DURANGO, Colo.—A troubled mining company that has endured years of rejected permits in the La Plata Mountains isn’t giving up efforts to extract precious metals from mines dormant since the 1940s.
Wildcat Mining Corp. has tried since 2006 to acquire permits to extract precious metals gold, silver and maybe tellurium from southwest Colorado. Last week the company amended a pending application with La Plata County, and in April, the company’s lengthy response to state regulators’ questions about its pending state application created another seven-week delay in that process.
The company has hired a new public spokesman, Denver-based project manager George Robinson, and is trying to start anew with plans to revive mining in and around the historic May Day and Idaho mines.
“The thing we haven’t done is be good neighbors,” Robinson told the Durango Herald on a tour of the mining sites.
“We’re going to reach out to say ‘Hey, is there anything we can do for you?'” Robinson pointed out a neighbor’s well. “If our road dries up the well, we’ll drill them a new well or find an alternative source. It’s cheaper to do that than for me to try to demonstrate that there’s no impact on the water.”
Assuming Wildcat can appease state regulators at the Colorado Board of Reclamation and Mining Safety in July and the county sometime thereafter, the company still faces scrutiny from the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state’s water quality division.
That neighborly promise is part of the compensation agreement the company offered 13 people who own structures within 200 feet of lands affected by the mining activity. So far, 11 have signed the agreement, Robinson said, though he did not provide the newspaper with a copy of the agreements.
At least one neighbor wants to see mining return. Ray Ferguson is not one of the landowners who have signed a Wildcat agreement, and he says he hasn’t been offered compensation for his support. Ferguson says he wouldn’t work in the mines but wants to see them in use.
“I’m too old to do it now,” he said. “But let me ask you this: Why do you suppose there ain’t no more jobs in the U.S.?”
Other neighbors say environmental concerns remain. Some have pointed out the area’s long history of mining companies violating environmental regulations and fouling local waters. Wildcat has at least five cease-and-desist orders against it for mining-related activities in the area.
“It seems like a shell game to me,” David Kingsley, a Hesperus dermatologist, wrote in a complaint to state regulators in January. “If anyone trying to mine natural resources has avoided and evaded all local, state and federal authorities, has done nothing but thumb their noses at proper channels and permits, has harmed the land needlessly and purposefully and thumbed their noses at local residents, it seems to me that, legally, they should not have a leg to stand on.”
Robinson told the newspaper that Wildcat Mining “can’t do a thing” unless the cease-and-desist orders are cleared. Asked how much longer Wildcat can persist without an ounce of gold, Robinson told the newspaper, “It won’t be two years.”
“If an investor called me and said ‘I have $2 million – should I invest it in Colorado or Ghana, I’d say ‘Do you have time? If you don’t have two years, go to Ghana,'” Robinson said.
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Information from: Durango Herald,
