| The Magazine of the CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES |
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| habitats The Rainbow at theEnd of the Mine
An hour's drive from my cinder block hotel room, I turn off Highway 127 onto a dirt track. It is three a.m. and the temperature is already 90o F. By mid-morning it will climb well above 120. I head west along the southern boundary of Death Valley National Park trying to find, in a moonless but star-jammed sky, a hole on the horizon that will be the butte marking the beginning of my walk to the Rainbow Talc Mine. Five years ago I could have driven my rented 4x4 across four miles of BLM-administered land to the entrance of the mine. If I were to try that today, I might find myself facing a stiff fine. Since the passage of the California Desert Protection Act (CDPA) this land has been part of National Park Wilderness, a sacrosanct status protecting it from cars and other mechanical intrusions. So I walk, grateful that I will see no "imprint of man's work," to borrow the operative phrase from the Wilderness Act (WA) of 1964. Even park rangers must leave their vehicles behind when they enter. Wilderness with a capital W–that land protected by the WA–is inviolable. Well, supposedly. Today the inviolability of this wilderness area is threatened with radical redefinition. Rainbow Talc Mine may soon become infamous as the site of the first legal use of a National Park Wilderness Area to include the ongoing roar of trucks and heavy machinery, explosives, massive generators, and perhaps even power lines. Because provisions in the 1872 Mining Law mandate access and support to mining claims, miners may also regrade and, while even rangers walk, monopolize the road. There is no trail to follow, but my directions are clear: circle to the east of the butte and cut across to the western side of Saddle Peak Hills, the hump of starlessness beyond the butte. By the time I get there, the sun should be rising over the Avawatz Mountains revealing, on the southwestern exposure of Saddle Peaks, Rainbow Mine. My steps crunch through the sand as quick and constant as an excited heartbeat. I feel as if I am deep underwater in a warm, sunless sea beneath a huge school of bioluminescent fishes. I stop to drink a quart of water, then resume my march, going over in my mind what brought me here. Rainbow was operated on and off between 1956 and 1971. In those days the mining claim was on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land and the owners were, in the spirit of the Mining Law of 1872, able to extract their profit in pretty much any fashion they preferred. They chose to cut deep tunnels into the hillside and cart out chunks of the soft, white silicate. Talc is used in a dozen industries from baby powder to lubricants, markers, spark plugs, ceramics, paint, paper, roofing materials, plastic, and rubber. In 1971 the mine was closed amid fears about mining southern California talc, which contains tremolite, thought to be carcinogenic. Nineteen years later, the mine owners decided, given a supposedly better understanding of the toxic nature of tremolite, and a bullish economy hungry for talc, that it would be profitable to reopen. They were given permission by the BLM to extract 10,000 tons of talc just as the CDPA concluded its roller-coaster ride through Congress. The operators found themselves with a worthless BLM permit to operate a mine on property belonging to the Park Service. Not only was their permit invalidated, but they suddenly had a far less sympathetic landlord. To pass the CDPA, its proponents had to make a number of compromises; high among them were honoring valid mining claims made within the newly defined parks and wilderness areas, and agreeing to consider granting temporary permits to those mines already operating within the new parks. Before granting a permit, the Park Service–doing its best to ease both the burden on Rainbow and the political tension surrounding the Park Service's new acquisitions–conducted an accelerated environmental assessment (EA), and found the impacts insufficient to curtail the mine's reopening. When they posted the results for public comment, however, they were barraged by letters of protest. Neither the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, Desert Survivors, nor the National Parks and Conservation Association expected the Park Service to grant a mining permit in a Wilderness Area without doing a full review. Chastened by hundreds of protest letters, the Park
Service opted to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), a
more thorough review than an EA. That EIS, just begun and expected to
take at least two years, will study the site for the presence of rare
species, such as California leaf-nosed bats and California fringe-toed
lizards, and evaluate the effect of reopening the mine on the environment
and wildlife. As far as I can tell, there are five possible ways the Rainbow Talc story can unfold. First, the EIS could reach a "no jeopardy" finding and the mine could be granted a permit to reopen, setting a new precedent for the treatment of National Park Wilderness Areas. A preferable variation of this option would be the granting of a permit requiring mitigations so stringent that operating the mine would be unprofitable. Though this might spare this wilderness, it would still set a dangerous precedent. Another possibility would be to draw Rainbow, along with the Ibex hills and dunes area, out of the park boundaries altogether. That's what the mine owners want, but it would require an act of Congress and would also set a precedent, perhaps one as dangerous as opening a mine in a wilderness area. Even Representative Jerry Lewis, famous for his strident opposition to the CDPA, was unwilling to take the heat for diminishing a park. Without a legislator behind it, this simply won't happen. Fourth, the park could buy the mine. Park Service policy encourages the purchase, when possible, of mining sites if they threaten to degrade park resources. In a hopeful sign, the park recently hired an appraiser, says Richard Anderson, Death Valley's resources manager. Unfortunately, there is no money in the park's operating budget for buying land. The park would need congressional authorization for such a purchase, and that could take years. Perhaps a knight in shining armor will appear in the form of a non-profit land conservation organization.... Finally, Congress could reform the Mining Law of 1872, one of the biggest resource subsidies anyplace, ever, so that public land management agencies like the Park Service can close mines, or keep them closed, within their boundaries. Rainbow is in wilderness, but in other respects it is hardly unique. In Death Valley alone there are 300 mining claims. In the Mojave National Preserve there are another 1,000. And in Joshua Tree National Park there are 59. The Cima Cinder Mine, in the northwest portion of the Mojave National Preserve–also created by the CDPA and overseen by the Park Service–is an example of a mine operating under the Park Service's jurisdiction. It's not a promising precedent. Though not a wilderness area, the Cima Cinder Cones are a National Natural Landmark. And the mine operators are carting one of them off while the Park Service looks the other way. The cinder cones are great piles of pyroclastic material and lava formed by volcanic vents. They jut like melting chocolate kisses out of a beautiful, flat Joshua tree forest that hosts an endemic subspecies of the plant. "One of the cones may be only 900 years old," says Art Montana, an emeritus professor of geochemistry at UCLA. "For education they can't be beat. Like the Hawaiian islands, they are geology in action." When the National Preserve was formed and the Park Service inherited Cima Cinder Mine from the BLM, it only granted the mine operators a one-year permit, after which they were supposed to submit a new application. That was four years ago. The Park Service's distaste for forcing miners to follow resource-protecting regulations apparently exceeds their distaste for watching a National Landmark under their management being hauled away. Yes, the Park Service is held hostage by the 1872 Mining Law, which guards the rights of miners on all public lands, but one begins to wonder when hostages cooperate so willingly. The sun is raising the curtain on a spectacular landscape. As I walk around the Saddle Peaks, the hill containing the Rainbow Mine entrance, I catch sight of the Ibex Dunes for the first time. They are exquisite in the dawn light, the chiaroscuro of their curving spines and the waves of lesser shadows radiating down their sides. I am neither prepared for their beauty, nor for their proximity to the mine itself. Their slopes taper down, literally, to within a stone's throw of the main shaft. After ogling for a minute, I climb the hill to the mine opening. Cool air pours out of its mouth, as if it had been sucking ice cubes and peppermints. Once inside, I see the source of the "peppermint" smell is less sweet than candy, but in its own way far cooler. It is bat guano. There are big piles on the floor, though I see no sign of the bats themselves. Cristi Baldino, a Park Service biologist conducting a bat survey in the mine's tunnels, has found a maternity colony of pallid bats here, as well as the presence of western pipistrelles and Mexican free-tailed bats. As I take deep breaths of the cool air I am only a little comforted by the results of the EA, which found no asbestiform tremolite, the carcinogenic agent whose supposed presence here forced the mine's closure. Montana, who spent 25 years studying the geology of the California desert, is suspicious of that negative report. The 20 samples taken are insufficient to find the stuff if it is there, he says. Furthermore, Caliente Mine, where the carcinogen has been found, is only about a quarter of a mile from Rainbow and taps into the same talc vein. "If Caliente has asbestiform tremolite, Rainbow may well, too," says Montana. But at the moment, at nearly 115 oF outside, I feel I'll be lucky if I live long enough to die of asbestos poisoning. Clearly bats aren't the only animals using the mine. A dozen red-tailed hawk feathers are strewn near the mine's entrance. The raptor presumably retreats here, just as I have, to escape the heat of the day. Kit foxes use it, too, as do other birds. After half an hour spelunking, I come back into the now blinding light. Angular sunlight brings the tracks of the previous night's creatures into high relief: sidewinders, western shovel-nosed snakes, stink beetles. Strange markings look like they may have been left by the ground-hunting pallid bats chasing insects. The tracks of a kangaroo rat end with a tussle right where they cross those of a kit fox. And there is direct evidence of wildlife, too. I see a desert iguana, countless speedy zebra-tail-lizards, and a side-blotched lizard, all out hunting before it gets too hot even for them. It will be a scorching walk from this extraordinary, secluded place back to the road. But, at least for now anyway, I won't be passed by trucks hauling away the innards of these hills. Gordy Slack is an Associate Editor at California Wild. |
Fall 1998
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