At issue is a proposal by District
Manager Mike Dwyer which would allow mining of 22,000,000
tons of gravel over a 10 year period from a pit in the
community of Lone Mountain, Nevada, nine miles northwest
of Las Vegas. Homeowners there are already currently
objecting to dust and 50-ton truck traffic from the seven
companies now mining the pit.
The protest was filed in behalf of a
nine-group coalition of area homeowners and
environmentalists early this month by Frederick Schuster
of Thunder Consulting, a Banning, California firm.
The BLM Las Vegas office, said Schuster, has a
long history of intentionally misclassifying commercial
gravel mining as "community pit" operations in
order to evade environmental assessment requirements, to
evade federal mining laws, and to get money to do things
the U.S. Congress has not funded.
"Historically, the [Las Vegas District
Office] has been designating community pits not for the
purpose for which they were intended (i.e., expediting
small repetitive sales of sand and gravel) but as a means
of granting large commercial sales without benefit of a
mining
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plan ... or a current
environmental assessment," said the protest.
"In the immediate case, the violations
of the LVDO are so flagrant as to constitute gross
malfeasance of office by the District Manager and the
district staff."
Even though air quality in the Lone Mountain
area, like Las Vegas itself, fails to meet both state or
federal standards, says the protest, "[d]espite
these facts the BLM went forward with a pit that would
contribute further to the dust and carbon monoxide
pollution."
District manager Dwyer, asked about the
protest, said it was premature because mining contracts
with the most recent high-bidding firms, Diamond
Construction and American Sand and Gravel, have not yet
been awarded.
Those contracts -- to mine a combined 4
million tons of gravel -- said Dwyer will hinge on
completion of a new environmental assessment that will be
put out for public review.
"If we haven't made a decision or taken
an action that would have some impact, there is nothing
to protest," Dwyer said.
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