Glenwood Springs—Officials with the city of Glenwood Springs are expressing their disappointment with the Bureau of Land Management’s apparent laissez-faire treatment of a controversial quarry mine expansion. In a letter to the BLM, the city says the latest Plan of Operations submitted by Rocky Mountain Resources for a 5,000% expansion of the Transfer Trail Mine is not complete without resolving a number of issues. As it has all along, the city is challenging the legality of the mine, the mining claims as well as the impacts on the community and the region. A growing, grassroots army of citizens across the valley have expressed concerns about adequate traffic routes, water rights, noise and dust. City officials are encouraged that the BLM has committed to a full Environmental Impact Statement to explore the impacts of an around-the-clock mining operation that would add up to 600 trucks a day on local roads. The BLM has also agreed to consider any potential harm to the hot springs aquifers, an evaluation of the limestone caves that could be damaged and an ethnographic study to include a number of Ute Indian Tribes. Glenwood Springs Mayor Jonathan Godes says, “We ask the BLM to stop putting the community between a rock and a hard place.”
