By Sandra Michaud

A varied group of people met last Thursday evening at the Bayard Community Center to discuss Grant County mining issues and hear updates about the New Mexico State Supreme Court's hearing on the GǣCopper RuleGǥ case. The court heard oral arguments on September 28 and is expected to issue a ruling soon.

The discussion also touched on other aspects of the impact the court's ruling may have and encouraged people to attend the hearing for the Lampbright Waste Rock Stockpile to be held Thursday, October 27, at 5:30 pm at the Grant County Administration Center. Information about the hearing may be found at this link: http://www.emnrd.state.nm.us/MMD/MARP/NorthLampbrightStockpile.html 

Allyson Siwik, Executive Director of the Gila Resources Information Project, or GRIP, explained how the decisions being made now would impact useable water availability for hundreds of years to come. She talked about what the mines are currently doing to mitigate groundwater pollution and how the implementation of the Copper Rule in its current iteration will change that for the worse.

Siwik told the group how, in 2012, the New Mexico Environmental Department (NMED) put together an advisory committee that included members of environmental groups, technical experts and representatives of Freeport-McMoRan to advise NMED on new rules for copper mining. After eight months, a draft recommendation was sent to NMED.

This was later changed by NMED, at the request of Freeport-McMoRan, despite the recommendation of its own technical staff, to ease restrictions on copper mining operations, giving greater potential to pollute groundwater.

GRIP and other groups that are challenging the Copper Rule say that implementing it will undermine the 1967 Water Quality Act, which was designed to prevent water pollution and instead place the emphasis on containment, which will need to be done in perpetuity, even after mines are closed. Under the Water Quality Act, mines that were in place before it was passed have to contain the polluted water, but new mines or expansions to existing mines must use the best available technology to try to prevent groundwater contamination. If the Copper Rule it upheld, they will no longer be required to prevent it, just to contain it to the areas under the pits themselves and the waste rock stockpiles.

Siwik said that another concern was the fact that Freeport-McMoRan was acting as its own Third Party Guarantee entity for the Chino, Tyrone and Cobre mines and that for 2015 and the first two quarters of 2016, the company failed to pass the Mining ActG