On Wednesday, the Plumas County Zoning Administration will revisit a request for determination of vested rights for the Engels and Superior mines, held over from the last meeting Oct. 11.
The public hearing—scheduled for Dec. 13 at 10 a.m. in the Mineral Building at the Plumas County Fairgrounds—will focus on public comment only, said Plumas County Planning Director Tracey Ferguson. No decisions will be made.
At issue is the question of whether the current lease holder, Toronto-based US Copper Corp (formerly Crown Mining), holds vested mining rights to the sites. US Copper’s Moonlight Project proposes to mine the approximately 13 square miles of land it controls at Engels Mine, 11 miles northeast of Greenville. If approved, the project is expected to include an open-pit mine, which could operate for 17 years, removing as much as 1.3 billion pounds of copper.
Mines that predate local zoning restrictions or the California Surface Mining and Reclamation Act (SMARA) are considered “vested” and do not require mining permits to continue operating. The Engels mine was founded in 1901 and is owned by the California-Engels Mining Company, which was formed when two mining companies merged in 1936, prior to the county’s first zoning ordinance in 1958.
The debate over vested rights
Because the Plumas County Board of Supervisors adopted its first zoning ordinance on July 8, 1958, US Copper has identified that as the date of vesting. In the years since, the California-Engels Mining Company maintains that it has never waived or abandoned its mining rights, according to public records.
However, the precise scope of what is covered by vesting may still be up for debate. According to the county code governing vested rights, mining ventures qualify only if there are “no substantial changes…in the operation.” The passage reads in full: “No person who obtained a vested right to conduct surface mining operations prior to January 1, 1976, shall be required to secure a permit to mine, so long as the vested right continues and as long as no substantial changes have been made in the operation except in accordance with SMARA, State regulations, and this chapter.” (Section 9-5.05)
The controversial proposal has already drawn numerous written comments, posted to the Zoning Administrator website. One, submitted by retired Engineer Geologist Tom Peltier, argues that the US Copper project fails to meet this standard, noting that the proposed mining process will differ significantly from past methods used at the site: “While the previous underground mining methods involved tunneling into the mountain, removing only high-grade ore, and leaving most of the low-grade ore undisturbed, the proposed open pit mine would expose vast quantities of low-grade ore in waste piles and wall rock of the open pit to atmospheric conditions that would rapidly result in breakdown of sulfide minerals and acid generation,” Peltier writes.
Taylorsville resident Daniel Kearns makes a similar argument but for slightly different reasons. Kearns argues that, according to a pair of technical documents on the company website, the US Copper project plans to target minerals other than those mined in the past, including “magnetite, specularite and a Cu-Au-Co-Ni-As-Mo-LREE (light rare earth element).” “It should be inferred that new processes, techniques, equipment and chemicals will be used to extract these mineral credits,” Kearns writes.
At the heart of these arguments lies the fundamental question before the Zoning Administrator: How substantial do changes need to be before the clause is triggered, especially given the 100-plus-year timespan involved?
Health and environmental concerns
Although the Oct. 11 session was intended to focus on the legal issue at hand, community members in attendance raised concerns about human and environmental health, as well as county administrative capacity. Similar concerns have also arisen in the written public comments.
A statement from the Central Valley Water Board, indicates that “any prospective mining project has the potential to generate waste material at the site” and itemizes a number of permits, certifications, and standards required by state and federal law for the project to proceed. Another, from C.L. Woods of Greenville, echoes these concerns over water and resourcing: “It takes millions of gallons of water each day to keep the silica and dust under control in an open pit at this scale…How long does the groundwater last…?”
In response, US Copper has submitted a report titled “A History of Mine Regulation in the United States,” in which they track the reduction in mine worker fatalities since 1915 and document landmark environmental protection legislation. The report ends, “Copper is especially critical for our transition to renewable energy and we are forced to rely on imports to meet full demand. Production – from historic mines operating under modern environmental and safety standards – are a necessity.”
Dec. 13 meeting
The 10 a.m. discussion at the Zoning Administration meeting Dec. 13 is part of the county’s ongoing process to decide whether US Copper has vested mining rights. Ferguson plans to hire a mining consultant in January to review the documents the company has submitted. She told The Plumas Sun she does not expect a final decision until the spring of 2024 at the earliest.
