Public Airs Concerns About Round Top Mine
There were candid expressions of concern, skepticism and even hostility toward Texas Rare Earth Resources’ plan for a rare earth mine at Round Top Mountain, when company representatives spoke with Hudspeth County commissioners and members of the public at the court’s meeting Tuesday (Jan. 28) in Sierra Blanca.
In comments from County Judge Mike Doyal and a handful of citizens, concerns centered on the potential health risks of toxic and radioactive substances that would be associated with the mine, as well as questions about whether the operation might if fact yield concrete benefits for the local community. Though TRER has been active in the area for more than two and a half years, it was the first public airing of misgivings about the proposed mine, which the company says could be a major global source of the critical heavy metals known as rare earth elements.
TRER CEO Dan Gorski addressed commissioners at Doyal’s request. In quarrying, crushing and processing 20,000 tons a day of ore at Round Top Mountain, 8 miles west of Sierra Blanca, TRER’s operation would concentrate quantities of the radioactive elements uranium and thorium, and a toxic element called beryllium also exists at the mountain, beneath the volcanic rock TRER is targeting. Doyal said he had questions about how those elements – whether they were carried on the wind or entered the environment in other ways – might pose long-term health risks to the Sierra Blanca community.
“For a lot of us here, it probably won’t affect us because of our age,” Doyal said, “but we have children and grandchildren that will grow up in the county. It’s a big concern for all of us.”
Members of the public were more pointed in their criticism of the project. Sierra Blanca resident Billy Dell French highlighted the risks associated with beryllium, small quantities of which can cause an incurable lung disease called berylliosis, and about how dust bearing beryllium or other dangerous materials could be carried downwind to Sierra Blanca. Though Gorski said that dust would be kept down and the rock would be misted throughout quarrying and processing, French expressed skepticism that TRER would be able to prevent dust from escaping from the site.
Bill Addington, who was a leader in the successful effort to prevent the construction of a nuclear-waste dump in Hudspeth County, said his years of activism in that campaign had educated him about the risks of radioactive materials – and that he found TRER’s assertion that it could contain those materials, risk-free, unconvincing.
“You’re trying to sit here and tell us that no particles of thorium or uranium are going to escape from the blasting, crushing and processing and come down here?” Addington said. “I have deep, deep concerns. We may not get sick for a long time, but there’s a latency period, and people may get cancer years later.”
Though TRER anticipates it could sell uranium produced at Round Top, there is currently no market for thorium, and the substance would likely be stored on-site. Addington said that storage would turn the mine into “nothing but a radioactive waste dump on our mountain.”
Doyal also asked about the acid that would be used in the “heap leaching” of Round Top ore – and about the massive quantities of waste materials that would remain on-site after the process.
In the heap leaching process, crushed Round Top ore would be spread on lined beds north of the mountain and soaked in a sulfuric-acid solution for 60 days, Gorski said. Rare earths – as well as the radioactive elements – would be extracted from the acid solution; the remaining crushed material, or tailings, would, after some time, be flushed with water and treated with milk of lime to neutralize the remaining acid. Tailings piles would accumulate over time. Gorski said the lined pads would be one of TRER’s costliest investments and would prevent acid or other byproducts from entering groundwater sources. He noted that the water table is deep near the Sierra Blanca Mountains – more than 1,500 feet deep – and that any acid that did soak into the ground would have to pass through hundreds of feet of limestone, which itself is used to neutralize acids.
Gorski several times mentioned RCL Rocks, the company that has been quarrying for material for Union Pacific on Sierra Blanca Mountain for more than a decade. Gorski said that TRER’s activities would be “similar in scale” to those of RCL Rocks; the geology of Sierra Blanca Mountain and Round Top are also similar, he said, and any radioactive material that would be released into the air by a TRER plant were already being released at the RCL quarry.
TRER’s Round Top lease is owned by the Texas General Land Office, and Gorski said a mine at the mountain could generate half a billion dollars in revenue for the GLO, which supports K-12 public education in Texas. Gorski also said the mine would produce between 100 and 150 full-time jobs, but Doyal asked about how the operation might actually benefit Sierra Blanca and Hudspeth County.
“I want to see the benefit locally,” Doyal said. “The royalties go to the state, the workers could come from El Paso or elsewhere – so what’s the benefit to local people, the benefit that outweighs the health risks?”
French echoed Doyal’s concerns.
“They always say they’re going to hire local people – the prison didn’t, they bus people in,” French said. French said she worked for Merco, the New York-based company that, for half a decade, disposed that city’s sewage sludge on pastureland north of Sierra Blanca, “but all the good money went to people they brought in.”
Gorski said that while certain personnel for specialized positions would likely come in from elsewhere, “85 to 90 percent of the jobs” would be open to local residents.
“Everybody in this county who wants to go to work out there will have a shot at it,” Gorski said. “The preference will be for local people. And mines are not low-paying jobs.”
Rare earth elements are crucial for all manner of contemporary technologies, from consumer electronics and military applications to the expanding area of hybrid-electric motors. In his presentation to the court, Gorski claimed that the rare earth deposit at Round Top was unique in North America. Presently, China produces almost all of the world’s rare earths, and Gorski said Round Top could meet the need for domestic sources of the metals.
“We know there is going to be a rare earth mine out here – it is going to be produced by somebody,” Gorski said. “Our job now is to make sure that it is us.”
The concentration of rare earths at Round Top is low – Gorski said a ton of the mountain’s material would yield between 1.5 and 2.5 pounds of rare earths. But the company says that the sheer size of the deposit and of the mountain compensate for the low grade. He said the region’s temperate climate and the mountain’s proximity to rail and highway infrastructure were also a strength for the project, and he highlighted the “business-friendly” regulatory climate in Texas as a key asset for TRER. The low-grade nature of the deposit has led to skepticism about the project’s viability among some mining analysts and investors, which may be hindering TRER’s ability to raise funds to continue the project.
Apart from the risks to human health and the economic impacts of a mine, the idea of removing a mountain in a rural landscape defined by mountains also troubled several citizens present at the meeting. TRER plans to begin quarrying on the north side of the mountain, but over the 50 or 100 years of a mining operation the entirety of 5,700-foot Round Top Mountain could be removed, and operations could extend to other mountains in the Sierra Blanca Range.
“If we can’t save the mountains that give the town its name, what can we save?” Addington said during a recess in the meeting.