2/14/15
Harbor commissioners voted at a packed Thursday night meeting to allow a mining corporation three months to further pursue leasing a location at the Samoa pulp mill site.
The US Mine Corporation originally proposed a six-month exclusive right to negotiate with the Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District for some of the facilities at the pulp mill site, but after a rush of responses and concerns raised by a maximum-capacity crowd at the meeting the commissioners decided on a compromise.
“We thought it would be more appropriate to do three months, and then we could either move forward or move on,” Commissioner Richard Marks said.
Commissioners Aaron Newman, Mike Wilson, Patrick Higgins and Marks voted 4-0 in favor of giving US Mine a three-month exclusive negotiation period in exchange for $5,000. Commissioner Greg Dale was absent.
The period will be an opportunity for US Mine to put together more specific details when it comes to the corporation’s potential plan for an ore extraction facility and the process, Marks said.
The corporation hopes to lease buildings and some yard space at the old pulp mill site, ship ore from mines up and down the West Coast, extract the precious metals inside the buildings and make precast cement products with what’s left of the ore combined with other aggregate, US Mine Corp general manager Guy Reed said at the meeting.
The proposal stirred community concerns, with those present inquiring about the chemicals used during the process, the potential for air, land and water pollution, as well as compatibility with other industries who already are or could potentially lease the site instead of or along with the mining corporation.
“It really concerns me to have this type of corporation come in,” Brenna Schlagenhauf of Hog Island Oyster Company said. “I just really question what the compatibility is with growing food and a very strong fishing industry in an area ... to have a company that is looking at using chemicals and using toxins.”
Schlagenhauf is also concerned about the $5,000 investment, which several speakers referred to as “a drop in the bucket” tying up the right to negotiate.
Many members of the public also questioned the logic of bringing industrial gold processing to a peninsula that the harbor district just spent the past two years cleaning up.
Reed and US Mine Corp President and CEO Scott Docktor said they were unable to answer all of the specific questions with the resources at hand.
Many of the concerns raised Thursday stemmed from a lack of information, Reed said in an interview after the meeting. For example, a common concern raised by community members was that cyanide would be brought to the bayside site. However, while cyanide is one way to extract gold from ore, it’s not the only option.
“We haven’t decide on that particular process,” Reed said. “Let’s just say that if that ends up being a deal-breaker, there are other options for us.”
While the US Mine Corporation “believes that the cyanide process that we are proposing is quite safe,” because of the modern equipment and methods used, the corporation could avoid using cyanide at the pulp mill site, he said.
Instead, they could process the ore to the point where the gold is contained in concentrate and then transport it to a different location to finish the process, Reed said.
This would allow them to reduce the weight of the ore to one percent to five percent of the total tonnage brought into Eureka by ship, he said.
The amount of ore that the company hopes to bring into the harbor each year is about 100,000 tons, Reed said. It’s also estimated that the mining operation would bring 30 to 50 jobs to the area.
The three-month period will be sufficient time for US Mine Corp officials to weigh their options and enter negotiations with the California Coastal Commission and the many other agencies that they will have to work with during the process, Reed said.
Three months from now the harbor district will also know a lot more and be better suited to make a decision, district Executive Director Jack Crider said.
“They have lots of different options and I think that the three-month period will give them a chance to vet out some of those options and see if we can craft it into some sort of lease,” Crider said.
In the meantime, Crider plans to do additional research and visit a similar facility so he can see the plan in action.
“We need to understand the type of chemicals they would bring on site, the volumes of the chemical they would bring on site — how the process actually works,” Crider said.
Local consulting attorney Ralph Faust said that while he sympathized with the harbor district in regard to the need for tenants and the economic benefit that the applicants would provide, he doubted that the project would be able to overcome many hurdles, including the California Coastal Act.
“The question you have to face, and the sooner the better, is ‘Is there any likelihood at the end of the day that this an approvable project?’” he said.
