People living along La Animas Creek and generally around and downstream from Copper Flat Mine are waiting for a public hearing that will determine whether the mine has enough water rights to operate. Meanwhile, Sandra L. Skogan – the hearing examiner presiding over the State Engineer’s hearing on the application to transfer leased water rights from Santa Teresa near El Paso to the mine’s wells in Caballo – today issued an order formally allowing the Percha-Animas Watershed Association (PAWA) to participate as a protestant in the hearing.
PAWA had filed a formal protest consolidating some 65 local protestants who had individually filed protests. The owners of Copper Flat (Tulla, an Australian investment company which owns Themac, a Canadian mineral company which owns New Mexico Copper Company, which owns the mine) contested PAWA’s protest. Tulla ask the hearing officer to bar PAWA from participating in the hearing because the statute on leasing water rights (the Water-Use Leasing Act) requires that protestants own water rights and as an organization PAWA does not own water rights. Tulla acknowledged that PAWA members individually own rights that might be affected by its use of water, but since the individual protests were withdrawn when PAWA consolidated them into one group protestant, Tulla’s motion was an attempt to bar all Animas Creek and Hwy 152 protestants from having a say in the litigation.
The hearing examiner denied Tulla’s motion, arguing that since the Water-Use Leasing Act also identifies the conservation of water and public welfare as topics that must be reviewed in the hearing, it made no sense to restrict the participants to water right holders. Furthermore, other parties without water rights have a legitimate interest in arguing for or against the application, prominently, the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission, legally charged to protect New Mexico’s obligations in Rio Grande waters, or Santa Teresa Land, the organization which presently uses the leased water and does not want to lose it.
The decision was issued along with several other decisions on motions. Turner Ranch Properties (the Ladder Ranch) was granted its motion that if the application were granted the transfer would end in 2029 and also granted its motion that the hearing did not have the authority to decide on issues of offsets (so that, Tulla’s argument that its lease of Jicarilla Apache water rights offsets its damage to Rio Grande water is barred from consideration).
The examiner denied Elephant Butte Irrigation District’s (EBID’s) request for a summary judgment to throw out the whole case because there was not enough water for the application. The hearing officer decided that the issue depended on facts to be ascertained in the hearing itself.
Examiner Skogan also issued sanctions against the applicant Tulla for trying to arrange illegally a meeting between themselves, the State Engineer, and EBID behind the backs of all the litigants and the hearing examiner herself.
The actions of the mine’s legal team might give pause to those who want to think of Tulla as a good neighbor.
There is still no word on when the hearing will be scheduled.
20 years ago TorC held public hearings and the mine permit was turned down. I was one of the speakers as Pres. of the Chamber. Kathy Clark, a former City Councilperson (MBA) went through the paperwork and said it was scam. It is a classic pump and dump effort and will benefit no one in the county except perhaps the Los Arcos Lounge crowd. The environmental damage it will do (during a 200 year drought) will not benefit Sierra County.
We’ll done PAWA, your acceptance gives a ray of hope in a darkening world. Thanks!
Sierra County has a romanticized relationship with mining and so there seems to be little worry or regard for the proposed Copper Flat mine. I was on the Superfund committee that oversaw the Moly Mine closure near Questa, and mining on this scale–by the Aussies no less (famed gold-diggers)–hasnt got a troy ounce of romance in it. Ruining and robbing the land and water and then leaving the mess behind–ON A MASSIVE SCALE. And the social factor is big too: Questa had 20 unsolved murders in the two decades that i was on that committee
Thanks, once again, Mr. Yeh for your insightful article. I am just one of the litigants trying to stop this mine from reopening. And in the last few years, with water becoming even more of a premium, your work on this matter is greatly appreciated.
Good news for the people most affected by the possibility of a short term, on paper, economic boost for our perennially(at least for the past few decades) economically stressed county/community… I grew up here at Old Elephant Butte Lake and graduated from HSHS… I returned here upon retirement from the legal field because I remembered how nice our little community was “back in the day”… I had many a career in many a field, which took me all round the state… After retirement to here I went back to work with my brother doing land and old mine reclamations around the state… Folks do not want to have to deal with the aftermath of mining I have seen and worked on to mitigate… I even worked out at Copper Flat for a while until I got temporarily laid off by the Environmental Contractor I worked for, for discovering some of the realities of Copper Flat and telling the public about it!!! The company owner was beholding to THEMAC, but he knew he needed me for the job at the old uranium Home Stake Mine in Grants, which was a major cleanup project ordered by the Feds!!! Copper Flat is an orphan, and will not have any real value until way into the future when all the big and valuable copper deposits around the world are depleted!!! Don’t hold your breath!!!