Freeport-McMoRan to permanently remove mining claims from Mount Emmons and transfer back to U.S. Forest Service Options

[Gene Kooper]

Published this evening in the online Denver Post.

Crested Butte celebrates as longest running mine battle in the West nears end

CRESTED BUTTE — This end-of-the-road village has spent nearly 40 years transforming itself from a mining town into a thriving tourist destination despite the threat of a huge molybdenum mine on the hill overlooking downtown.

But the final chapter in the longest running mine fight in the West may soon be written.

Freeport-McMoRan — the world’s largest moly producer and owner of the Climax Mine near Leadville and the soon-to-shutter Henderson Mine near Empire — has inked a preliminary deal to permanently remove mining claims from Mount Emmons and return about 9,000 acres to the Forest Service. It will also work with Crested Butte to continue treating tainted water flowing from a long-defunct mine on the mountain.

For decades, every time molybdenum prices peaked, locals raised money and filed lawsuits to fight a proposed 1,000-worker mine digging 25 million tons of high-grade moly from the belly of beloved Mount Emmons. The crusade was at times so pitched that residents pledged to lay down in the middle of Whiterock Avenue to block ore-hauling trucks.

From the article it appears that if the town of Crested Butte can raise $2,000,000 Freeport-McMoRan will give up nearly 9,000 acres of unpatented lode claims on Mt. Emmons. Sen. Bennet has agreed to sponsor a bill that the article implies will permanently remove the area covered by those claims from mineral entry. At least that is how I read the story. The townsfolk and environmentalists are hailing this proposed action as forever removing Mt. Emmons and its large moly deposit from ever being mined.

The article implies that the Gold King Mine disaster acted as a catalyst for Freeport-McMoRan's decision. The company will still operate a water treatment plant to treat acidic metal-laden water that discharges into Coal Creek.

[EMac]

I'm still lost as to what you're trying to get across; I don't see much difference in who is doing the mining in the Castle Mountains, so I'm not making the connections you are. If you have evidence otherwise, please link to it.

For all intents and purposes they're the same folks operating under a general partnership: Newcastle news release

NewCastle has 100% of the right, title and beneficial interest in and to the Castle Mountain Venture, a California general partnership, which owns the Castle Mountain property (the “Project”) in San Bernardino County, California, (7,458 acres in total).

You can look on the claim files and see that both Castle Mountain Ventures and Viceroy Gold Corp have the same PO Box in Searchlight, NV.


I'm muddying the waters with my comments around public lands transfers to the states. You're more confident this isn't possible than the state legislators are. I'll have to read more about the Enabling Act, but I'm skeptical just reading the excerpt. From it alone we can see they distinguish between soil and land. It speaks to primary disposition of soil, but refers to land when it comes to taxing. Moreover, I fully expect this topic to be reintroduced into the Colorado legislature as a new version of defeated SB 15-232. We're stuck now since we have a Republican-controlled Senate and Democrat-controlled House (Baumgardner says he's "billed up" already and the vote would have little chance of passing a Democrat-controlled House; Source: Colorado Statesman).