council set a final 180-day time limit for Emgold to come up with the required deposits for their flagship project, the Idaho-Maryland Mine and Ceramics Factory. If Emgold fails to deposit approximately $440,000 within 180 days, the project application will be closed.

Emgold had previously requested a 60-90 day extension by the City Council on Nov 8, 2011, citing a lack of funds and difficult market conditions. But at Thursday’s meeting Emgold CEO David Watkinson reported that no progress had been made and still more time was needed. Further delays are complicating staffing for the city and may require new contracts to be negotiated. The City made the concession of granting more time, but this time chose to set a firm limit on further extensions. The initial deposit is required for staffing and independent consultants. Emgold will need another $3-4 million to complete the permitting process. If the permit is granted, revenue generating production would take an additional 3-4 years.

As per financial reports on September 30, 2011, Emgold had a working capital deficit of $695,764 and an accumulated deficit of $49,327,646. CEO David Watkinson has a salary of $185,000/yr. According to a recent statement by Emgold, the stock offerings in late 2011 were specifically to be used for projects other than the Idaho-Maryland Mine and Factory and for general administration and salaries. No explanation was provided as to why the stock offerings were directed elsewhere.

Emgold is a Canadian “Junior Mining” corporation and has never operated a mine or tile factory. If Emgold has failed to get funding to date, the 180 days may also be a challenge. According to Peter Koven writing for the Financial Post last week (March 6, 2012), the outlook for Junior Mining Companies is very poor: “For juniors that don’t have a good story or a competitive advantage to raise cash, experts warned that the financing road could remain tough for a very long time.”

The City first accepted the application for the project in 2005. The last public hearing on the project was in January 2009, when the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) was reviewed by the Planning Department and the public submitted comments. The DEIR was subsequently deemed inadequate. Due to concerns about truck traffic, air pollution, noise, cyanide processing, water pollution, dust, threats to local wells, and other impacts, significant opposition to the project has emerged. Since then the project has undergone minor revisions and been resubmitted. On November 8, 2011, the Grass Valley City Council approved contracts for hiring new consultants to start the process again and prepare a new Draft EIR. The process will take at least a year.

How many times can a corporation break the law and continue to exist? Inside the fight to revoke Massey Energy’s corporate charter.

By Sarah Van Gelder

A majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices and some politicians like to refer to corporations as “persons.” Few actual people, though, could get away with years of lawless behavior resulting in injuries and deaths, and the destruction of entire communities and ways of life. To do that takes the protection of a corporate charter and a legal and regulatory system that has succumbed to concentrated money and power.

On Friday, two public interest groups asked the attorney general of Delaware to revoke the charter of Massey Energy, a company they call a criminal enterprise.

“Massey Energy operates outside the law,” says Lorelei Scarbro, who lives a few miles from the West Virginia’s Upper Big Branch mine, which is owned and operated by Massey Energy. Scarbro traveled to Delaware to speak in support of revoking the Massey charter. “The people of Appalachia are collateral damage; they believe it’s okay to wipe out a whole culture.”

An April 2010 disaster at the Upper Big Branch mine claimed the lives of 29 coal miners. The accident investigation, commissioned by West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin, pins the blame for the disaster squarely on Massey’s “total and catastrophic systemic failures … in the context of a culture in which wrongdoing became acceptable, where deviation became the norm.”

According to the report, Massey is also responsible for “incalculable damage to mountains, streams and air in the coalfields; creating health risks for coalfield residents by polluting streams, injecting slurry into the ground and failing to control coal waste dams and dust emissions from processing plants; using vast amounts of money to influence the political system; and battling government regulation regarding safety in the coal mines and environmental safeguards for communities.”

Massey is chartered in Delaware, which is known for its corporate-friendly policies, although the company has no operations there.

The two public interest groups, Appalachian Voices and Free Speech for People, cited the company’s long history of safety violations in asking the state attorney general to revoke Massey’s charter. They also pointed to the thousands of Clean Water Act violations resulting from the company’s mountaintop removal mining practices.

“I know people who have died. I know people raising family on poisoned water. We need the attorney general to know that atrocities are occurring on the ground on account of an outlaw corporation,” Scarbro said at a press conference on Friday. Scarbro is part of a family of coal miners going back three generations, and a leading spokesperson in a campaign to stop mountaintop removal mining on Coal River mountain and instead install a 328-megawatt wind farm on its ridges.

How has Massey been able to routinely ignore health and safety standards and environmental regulations?

“Many politicians were afraid to challenge Massey’s supremacy because of the company’s superb ongoing public relations campaign and because CEO Don Blankenship was willing to spend vast amounts of money to influence elections,” notes the report to Governor Tomblin. “In one well-documented instance, he used his resources to elect a relatively obscure judge to the state Supreme Court.”

“It is well established that the corporate charter is a privilege, not a right,” says Jeff Clements, co-founder of Free Speech for People. “Delaware, as with other states, reserves the right to revoke or forfeit state corporate charters when they are abused or misused, as in cases of repeated unlawful conduct.”

“The Massey Energy Company presents a classic case of a corporation whose charter should be revoked,” says Clements.

“We are strongly urging Attorney General [Beau] Biden to stand up to corporate power and say, at some point, corporations do not have the power to dismantle our democracy and to violate our laws willfully and systematically,” said Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has been part of the effort to decharter Massey.

Jason Miller, a representative for the Delaware Department of Justice, told YES! that the petition to revoke Massey Energy’s charter is “under review.”

Interested?

• Public Pressure Saves 2,200 Mountain Acres
  An Appalachian victory in the battle against mountaintop mining.
• Real People v. Corporate “People”: The Fight Is On
  The Supreme Court says corporations can spend as much money as they want on political advertising. Millions of Americans say they’ve had it.
• Sitting In With Wendell Berry
  An interview with Wendell Berry midway through his four-day sit-in in the Kentucky governor’s office in protest of mountaintop removal coal mining.

“Who doesn’t support the sustainability movement?” you might ask.

Well, in Jeff Ackerman’s account, mostly the federal government:

Last week I went to see a documentary called “Farmageddon,” which convinced me that our government has declared war on this sustainability movement. The last thing Uncle Sam wants today is a society able to think and act for itself. He’d rather have us clamped firmly on his teat and as far away from a goat or cow’s udder as he can keep us.

If we start drinking milk straight from a goat or cow — like our ancestors did before us — what would happen to the food industry, or the federal Food and Drug Agency that controls it?

… Most of the small farmers grow food and milk cows and goats to feed their families, friends and neighbors. This country was once a nation of farmers, and that’s the way we operated. The upside to this down economy is this sustainability movement, which is encouraging us to return to the days when we fed ourselves, our families and our neighbors with food and milk we grew and raised with our own two hands.

It’s nice to see an editorial in The Union in support of sustainability.

I’m curious to know, though, whether this now means that Jeff Ackerman has joined the growing number of Nevada County residents who oppose the ginormous local non-sustainable project being considered by the City of Grass Valley, the re-opening of the Idaho-Maryland Mine for speculative exploration, a project that he has previously supported? Hardrock mining for gold, a non-renewable resource, is the epitome of non-sustainability.

But back to Farmageddon. I need to understand this better: Is the government at war with organic farming, at war with sustainability, or just at war with raw milk?

Maybe I’ll start by watching Farmageddon, which I’ve not yet seen.

Dear Friend,

Back in May, more than 26,000 Earthjustice supporters stood up to tell the Obama administration to close a massive Bush-era loophole in the Clean Water Act that is allowing mining companies to dump their toxic and dangerous mining waste directly into the waters we rely on.

That mining waste loophole still exists, and each day that the Obama administration doesn’t close it, a gold mine in Alaska pumps hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic wastewater slurry into Lower Slate Lake, killing its fish and aquatic life. This is happening in Alaska, and rivers and streams in many other states could be next. High gold and metal prices have triggered a mining boom that, without stronger regulation, threatens countless lakes, streams and wetlands in Alaska and throughout the country.

For the next two days, we ask you to help us follow-up on those 26,000 letters by taking part in our National Call-In Event to protect our waters from dangerous mining waste. Thousands of Earthjustice supporters will be joining with supporters of the National Wildlife Federation, EarthWorks, and Natural Resources Defense Council to make a strong statement to the Obama administration: This loophole must be closed immediately!

You can help stop the mine and protect clean water by calling the Environmental Protection Agency. This will only take a few minutes, and it’s easy. Please take action to tell the Obama administration to close this loophole immediately.

After you call, please let us know how it went by logging your call on our website.

Make Your Call Today Or Tomorrow:

The Environmental Protection Agency: (202) 564-4700

When the receptionist answers the phone, please express your desire to leave a public comment for the agency. Please urge the agency to close the loophole in the Clean Water Act immediately so mining companies can’t dump toxic waste into the nation’s waters.

Here’s a sample of what you can say (and we hope you will add your personal touch, too):
“Hello! My name is [first name] [last name], and I live in [my city], [my state].

“I’m calling to ask the Environmental Protection Agency to close the loophole in the Clean Water Act so mining companies can’t dump toxic waste into the nation’s waters.

“Mining companies are using the 2002 loophole in the Clean Water Act rule to bury streams and lakes with untreated mining wastes.

“The EPA should close the mine waste dumping loophole immediately.”
After You Make Your Call: Please let us know about your call experience by logging your call on our website, or by emailing action@earthjustice.org.
Why are we calling the Environmental Protection Agency?
The Environmental Protection Agency, along with the Army Corps of Engineers, is responsible for managing the Clean Water Act, and the EPA can act directly to close the loophole. That’s why it’s important that they hear from concerned citizens like you.
Thank you for taking the time to speak out! If you have a few extra minutes and would like to join the Earthjustice supporters who are calling the other agencies, you can call the White House Council on Environmental Quality at (202) 395-5750 and the Army Corps of Engineers at (202) 761-0099.

©2011 Earthjustice | 426 17th Street, 6th Floor, Oakland, CA 94612 | 510-550-6700 | action@earthjustice.org

PHOTO CREDITS: Top: Lower Slate Lake in Alaska, before the Kensington Gold Mine’s waste dumping and after. (Before: Irene Alexakos; After: Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.) Middle: Aerial photos of Lower Slate Lake before and after the Kensington Gold Mine’s dumping of mining waste. (Before: Photo by Pat Costello, courtesy of LightHawk.) Bottom: Polluted Cabin Creek, near Leewood, West Virginia. (Mark Schmerling)

Panelists will include members of APPLE (Alliance for a Post-Petroleum Local Economy), CLAIM-GV (Citizens Looking at the Impact of Mining, Grass Valley), WCCA (Wolf Creek Community Alliance), Sierra Fund, Yubanet and NCGP (Nevada County Green Party).

Tickets on sale starting Thursday July 14th at Briar Patch and Booksellers in Grass Valley. $5 advance $7 at the door.

Here’s how Ackerman, again borrowing from Miller, complains about government regulations:

I remember Mike telling me that the only reason there is a United States Post Office in the town of Alleghany — population of roughly 70 — is to handle the piles of paperwork required by the state regulators.

I got curious about this silly hyperbole and called the postal clerk at the Alleghany Post Office today, with predictable results:

“Someone in our local paper this morning claimed that most of your mail is government mail,” I told her.

“That’s not true,” she said.

Obviously!

One of Ackerman’s readers this morning did a good job of deconstructing his implicit assumption that the Idaho-Maryland Mine re-opening deserves approval:

By no means is this project DOA just because of state mining laws. The entire proposition to even consider a large scale industrial mining and “ceramics plant” in the middle of an area populated with homes and businesses was quite insane. In a city and area that is trying to upgrade and attract modern business and tourism. A Sierras struggling to come to grips with the environmental catastrophe that was CA mining.

I’m damn thankful we have the laws we do here in CA. Its why many of us prefer to live in CA.

Its past time to move on and stop wasting time and suckers money on this thing.

So much for Ackerman’s implicit assumption that Emgold’s Idaho-Maryland project deserves approval.

What interests me most, though, is the resentful style of Ackerman’s writing, a style that has often caused his readers to refer to The Union as the “Tea Party Gazette.”

This whining and resentful style reminds me of the old Marshall McLuhan adage, “The medium is the message.”

When resentment against government is the persistent underlying message in all situations, as it clearly is for the right, then it becomes the “medium,” a sort of functional brand, which can be used in a lazy and simple-minded way, as Ackerman used it today. It’s a one-size-fits-all-intellects argument (AKA “ideology”).

The comment from his astute reader clearly shows that there is more nuance to the Idaho-Maryland issue than Ackerman is willing to understand. It’s an issue that doesn’t fit all intellects, but — damn! — requires study.

The anti-government and anti-environmental-regulation rant in this case also glosses over the true reason Emgold will fail: because it’s a junior mining company with no proven reserves at Idaho-Maryland, and no track-record of actually mining gold, and for these reasons the investors are fleeing, and the community is waking up to the fact that this project is going nowhere.

In addition to conserving intellectual effort, the government-resentment brand also serves a tribal purpose, binding large groups of sometimes justifiably-angry people into a community of whiners.

And finally, whether justified or not, whether innocent or calculated, the whining and resentful style serves the purpose of directing anger away from its proper object (corporate power) and toward a substitute object (government), and in so doing, undermines our belief that government can and should be an expression of our collective will.

The far right carries this reasoning to its ultimate extreme, and wants, as Grover Norquist said, to “shrink government down to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.” As silly as this sounds, it is the essential sensibility animating the long-term conservative project of undoing FDR’s New Deal. That project may now be enabled by Obama’s tax cut deal with the GOP, particularly the provision that reduces the payroll tax, which will accelerate the erosion of Social Security funding.

In the end, resentment of government is an expression of powerlessness, unless it evolves into righteous citizen anger and the will to act, as it has with some members of the Tea Party this year.

But if it doesn’t go beyond mere passive resentment and peevishness, it short-circuits the will to act against the true source of the problem.

Jeff Ackerman’s Op-Ed today, like most of his Op-Eds lately, is an expression of this fundamentally powerless one-size-fits-all-intellects style of peevish thought.

I do agree, though, with his confident prediction that Emgold will fail in its effort to re-open the Idaho-Maryland Mine.

It’s interesting how people on all sides of the Idaho-Maryland issue in our community are beginning to converge on this same conclusion.

Heckel essentially confirmed Mayor Lisa Swarthout’s statement to David Watkinson, CEO of the Idaho-Maryland Mine Company, in September of 2009, that the city had decided to require a revised DEIR.

In his interview with Emery, Heckel explained why the city has now set a deadline — April 8th, 2011 — for Emgold to submit a revised project description and funding or face the expiration of the current application.

Here’s my transcription of the essential portions of last night’s interview:

JOE HECKEL: “We’ve been waiting since approximately early 2010, when they had stated that they wished to supplement or amend their application with new information … “

“We did not proceed to prepare what is called a final EIR — which would have been a collection of responses to all the comments received — because at that time in early 2010 the applicant was indicating they wanted to submit some changes to their project, mainly in response to the questions or issues that came through all the comments in the draft EIR.”

“So the status of the project right now is the draft EIR is certainly completed and was looked at as moving to a final EIR, but however since the time has passed and it’s fairly certain that the applicant will be advancing changes to their project, those changes are going to have to be re-evaluated again in the light of a supplemental or a new draft EIR.”

Note: Heckel didn’t mention here that the decision to revise the DEIR is driven not by Emgold’s preferences, but  by the copious public comments showing the original DEIR to be wholly inadequate: It dealt poorly or not at all with such issues as air quality, cyanide transport, acid mine drainage and toxics as a security threat, among other issues].

“Not all of the sections of the draft EIR would have to be changed, Paul, certainly there could be some updates, but until we see what those changes are — those modifications — it’s kinda difficult to predict what would be the scope — or the changes — that would be in a draft EIR.”

PAUL EMERY: “So essentially that means it needs to be opened up for public review once again?”

JOE: “Yes, what would occur is — let’s just walk through he steps — is the applicant would be filing those new changes with the city — and those changes could deal with a number of points of their operations — then we would commission a draft EIR to be prepared. We would utilize a lot of the information already collected and compiled in the previous EIR but we would focus a lot of our critique and analysis on the new changes. But we would have a new draft EIR — called a “new” — but an updated draft EIR prepared and released for a public review period in which the public would be provided an opportunity to fully look at the document and walk through what the issues and concerns would be with the project.”

PAUL: “Now Joe your department has put a deadline on when you’d like to have response form the company proposing the project and that’s april 8th. What does that mean?”

JOE: “As I mentioned, the draft EIR concluded its review process in early 2010. We were informed by the applicant that they were looking to amend their application, modify it. So it’s been about a year of time. So, we just are interested to gain some closure on the project, to advance the project to a particular point where a decision could be made. And also there is new changes that occur in state and local regulations. There’s a number of studies that were tied to the project
that just need to be looked at and/or refreshed. So, there is a concern that if the project application sit for a significant amount of time there’s new issues that could come into play that we don’t know about. So we applied a particular date — April 8th — and if they don’t submit their modified application by that date — and also funding to drive the process — we just consider the application to be withdrawn. Now that’s not a statement as to the appropriateness of the project. We’re not — as staff — we’re not making that call. We’re not speculating whether the project is good or bad. We’re just simply saying that the application has been withdrawn. And certainly if they wish — at a later date after April 8th — they could refile their application and re-initiate the process.”

…

“Our sense of it is that they will be submitting an amended application package by April 8th.”

There have certainly been costs to Grass Valley in waiting for Emgold over the last year. Some level of administrative costs have been ongoing, particularly in the Planning Department. There are probably also what could be called “opportunity costs,” the cost of lost opportunities to pursue other business projects for or near that property.

The city’s decision to impose a deadline on this costly protracted process makes good business sense.

Reprinted with permission of the author

by MARA KARDAS-NELSON

Environmental activist Mariette Liefferink’s four-inch crimson heels still sport their Woolworths sticker as they puncture the sulphuric crust lining Robinson Lake, situated in the Western Basin of the Witwatersrand.

The water is quiet, smells slightly of vinegar and laps gently against a shore devoid of any life save for a few, lone reeds. Behind the lake is a large, naked yellow mountain of mine waste adorned with a few small green nets meant to stop the dust from blowing in an incessant wind.

Liefferink talks sweetly over her asthma. “This lake has a pH of two,” she said. “It’s pure acid, coming from flooding mine operations just up the road. There are no life forms here. It’s completely dead.”

This is acid mine drainage, or AMD, a problem so complex, overwhelming and shrouded in economic, political and scientific machinations that it has become a terrifying yet poorly understood criminal.

South Africans are fearful that Johannesburg may soon be at the mercy of acid water, with whisperings of the CBD crumbling as basements flood and buildings corrode. The government is said to be too slow, gutless and corrupt to enforce necessary action, the mining companies too heartless and unwilling to pay, the community and environmental activists too alarmist and the solutions too expensive or ineffective.

In reality, these statements represent a wide variety of fact and fiction. AMD involves an elusive and complicated mass of overlapping, incorrect or incomplete data, personal politicking marked by oft-interchanging vendettas and alliances and an environment pockmarked with racial prejudices, the unpredictable demands of the international market, foreign exploitation, and a broken political, legal and managerial landscape fuelled by apartheid and encouraged under the democratic government.

This is not just about water. And nothing is as it seems.

What is AMD?
Acid mine drainage is a side effect of mining operations the world over. It occurs through natural runoff after rains flush through a mine dump; from mine companies disposing of the water used in their operations; or from old, disused mine shafts filling up with water, eventually decanting, or flooding, above ground.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency considers AMD to be one of the world’s biggest environmental threats, second only to climate change.

AMD is high in sulphates (salts) and heavy metals and bears a low pH, the marker of acidity.

This toxic mix means that the water cannot be used for human or animal consumption, because exposure to uranium and other heavy metals can result in toxic and radioactive effects such as cancers, mental disorders, birth defects and kidney failure.

AMD also has a negative impact on the environment, severely affecting the ability of plants to grow and animals to thrive.

The Witwatersrand, home to the world’s largest deposit of gold and host to mining operations for more than 120 years, saw its first decant when the Western Basin overflowed with acid water in 2002, with acidic water rushing through a Rand Uranium operation and into Robinson Lake. Because of its high uranium content the lake has been designated a hazardous radiation site by the National Nuclear Regulator.

AMD is soon expected to decant in the province’s Central and Eastern Basins and can be found already in Mpumalanga, North West, KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State. And it’s not going away anytime soon. Because of the large number of mine dumps and huge, empty and largely uncared for voids, or empty underground basins, experts predict that today’s mine waste could create AMD for hundreds to thousands of years to come.

On top of that, South Africa’s unique geology actually encourages the country’s extensive AMD problem. The Witwatersrand was named for its luscious, flowing white waters. But its underground basins were drained of water through pumping, a process termed “dewatering”, so that gold deposits could be extracted from ever-greater depths. This process resulted in the creation of massive voids.

But as the rand’s deposits became scarcer, companies ceased pumping activities and closed up shop. The now-empty basins began filling with water, collecting along the way salts, iron pyrite – also known as Fool’s Gold, which, when oxidised, becomes acidic — and heavy metals. Now those fountains are producing water again, said Liefferink. But this time it won’t be white, clean water, but AMD that’s coming above ground.

What’s at risk?
With the Western Basin still decanting at a rate of between 15-million and 30-million litres a day and 56-million litres during heavy rains, the Central Basin, on which Johannesburg lies, is predicted to produce 60-million litres a day within a matter of months. This is equivalent to water from 24 Olympic pools hitting the city’s streets daily.

In July the department of water affairs stated that potential decant within the Johannesburg area could take place within 18 months, or by early 2012. The water is now estimated to be 530m below the surface and rising at a rate of between 0.3m and 0.9m a day. This rate could increase with heavy summer rains.

Large buildings in the CBD, such as Standard Bank and Absa, have been listed by activists and scientists as potential targets and Gold Reef City is expected to be one of the first major attractions to end up under water.

Standard Bank and Absa have commissioned studies to look at potential effects but the results have not been publicly released. The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) said Gauteng has the potential to create 350-million litres a day of AMD decant by 2014, the equivalent of 140 Olympic swimming pools.

The department of water affairs suggested building a pumping station to keep the decant at bay, but work on this has yet to begin.

In late October farmers warned that the water could affect exports to European markets, with Spar and Pick n Pay expressing concern over the safety of their produce.

The Cradle of Humankind, a world heritage site, is a potential target, with the Western Basin decant making its way through the Krugersdorp Nature Reserve’s hippo pool and into the Cradle area. Garfield Krige, a mine consultant who predicted the 2002 decant, said that “for every megalitre of mine water, about 300 litres of void is created. Sooner or later we’re going to get major collapses in the Cradle.”

On the record for decades
Communities, scientists, mining companies and government have known about the AMD threat for decades.

Before mines were given permission by government to dewater their voids in the 1960s, a 1957 document presented by the Chamber of Mines to the CSIR noted potential problems with what it termed “re-watering”, or decant, after mines closed, with both processes potentially and actually producing sinkholes, increasing seismic activity and causing water and air quality to deteriorate.

As Witwatersrand gold operations began to close en masse in the 1990s, studies were done to ascertain the potential impact of ceased pumping. In 1996 Krige was involved in producing what became known as the Strategic Water Management Plan, or the Swamp report, which predicted within a month of accuracy that AMD would make its way to the Western Basin surface in 2002.

“The [department of water affairs] was completely aware that the voids would start filling up,” said Krige. “The fact that the department [did not] take proper decisions over that period, from 1996 to now … [gave] all the mines time to get rid of their liability … The department should have said 2002 is the deadline. [Instead], in 2002, the water started to decant and it caught everybody off guard, even though everybody knew about the whole thing. It’s now 2010 and nothing has been done.”

Internal government discussions have noted concern over Central Basin decant for years.

A 2009 water affairs department memo considered AMD “the single biggest environmental threat that this Government and country will be faced within the immediate future if the necessary managerial decisions are not taken timeously … The rise in the water table will have catastrophic consequences if not dealt with timeously.”

Who’s responsible?
While AMD has been known about for decades, little money has been made available either by government or industry to remedy decant and mitigate disaster.

Issues surrounding liability are central to who will pay, with many of the major players that operated throughout the Witwatersrand’s 120-year history having packed up and moved on, leaving smaller, less economically successful mines to pump and treat water they did not contaminate.

Nationwide, there are nearly 6 000 ownerless or abandoned mines, according to the department of mineral resources, most of which have not undergone proper remediation.

“Establishing liability is a very complex problem,” said Democratic Alliance MP Gareth Morgan. “The vast majority of mines that are responsible for the decant have ceased to exist or have been abandoned and have not been rehabilitated.”

The 1970 Fanie Botha Accord stated that mines that closed before 1956 are the responsibility of government, with those that closed afterwards to be remediated by the responsible company.

While, in theory, regulatory laws and bodies have been enhanced post-1994, in practice a large brain drain from the public to the private sector enabled by lack of funding and poor management has resulted in these laws rarely being enforced.

Carin Bosman, former director of water resource protection and waste at the water affairs department, said that without adequate funding officials are virtually helpless. “You can issue the directive, but then you don’t have the money to back it up.

The costs often trump what is allowed within the budget.”

Infighting between departments and overlapping laws and bodies make it difficult to know in which cases legislation should be instigated and when one rule takes precedence over another.

Said Paul Marden of trade union Solidarity: “The department of mineral resources is involved, [the department of] water affairs is involved, [the department of] tourism is involved and you often find that people sit and pass the buck to each other. Each department wants to maintain its own independence and then you don’t get anything done.”

The task team
The recently appointed inter-ministerial task team on AMD, announced in September by the former water minister, Buyelwa Sonjica, and consisting in part of experts from the CSIR, the Water Research Council, the Council for Geosciences, the Chamber of Mines, the mineral resources and the water affairs departments, may denote a change in governmental behaviour.

In late October government announced that the water affairs department would report the team’s findings to Cabinet by mid-December. While activists and experts are hopeful, the team’s work has been kept from the public domain.

An October 15 report released by the team was not made public. Instead, a four-paragraph press statement was released. When a tender for pumping and treatment options was announced and then immediately revoked, government would not respond to queries from lawyers, activists or treatment companies about why this happened.

Marius Keet, a member of the team and a water affairs official, said that no comment could be made while the group was still in “sensitive” discussions. The DMR also refused comment, after over a month of repeated requests from the Mail & Guardian.

Liefferink contends that the lack of information stemming from the task team is indicative of a general government trend.

While AMD “is not a unique South African problem, what is unique … is that it is denied, it is suppressed, it minimised … and not addressed,” she said. “We’re living in an autocracy and not a democracy. Government is meant to engage civil society in these discussions and instead we just see … suppression of facts.”
Within the world of AMD, nothing is clear, transparent, or easy to understand. Nothing save for the white sulphuric crust lining Robinson Lake and popping up across South Africa’s mining lands.

This project was made possible by funding from the Open Society Foundation for South Africa’s Media Fellowship Programme.

The only reason that this matter dragged on for months before the Planning Commission and is now in consideration on appeal before the Board of Supervisors is that Mr. Chadwick, Blue Lead’s attorney, has a talent for making a very simple matter seem complicated.

The simple fact is that there is no convincing evidence that a lawful viable commercial mining operation was being conducted by the owners of the Blue Lead site in 1954, when Nevada County first required mining permits.

Mr. Chadwick speculates that Mr. Lyle White — who did not own or lease the property — was conducting such an operation in 1954. Mr. Chadwick asks us to accept his speculation as evidence.

However, evidence presented during the public comment on May 27th is fatal to Mr. Chadwick’s argument: Lyle White could not have been conducting a commercial mining operation on the subject site (with or without permission) because he was working full-time at The Union in Grass Valley and according to his own report, spending all his spare time tending to the Red Dog Cemetery.

Blue Lead’s appeal contains some curious and inaccurate statements.

First, as Yubanet reported on June 7th:

In the statement of reason for the appeal, Blue Lead’s attorney incorrectly states the Planning Commission “voted unanimously in favor of affirming Blue Lead’s vested right to mine its Property” at their March 25 meeting. In fact, the commission only voted on a motion of intent on that date.

Notice that the Commission formed that intent before hearing substantial testimony from historian David Comstock and other members of the general public. Based on that testimony and on the Planning Commission staff’s analysis, the Commission ultimately found that Blue Lead had not met it’s burden of proof in establishing evidence of a legitimate mining enterprise on the subject site in October of 1954.

Mr. Chadwick also refers optimistically in his appeal to his previous weak attempts to prove vesting as “settled evidence,” and accuses county staff of attempting “to re-open” it.

Vesting was never settled evidence because Blue Lead failed to meet its burden of proving it.

In his appeal, Mr. Chadwick complains that on May 27th the Commission reversed its “prior decision” without making any “specific findings as to … whether mining operations were on-going on Blue Lead’s Property in 1954, when the right vested.”

As we have already seen, there was no prior decision, only a motion of intent on March 25th to make an affirmative decision in the future. At the next meeting on April 22nd, the decision was delayed until May 27th in order to allow more time for public comment.

But more importantly, the Planning Commission itself had no burden of proof to make specific findings.

Rather, the applicant bore the burden of submitting convincing evidence proving he’s entitled to the vested right. The Commission did all it was required to do. It made a judgement about whether the applicant had met his burden of proof. It found that he had not.

It’s not surprising that nowhere in his formal appeal does Mr. Chadwick refer to the influential public testimony that brought new evidence to light, evidence fatal to his vesting argument.

The evidence most damning to Blue Lead’s application was that which established that Lyle White was employed full-time at The Union in Grass Valley in 1954, and spent most of his spare time caring for the Red Dog Cemetery.

Blue Lead’s attorney Mr. Chadwick, on the other hand, speculated that White was conducting a serious and lawful commercial mining enterprise on the subject property in 1954. He apparently hoped that the Commission would accept this speculation as evidence. In the end, the Commission did not.

Finally, in his appeal Mr. Chadwick promises at some future time (at the next BOS meeting?) to introduce “new evidence” relating to “(1) Lyle White’s permission to mine the Property; and (2) Lyle White’s commercial mining operations.”

Does Mr. Chadwick actually have new evidence, or does he hope that by promising it, the BOS will be more likely to consider his appeal rather than reject it out-of-hand?

Any “new evidence” will have to overcome the already well-established evidence that Lyle White was too busy and too far away to have plausibly been conducting a lawful and viable mining enterprise on the subject property in 1954.

This established evidence  properly persuaded the Nevada County Planning Commission and its staff, and will most likely convince the Board of Supervisors that Blue Lead is not entitled to the vested right to mine.

As many of us reminded the Planning Commission in the public comments leading to their decision on May 27th, denying Blue Lead the vested right to mine is not the same as denying Blue Lead the right to mine. They may still mine so long as they get the appropriate county permits.

Can we locals learn anything from the recent disastrous events in the extraction industries?

Or does “It’ll never happen here” — and — “Jobs at any cost” pervade all thinking?

The recent mine explosion in West Virginia coal country killed 29 miners and now the BP oil rig blowout killed 11 workers and continues to create untold environmental damage.  These disasters should cause us to “think baby think” about the nature of extraction industries as well as all corporate promises.

There is a common thread in these disasters that we should try to learn from.  Despite so called “regulation” the safety of the workers and the surrounding communities is solely the responsibility of the company that is running the mine or rig.  Oversight tight enough to be effective has been ruled out by the screams of the companies as being too much bureaucracy and too costly.  Apparently it is cheaper to pay wrongful death claims than it is to “do it right” and obey the rules.

The Massey Mine was cited numerous times for safety violations.  The regulators and the mine owners just ignored the citations and kept going with very tragic results.

BP / Transocean / Halliburton did not listen to their workers or their well, nor did they maintain the blowout preventers that might have kept things from going out of control.  They promised that they would operate responsibly, but …  an oil drilling consultant now states:  “They have horribly underestimated the likelihood of a spill and therefore horribly underestimated the consequences of something going wrong.”

The underlying issue is that the vast majority of corporations are not in business to help their employees or their community.  They are in business to maximize their profits.  When it is a choice between employee safety or community well-being and profit, who wins?  Profit.   This is clear from more distant past events (including Enron, WorldCom, AIG, Madoff, Wall Street …) as well as these recent events.

Why is this important to Nevada County?  We have several mines that are trying to open or reopen.  We have heard from the proposed operators that “everything will be fine, just trust us.  We (the mine operator) will take care of the community, we won’t pollute your air or your water, we won’t drain your wells, we won’t clog the roads with traffic.”

Even before these recent examples of the total lack of responsibility by corporations, I was skeptical of these claims.  Nothing in recent events has given me the slightest reason to change my mind.  So I am asking that you give serious attention to any corporation that promises to be a good citizen.  If we allow these operations to move forward, they should do so only with the strictest of oversight and with iron clad parameters for shutting them down at the first sign of any violation of their promises.  I can hear the screams now, “If you force us to operate the way we promised to operate we will lose money (actually, we won’t make as much as we want) and we will have to shut down and lay off workers.”

We currently are fortunate to have a choice.  Ideally, we would prevent the most egregious operations from opening, regardless of the lure of a couple of jobs.  If they do proceed then we must make sure we put in place strict safety standards and environmental safeguards which are staunchly monitored by intelligent experienced regulators.  Otherwise we stand a significant chance of become the next community to be victimized by corporate criminals.  You choose.