I see that your little boy, the furry one, is out in Nevada carrying a picket sign...
Glitter in That Litter
Cat Clay at Center of Nev. Mining Dispute
By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 8, 2002; Page A01
RENO, Nevada -- For a quarter century, geologists searched for the perfect clay, for that one deposit of light, fluffy and -- most important -- highly absorbent pay dirt.
Then, eureka! They found it here at the scrubby fringe of suburbia, where the world's largest producer of kitty litter hopes to dig a giant open-pit mine on public land to extract millions of tons of the dust-free pellets that discerning house cats prefer.
But a surprise challenge from the county recently brought the project to a halt -- at least temporarily -- and the controversy is shining a light on growing tensions among local communities, the federal government and the mining industry.
"This is the beginning of the end of mining as king in the West, and isn't it ironic that it might be because of kitty litter?" said Tom Myers, executive director of Great Basin Mine Watch, a group that opposes the cat-clay dig because it is too close to human habitat, including an adjoining Indian reservation.
Not so fast, the miners say.
"Under the Mining Law, that clay is ours, and we intend to take it," said Bob Vetere, vice president and general counsel for Oil-Dri Corp. of Chicago, maker of Cat's Pride, which seeks to mine its clay claim on land overseen by the federal Bureau of Land Management.
At the center of this case, and almost every other dispute over mining in the West, is a resilient piece of legislation called the General Mining Law of 1872. It grants sweeping rights to miners to extract gold, silver, copper and even cat clay from federal lands without paying a penny in royalties to taxpayers.
Signed by President Ulysses S. Grant, the law was designed to encourage expansion and settlement of the West. Today, the law is generally interpreted to be so tilted toward the mining industry that it is hard for the federal government -- and almost impossible for local or state governments -- to deny a committed miner the right to dig.
But that might be changing.
Almost everyone, including the mining industry, says the 1872 law needs to be updated, though there is little agreement how, and previous attempts have ended in stalemate.
Bruce Babbitt, Interior secretary in the Clinton administration, tried to rewrite the Mining Law in 1994. But as he conceded immediately before leaving office, "I had my head handed to me."
Babbitt sought royalties and the right of federal bureaucrats to deny some mines if the land had greater value for recreation or wildlife habitat. (Currently, companies taking oil and gas from public lands pay royalties of 12 percent to the U.S. treasury; coal miners pay 8 percent; silver, gold, copper, kitty clay and other "hard-rock" mines pay nothing.)
The miners in turn contend that the public lands are there to be exploited, responsibly; that modern techniques are much less polluting or even benign; that the minerals are an important part of the regional and national economies; and that digging for gold is a riskier proposition than drilling for oil and so royalties need to be relatively small.
Industry-backed reforms did pass Congress, but they did not go far enough for President Bill Clinton, who vetoed the bill. Then he and Babbitt sought to stiffen the Mining Law through a series of administrative decrees, including new powers to deny mines if they caused significant and irreparable harm.
But after taking office, the Bush administration rescinded the Clinton-era orders, saying the rules violated the Mining Law of 1872.
"There's a reason we have the 1872 Mining Law as our guiding light yet today," Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton said, "and that is because time after time after time attempts to change that law have failed to reach consensus."
Norton said the Bush administration would like the law changed, but she held out little hope that would happen during an election year.
"The industry would like to create the illusion that they're reforming, but there'll be a fight. We consider the current proposals to be sham reform," said Stephen D'Esposito, executive director of the Mineral Policy Center in Washington, an environmental advocacy group.
Jack Gerard, president of the National Mining Association, said his industry group is willing to support reform and ready to pay "reasonable royalties and holding fees," but is opposed to placing any more land off-limits to mining.
As Washington gridlocks on the issue, most of the action has been taken in the western states.
In Montana, for example, voters passed an initiative to ban the use of cyanide, which is used to leach precious minerals from the raw rock but may leave poison behind. The ban is being challenged in the courts.
In Washington state, residents continue to fight over the Crown Jewel gold mine. The state denied necessary water permits -- a rare instance of a state action essentially trumping the Mining Law. Mining companies have spent $80 million on a fight that has bounced around in the courts for years.
In Nevada, where mining is the second-largest industry and gold mines are so big that the largest can be seen from an orbiting space shuttle, the kitty litter case has garnered extraordinary media attention -- and resounding silence from most of the state's political leaders.
"I believe that mining is good for Nevada and the country," said Pete Sferrazza, an attorney and Washoe County commissioner, who voted against the kitty litter company. "But when people understand how much power is given to miners in the Mining Law, they're shocked."
Sferrazza said frustration is growing over Washington's inability to improve the mining law, by which the commissioner means giving local property owners and governments more say over what mines are acceptable.
Just north of Reno, where the leading edge of suburban sprawl bumps against sagebrush desert, the cat clay claims are found in two parcels administered by the federal Bureau of Land Management. It is not a pristine place.
There are gravel roads and wire fences and a nearby sewage lagoon serving the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, a band of urban Indian transplants who built a small reservation-housing development abutting the mine site. The Indians bitterly oppose the kitty litter operation, saying the mine will blanket their quiet valley in noise and dust, and endanger their lives with a constant procession of trucks hauling the litter away.
Vetere, of Oil-Dri, said the company has tried mightily to mollify its critics, offering to operate the mine, for example, only during daylight hours five days a week.
But why can't the company just go someplace else?
"The beauty of the claim is that the clay is just five or 10 feet below the surface," Vetere said. It is easy to get. The miners will drive a bulldozer into the deposit and scoop it up.
Vetere also argues that the clay is unique. "Light, fluffy, super-absorbent clay," he said. "It makes us happy and it makes cats happy."
There is not another deposit like it west of the Mississippi, Vetere said. The company is getting its cat clay from a mine near Ochlocknee, Ga., but the transportation costs are expensive and Oil-Dri and its clients, such as Clorox and Wal-Mart, which market Fresh Step and Special Kitty, have been looking for years for litter sources in the West.
Vetere said he never imagined that his company would be denied permits. It owned the claim, after all. It spent $1 million on environmental studies and showed that the mine would not violate air or water quality regulations. It secured permission to mine the claim from the Bureau of Land Management and was ready to go.
But the kitty litter mine was stopped by a 3 to 2 vote of Washoe County commissioners, who blocked the proposed 20-year-long dig by refusing to issue a special permit to operate a processing plant on nearby private property. The commissioners said a big, dusty, busy mine, so close to the suburbs, did not fit into their master plan for the area -- although a gravel pit does operate down the road.
In any other land-use debate, this would be unremarkable. But what makes this case different is that a local government successfully interjected itself between a miner and a mine, challenging 130 years of precedent. Under the Mining Law, it is unclear whether the federal government can deny a claim to mine as long as the company seeking to dig has meet air and water standards.
"I don't count on Washington doing anything, but I believe if we can establish precedents, then we can show that local communities can win against bad mines," said Myers of the Mine Watch group in Reno. "We're not against all mining. But you can't tell me it's a good idea to set one down here in the suburbs."
Vetere said Oil-Dri will be back. The company will either seek to build a processing plant on federal land or it will truck the raw clay to another facility far away -- thereby circumventing the need to get permission from the local authorities, in his mind.
"Just because we let local decision stand, that's not setting any precedent," Vetere said. If Oil-Dri sues the county, and demands its right to mine in federal court, which it still might do, Vetere envisions years of legal wrangling. "We won't walk away," he said.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company |
