Letter from Paul Martz
Mining – June 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors,
I suppose given the circumstances I’ve put myself into through the agency of a big mouth and my own free will, I’m required to respond to Hal’s diatribe against the proposed mica mine on Poncha Pass, and to try and reconcile fact from the various fictions that are being touted as truth about it.
First, I want to give Bob Gomez credit for the best misinformation campaign I’ve ever seen. While some might oppose any mine, Bob has some people actually believing that they will have to wear dust masks to work in downtown Salida if the mine goes in. This is a measure of true genius, and he ought to go into advertising because his talent is obviously being wasted at the present time.
I can say with all honesty as a geologist, and in sincerity as a former federally certified asbestos abatement manager, there is no comparison between silica fines, asbestos particles and mica no matter how small you grind them. They aren’t even in the same crystal system. Any inhalation of large quantities of small particles, including cat dander (don’t start with me, I’m not slandering cats) is detrimental to one’s health and we have lots of Federal laws on the books to prove it. But the proposed operation won’t expose either its workers or the general public to “toxic” dust.
In response to Hal’s statements about the “spirituality” of the Tribe’s endeavors: are they supposed to take their gambling (some people call it that) winnings and invest them in shrunken heads and those little rubber tipped bow and arrow sets produced in Taiwan and set up a roadside junk shop? You can bet they would really want to send their kids to college to run that operation.
I also consulted for the outfit that was the principal competitor of Apache Pyrite operation in Leadville (it was not a mining operation, it was a tailings reclamation project). There was no comparison between our product and that of the Leadville operation. For one thing the people in Leadville had no idea of the ultimate requirements of the many end users — sort of like people who use mica daily and don’t even know it.
One only has to look around and see that Chaffee county produces two other “bulk” products that get trucked out of here for a profit. The bagged marble chips which originate from the Monarch District and Calco’s ground lime which nearly everybody nationwide uses (hopefully) to brush their teeth every morning. The zinc sulfate formerly produced by CoZinco was another bulk industrial product produced in Chaffee County until just recently. New owners shut that operation as a business strategy to eliminate competition to their other plant, but the product could be produced here economically.
I don’t speak for the Tonto, nor for Cochise or Geronimo, but I note that all of them use(d) mined products; Geronimo a little too effectively for the ancestors of some of my friends. I also find Hal’s concept of one unified Native American set of cultural values stereotypically racist. An Apache wouldn’t have a clue about whale hunting but that activity is a key cultural aspect of the Inuit who own NANA Corp. in Kotezbue, Alaska.
Paul Martz
Consulting Geologist
Poncha Springs