exchange for 4,132 it gave the BLM.
Of the land that went to the mining company,
6500 acres were identified as having high potential for
gold and silver. Of the land that went to the BLM, none
was rated as having any mineral potential.
As compensation for the 6500 acres of rich
mineral estate it received, Independence paid the BLM
$51,220.
Not only was that sum a ridiculous pittance,
says Hancock, but its payment brought to an end an annual
net income of over $100,000 that the federal
government had been receiving for assessments on more
than 1100 Independence mining claims on those acres.
"It is hard to understand how such an
annual income can be completely ignored in the appraisal
process," said Hancock in a letter to the BLM Elko
office in June last year.
That letter was protesting another pending
land swap, one sought by Barrick Goldstrike Mines.
"Information in BLM's Nevada State
office," wrote Hancock, "indicates the
appraisal of the selected lands was only for the
surface value. The [office] has no record of a
mineral appraisal being made for the value of the mineral
estate...
"The fact is that the 1278 acres of
public lands do have mineral value. The public is
entitled to
|
be compensated for it.
The selected lands are located in a geologic structure
known throughout the Carlin Trend to produce gold and
silver."
Hancock's June 2, 1996 protest of the Barrick
Goldstrike swap was dismissed in a letter from Babbitt's
office dated April 24, 1997.
Altogether, the Secretary's office has now
intervened to dismiss six of his protests, says Hancock
-- twice in Elko area land-swaps, and four times in Las
Vegas exchanges.
The first time Hancock ever saw the ploy, he
says, was when Babbitt used it to dismiss a protest
Hancock had filed against a multimillion-dollar Las Vegas
area land swap several years ago.
"Always before, all of [the] protests
during the years I was in Nevada -- any protest on
classification, or public sale, or anything -- they
automatically went through IBLA."
The firm that proposed the swap Hancock was
opposing is an Arizona general partnership, Olympic Group
Inc., which does business in Nevada as Olympic of Nevada,
Inc.
That firm, believes Hancock, "had enough
juice to get the Secretary's office to kind of intervene
and exercise its authority."
Babbitt is a former governor of Arizona and
also a long-time attorney and consultant to land
development and
|