Reader Forum

New Mexico Business Journal, Nov, 2001

Support for Fence Lake

The proposed coal mine in Catron County will provide good jobs, more energy. (Reader Forum)

The glaring headlines in the newspapers are pretty hard to miss.

"80 New Mexico Mining Jobs Cut." "Rotating Blackouts Could Hit All of West, Not Just California." "Coal is Vital, Utilities Say."

The good people of New Mexico have been reading about the "energy crisis" and the resulting layoffs for months. What you may not have heard about is a major project being planned for western New Mexico that really can help all of us.

That jumpstart for our economy is the Fence Lake Project; a proposed surface coalmine located 14 miles north of Quemado. The 18,000 acres in the Fence Lake permit area covers both Catron and Cibola counties, two of New Mexico's most rural counties and where we really could use some good news these days.

Fence Lake is the site that a Phoenix-based municipal utility, Salt River Project, plans to dig about 80 million tons of coal over the next 50 years. Most of that coal will be mined to power SRP's 760-megawatt Coronado Generating Station, located just across the Arizona border in St. Johns.

SRP needs the Fence Lake Mine to replace the McKinley Mine, located near Gallup, which is expected to run out of coal by 2005. Since SRP's Coronado power plant provides enough electricity to serve about 190,000 of SRP's 750,000 customers in the Phoenix area, a new coal source is vital.

The best news of all is that residents of New Mexico will be the real winners with the Fence Lake Project. While most of the power fueled by our low-sulfur New Mexico coal will go to Arizona, some will make it's way back to New Mexico along the Western Grid.

Best of all, especially for our residents in Catron County, the Fence Lake Project will bring more than 200 jobs to an area of the state still reeling from job cuts by Phelps Dodge and other companies who, ironically cited higher energy costs as the reason for their layoffs.

Of these 200 jobs that will be created by the Fence Lake Mine, between 75 and 150 will remain for the duration of the mining operations. Another 100 to 160 jobs will be tied directly to the construction phase of the mine and a 43-mile railroad that will be constructed from the Fence Lake Mine in western New Mexico to the Coronado power plant in eastern Arizona.

If you don't think those jobs will be in high demand, check back to 1987 when SRP mined coal from the Fence Lake site to see if it would burn at the Coronado station. From that test burn, SRP received more than 1,400 job applications for only 14 jobs!

In addition to the new skilled and unskilled jobs being created, most of which will be filled by New Mexicans, our state's schoolchildren will benefit significantly. The estimated $60 million to $70 million in royalties that will come from the new mine will go directly to the New Mexico Education Trust Fund, adding another $60 million in taxes paid to New Mexico, and I'd say our state winds up doing pretty well, indeed.

Of course, there have been more than a few roadblocks for Salt River Project to negotiate, as it seeks final approval to begin construction of the mine. Concerns have been raised regarding the protections of the Zuni Salt Lake, and no less than seven different studies have been performed on the hydrology of the lake, located 12 miles from the Fence Lake Mine's well.

SRP, which enjoys a good reputation for environmental stewardship from its customers and neighbors in Arizona, assures us that it is committed to meeting all permit conditions and that the mined area will be returned to its approximate original contours and Zuni Salt Lake will not be adversely affected The approval process, which started in 1988 when SRF first sought a federal coal application from the BLM and has since withstood a handful of legal challenges, has finally moved to the point where there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Last month, the Fence Lake Project cleared the first of two important hurdles when the stat's Mining and Minerals Division approved a five-year extension to Sap's New Mexico surface mining permit.

And, perhaps very soon, the Department of the Interior will grant its approval of a Federal Mine Plan for Fence Lake. That will be the green light for SRP and the project's beneficiaries to start construction of the railroad and the mine, and set the stage for delivery of the first coal in January 2005.

The time is right for the nation and the West to develop more reliable and affordable energy supplies like this one at Fence Lake. For the people of New Mexico and our rural counties in western New Mexico, let's hope there are no further delays.

The commissioners of Catron County fully support the Fence Lake Project. Our residents are ready to get to work.

AUGGIE D. SHELLHORN

The author is chairman of the Catron County Commission

The Education System Must Change

Lost in the calls for moderation in an overhaul of the state's education. system are the children of New Mexico who are not being educated. Since Gary Johnson was first elected, spending for K-12 education has increased by half, while the number of children who leave school uneducated continues to increase.