Save Red Lady
I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been stewing on this post–wanting to give the subjects its due, wanting to address the issue without emotion and without grief, but its time has come and I need to address it. Now, I’ve touched on the subject before, but not wanting the subject to consume this blog I haven’t addressed it since.
I just have one request of you who are reading this post–bloggers, activists, parents, treehuggers, lurkers. Please tell this story, and please spread this news. Blog about it. Talk about it. Write about it. Mention it to your friends and coworkers. If you haven’t words of your own, you can copy mine. More than 1,700 of you visited this blog last month so let me hear from you now.
Red Lady’s story is a story that needs to be told, and, with enough help, it’s a story that could end happily for our town.
Above Crested Butte, a little Colorado ski town steeped in the wild wild west with its historic buildings and sweet eccentric charm, rises Mt. Emmons or as the locals call it: Red Lady. The mountain is beautiful as it towers over the town, and it’s been a source of recreation for the people who live here. We ski on it; we hike its peak; we love it and it’s part of us.
Sadly, Red Lady is under threat.
You see, Red Lady sits on one of the world’s purest sources of molybdenum. Molybdenum is a mineral that is used to harden steel and it’s used in many forms ranging from multivitamins, to medical supplies to recreation equipment like light-weight mountain bikes and skis. Molybdenum is a hot commodity and it sells for approximately $27 to $32 per pound.
Red Lady: The History
There was a mine on Red Lady in the 1970s, but it closed after molybdenum prices fell. But it didn’t close quickly enough, and the mine polluted the Coal Creek Watershed. For a long time, Coal Creek and the community’s primary source of water was a dead creek. It took a lawsuit filed between mining corporations to clean up the water in Coal Creek. The very same company who intends to mine Red Lady now is the one that refused to own up to its responsibilities in the past. They do not, in short, have a very good track record.
In April of 2004, the Bureau of Land Management under George W. Bush’s administration sold a 155-acre parcel of Mt. Emmons for a startling $775. Yes, that’s right $775 or approximately $5 per acre. In the town of Crested Butte, the median price of one lot (1/10 of an acre) is $735,000. Pretty big discrepancy, isn’t it?
The huge deposit of high-grade molybdenum coupled with the benefit of some existing infrastructure makes mining Red Lady rather appealing to greedy mining corporation executives. Indeed, they anticipate mining approximately $15 billion from Red Lady though they’ve only promised “tens of thousands” in charitable contributions to the town they intend to violate and pollute.
What a Mine on Red Lady Means
- The mine, if allowed, will impact our community by raising the county’s population by at least 8% and probably more. We will, in turn, need greater support systems in place.
- The mine, if allowed, will impact Coal Creek, a municipal water source, with increases in minerals and suspended sediment. Coal Creek could, indeed, become a dead creek again with little aquatic life.
- The mine, if allowed, will endanger our community’s years after it’s closed while hard minerals seep into our water supply.
- The mine, if allowed, will impact wildlife and potentially change migratory patterns of animals.
- The mine, if allowed, will threaten endangered species like the Uncompahgre Fritillary a beautiful butterfly native to this area of Colorado. I have seen this butterfly with my own eyes as I nursed my baby atop the mountain.
- The mine, if allowed, will impact property values in the community and will be visually scarring to our peak.
- The mine, if allowed, will endanger our air by bus exhaust from transporting of the workers from Gunnison to and from the mine every day of the week in addition to transporting the molybdenum from the mine to its destination point.
- The mine is a bad, bad thing.
What about other towns?
At a community open house, Clyde Gillespie, a spokesperson for the Lucky Jack mine answered questions from concerned members of our community.
One gentleman asked, “Can you name a single community in which you have come in to mine and created a positive experience for the community?”
After a great while attempting to blow off this question as he had done so many others, Mr. Gillespie answered, “Republic, Washington.”
Republic, Washington is a small town with a gold mine that is not even run by KOBEX or US Energy Corp (the companies who intend to mine our mountain). Let me tell you about the positive impact mining has had on this community: 17% of the male population work in the mine and 24% of the population lives under the poverty line with 31% of children living below poverty. And this is a hallmark of the positive effects of mining?
So Act with Me
With enough effort, we can still stop this mine and save our beloved mountain and our beloved town. The community has fought mining for more than thirty years, but we can no longer do it alone. We need your help.
- Read more about this issue here.
- Blog about the issue.
- Write your congressmen and ask them to sponsor The Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act of 2007 (HR2262) authored by Representatives Nick Rahall and Jim Costa.
- Email High Country Citizen’s Alliance with a prayer for Red Lady to be placed on prayer flags sold to raise money to fight the mine at office@hccaonline.org.
- Contact KOBEX Resources and US Energy Corp to let them know how disgusted you are by their actions.
- Donate to High Country Citizen’s Alliance.
- Stop purchasing any new items containing molybdenum.
Please join me in this fight and comment or trackback to this post so I know you’re out there and so I know we’re not alone.
Leave a Comment