Leah Cantor
Frank Adelo, president of the Upper Pecos Watershed Association, left, asks New World Cobalt CEO Mike Haynes, right, to transfer mineral rights to UPWA as a tax deductible donation and leave the Pecos in peace
The mysterious Australian mining company that's pushing for permits to begin prospecting for precious metals in an area just outside the Pecos Wilderness has finally revealed its human face.
New World Cobalt CEO Mike Haynes, who lives in Australia, and Exploration Manager Patrick Siglin, who runs the company's American subsidiary Comexico and lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, made their first local appearance Thursday night at a meeting hosted by the Santa Fe Forest Service at the Pecos High School.
According to Siglin, the company is small and personal.
"I appreciate hearing the community's concerns," Haynes said. "We don't expect to contaminate anything with drilling 30 holes because we will do it to the best possible industry practice, and we will reclaim to the highest possible standards."
Despite traveling from far, far away to engage with locals face to face, the majority of Pecos residents were not convinced.
"I just want you to look at everyone in this room and just know that there are hundreds of people for every one of us, and we don't want you here," one man told the mining executives after asking them to stand and face the room.
But not everyone was there in opposition. Two individuals vocally supported the project, citing jobs as one benefit a new mine could bring to the area.
For the most part, though, locals demanded more detailed explanations and emphasized the project's potential to jeopardize fragile cultural and biological ecosystems.
Local farmer Ralph Vigil, an eighth-generation resident of the Pecos and the chairman of the New Mexico Acequia Commission, said the Forest Service and the company have failed to include traditional Hispanic farming communities in their cultural impact studies, and stressed the dependence of traditional agriculture in the valley on the Pecos headwaters.
"Without that watershed, this community and the rest of the communities are nothing," said Vigil. "The acequias are being ignored. Comexico, the acequias need to be dealt with and consulted."
Robert Mora, former governor of the Pueblo of Tesuque, said the Forest Service and the company have mislead tribal leaders about certain aspects to the proposal. "We are hearing a few things here that are different and were not presented to us, and to us, that is very backstabbing … We asked for clarity, we asked for honesty, but we don't get it," he said. "The Pueblo of Tesuque stands opposed to this project."
Forest Service staff explained that the purpose of the current scoping process is to determine what level of environmental and cultural impact assessments and protections will be required under NEPA. Public comments, they said, play an important role in making these determinations.
Many residents pleaded with Forest Service staff to stop the project altogether, but Forest Supervisor James Melonas said his hands are tied by the General Mining Act of 1872 that mandates minerals on federal land be made accessible for extraction.
A representative speaking for US Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, D-NM, announced his support for a bill called the Hard Rock Mining Reclamation Act to amend these laws at federal level. The announcement was met with general applause.
Yet one young man, James Clarke, voiced a different perspective. "I'm excited about this project," he said. "I think it's important that when we are building solar panels … and other technology … that we don't do it with copper that is bloody."
Clarke pointed to thousands of mining deaths in other countries caused by unregulated conditions, adding, "I think we [should] do it with copper that was ethically and responsibly harvested and we can do that here and generate jobs here."
Another woman from the Pecos area, Lee Nielle Rivera, stated a similar opinion. "I've read statements of how many elements and minerals it takes to build one wind turbine … People are asking that we have a clean environment, where in the world are we going to get all those minerals unless they're mined?"
Not in the Pecos, the crowd murmured in response.
The evening discussion highlighted difficult questions that circled the topic of environmental justice, a term used to describe the inequities with which environmentally damaging activities and pollution disproportionately impact rural communities, low-income communities and communities of color.
Nationally, this concept has entered the public discourse in recent years with issues such as the Dakota Access Pipeline. The pipeline was originally routed through a white suburban community around Bismarck, North Dakota, before being rerouted through land sacred to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and in close proximity to the tribe's drinking water supply.
In urban settings, African Americans are more likely to suffer from environmental and chemical hazards than any other racial demographic, a study conducted by the EPA's National Center for Environmental Assessment in 2018 found. In general, people of color are more likely to live near pollution sites and breathe toxic air, and over half of Americans who live near hazardous waste sites are people of color.
Poor rural white communities were also disproportionately impacted.
One could argue the entire history of resource extraction in New Mexico is a story of environmental injustice, often inflicted by people who came from afar.
Uranium mining has predominantly negatively impacted Native communities in the state, and the worst toxic spill in US history took place on the Navajo Nation in the 1970s. In Albuquerque, old Hispanic neighborhoods have suffered the worst lasting impacts of industrial superfund sites. Today, rural communities must deal with impacts of mining and oil drilling, while communities such as Santa Fe face relatively few immediate threats to public health due to environmental issues.
These dynamics are at play in the New World Cobalt proposal.
But comments made Thursday night also highlight how environmental justice plays out at the global scale. Countries such as the US export many of the environmental consequences of creating products such as smartphones and windmills to developing nations where labor is cheap and regulations are far more lenient.
Despite the assurances made by New World Cobalt CEO Mike Haynes, most often it is the people left behind, not CEOs, who pay the price. The Forest Service scoping process is one step in determining how rigorously Haynes will have to live up to his promise to leave the area intact if the proposal is approved.
The agency is accepting public comments through their website or by mail until January 17.
Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story misidentified US Rep. Ben Ray Lujan's role in federal mining legislation. He supports existing legislation to amend mining law.