They will be drilling at 30 locations, not just four. They plan to haul the equipment, the drill rig, and supplies in and out by vehicles and trucks and to use mules to carry the bags of samples out. They don’t want to use helicopters this time. Conglomerate Mesa is a roadless area and the road scars from the exploration done 30 years ago are still visible today. Temporary roads (roads built and then reclaimed) and pack trails will be visible for decades to come. They will also be clearing the vegetation for drill pads. Hopefully, the mice and ground squirrels will abandon their warrens in time.
It isn’t just the road scars that impact the environment, it is the drilling noise 24/7 and flood lights at night for months that will force wildlife out of the area. Birds, bats, and animals can’t listen for prey or communicate in a noisy world. It is the use of gallons and gallons (500-1,000 gals/day) of water that will be sprayed on the road in to keep the dust down and to lubricate the drill bit. It is the loss of groundwater that will come from a nearby desert town. Worst of all, it is the intrusion into a place that is sacred to the Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone and the Death Valley Timbisha Shoshone Tribes.
Granted, these are temporary trespasses and the roads will be “reclaimed” at the end of the project. Yet, reclamation never returns the land to how it was. It usually degrades natural resources and leaves a trace. Worse yet, exploratory drilling may lead to an open-pit, cyanide heap leach mine. That would be a permanent loss of a special place. Turning a mesa, a mountain, into a big open pit with enormous trucks driving down into the pit all day long moving dirt, would be a permanent loss of acres and acres of wonderful Joshua Tree habitat and nature. This pit would be sandwiched between the Malapais Mesa Wilderness and the Cerro Gordo Wilderness Study Area and at the doorstep of Death Valley National Park. One would look down on it from the top of Mt. Whitney. It would not be “reclaimed” in our lifetimes. Mining companies keep leaching the tailings long after the digging has stopped and they defer closing a mine to avoid doing the reclamation.
On July 27 there was a hearing in the Natural Resources Committee on the 1872 Mining Law. Did it need to be reformed? The Republican camp said no, no reform is needed because the U.S. has the toughest environmental laws in the world: NEPA, The Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and state laws. However, not one of those laws will stop a mining project. NEPA will lay out all the environmental impacts. The Clean Water Act will keep pollution out of streams and lakes as long as the impounded polluted ponds and liners don’t leak. The Endangered Species Act will allow governmental agencies to impose mitigations, but none of these laws say “no” to a project that is going to destroy a place that should not be destroyed, like Conglomerate Mesa.
This Mojave Precious Metals project is on our public lands, in an area designated National Conservation Land (NCL) and an Area of Critical Environmental Concern. We all have a vested interest and should comment. California as well as the current administration are working to save 30% of nature by 2030. Allowing MPM to degrade Conglomerate Mesa is contrary to those efforts. We need to say “no”, if our governmental agencies can’t.
The scoping document for their phase two project was posted on the BLM website on July 30. Comments are due by August 30, 2021. For more information or to submit comments go to the Protect Conglomerate Mesa website where you will find the BLM link for commenting and primary documents, plus a template letter you can use and a link to a "Tips" page with bullet points you can incorporate into your comments, if you'd like.