S.F. County considering moving funds from mine project
If approved, $1.5M set aside for Mount Chalchihuitl would go to making Thornton Ranch Open Space accessible
For nearly 20 years, Santa Fe County has been trying to purchase and clean up property surrounding a prehistoric turquoise mine near Cerrillos.
The goal of the Mount Chalchihuitl project is to incorporate the property into Cerrillos Hills State Park following environmental remediation work to remove decades of contamination from far more recent mining in the area.
Now, however, the county is considering moving about $1.5 million set aside for the project to another long-awaited effort: making the Thornton Ranch Open Space, a 2,500-acre parcel in the heart of the Galisteo Basin, accessible to the public.
The proposed transfer of funds has sparked some opposition from people eager to see protections for the ancient mine site — believed to be the oldest turquoise mine in North America.
During a meeting Tuesday, County Manager Katherine Miller told county commissioners about challenges the Mount Chalchihuitl project — Mount Chal for short — has faced over the years.
“We’re not saying we should totally give up on this, but we have been sitting on money for this project for probably close to 20 years,” Miller said. “I can’t tell you how many iterations we have tried in order to acquire these properties and continue to meet with what feels like insurmountable issues.”
In a My View published Sunday in The New Mexican, one proponent of protecting Mount Chalchihuitl said he believes the county must continue to invest in the project.
“Past difficulties and current financial stresses must not be allowed to stop Santa Fe County from following through with its commitment, dating to at least 2001, to acquire and protect the largest prehistoric Native American turquoise mine in North America,” wrote Dennis Kurtz, president of the San Marcos Association.
“The Mount Chalchihuitl project should be revisited; its scope and budget should be readdressed; and the County Commission should commit time, energy and money to completing it,” Kurtz added.
County spokeswoman Carmelina Hart said in an email Tuesday she couldn’t give a rough estimate of how much contamination remains at the site.
“The contamination exists and has existed for decades from private legacy mine tailings,” Hart said. “We do not have reliable estimates of the level of potential ground water or soil contamination at Mount Chal or surrounding, private properties.”
The County Commission did not make a decision Tuesday on whether to transfer funds from Mount Chalchihuitl to the Thornton Ranch.
After a lengthy discussion on the matter, Miller suggested moving talks behind closed doors.
“This is obviously a discussion, I think, for executive session relative to property acquisition,” she said. “I just want it to be known. It’s not a matter of we haven’t been trying. We’ve been trying for 20 years.”
Miller said the county had planned to buy two parcels of land near the site with the intent of hauling toxic mine tailings from one property into an old gravel pit on the other and then capping them off. But the county has been unable to reach agreement “on any reasonable price” with one property owner, she said, and a purchase agreement for the other parcel expired after the sellers were unable to meet the conditions of the deal.
Meanwhile, the county is getting closer to “design completion” on the Thornton Ranch Open Space, Miller said.
But the project is short about $1.5 million.
“One of the things that the board really, really pushed us over the last 10 years is to make some of these open space properties accessible to the public — that we didn’t buy them just to preserve them,” she said. “We bought them also to have some public access, and that’s something we’d like to try to do.”
Miller is proposing to leave “a little bit” of money for Mount Chalchihuitl “to address cleanup and mitigation” of property the county already owns nearby.
“There are concerns with contamination in groundwater, as well as down the arroyos, from the [tailings] that have been left on Mount Chal,” she said. “It’s going downstream, down the arroyos and contaminating property we already own.”
Commissioner Anna Hansen questioned whether the old turquoise mine had ever been designated a Superfund site. The federal Superfund program is responsible for cleaning up some of the nation’s most contaminated land.
“This is a very difficult situation because we all recognize how important this landmark and historic mine is,” Hansen said. “But at the same time, I am well aware of how expensive cleanup and remediation is from all of the work that I have done with [Los Alamos National Laboratory] on the cleanup of Los Alamos and the legacy waste.”
Commissioner Anna Hamilton said Hansen’s idea was worth pursuing.
“That might be something the state needs to pursue federally because when something gets designated as a Superfund site, it brings federal dollars,” Hamilton said.
“Part of the rationale for that is that … those things are typically so expensive that it’s not something that a local government can afford on its own when — quote unquote — responsible parties are no longer in existence or available,” she added. “There’s no private deep pocket to go after.”
Hamilton questioned whether the county should be making “further [land] acquisitions with respect to this site.”
“We buy it; we’re responsible for it,” she said.
Miller said the state, not counties, is responsible for the remediation of old mine sites.
“I think that when the state realized the county was willing to buy this, it was like, ‘OK, we don’t have to do anything here. Now it’s the county’s problem,’ “she said.
“Frankly, somebody else should be cleaning that up — not us.”