Jordan Wirfs-Brock: Green gold in the foothills

Green Gold in the Foothills
Note: I wrote this as a deadline story for my Reporting on the Environment class.

March 17, 2009

Tom Hendricks hefted a potato-sized chunk of glittery rock above his head and asked if anyone knew the price of gold.
Guesses rebounded through the audience: $925? $922? $867?

“Gold closed at $915.60 an ounce today,” said Hendricks. He passed the rock – a piece of ore from his mine near Nederland, Colo. – to the person with best guess.

On Tuesday night at the Boulder Public Library – on a stage covered in relics like a helmet, a rock hammer, maps and a jar of crushed limestone – Hendricks gave a lecture on the 150-year history of mining in Boulder County. Hendricks has been mining in Colorado since 1971. He also talked about the future, which he hopes will be filled with silver and gold. As vice president of Calais Resources, Hendricks embodies two of hard-rock mining’s recent trends: the expansion of gold mines in response to record prices in 2008 and efforts to clean up mining’s dirty image by introducing environmentally responsible practices.

In October, the Boulder County Commissioners approved Calais Resource’s plans to expand operations at Nederland’s Cross Mine. As soon as mid-April, Hendricks hopes to start mining up to 200 tons of ore a day and employ 30 people. He’s determined to do it in a way that will benefit the local community and ecosystem.

“I think somewhere, deep down inside, everyone can get gold fever,” said Hendricks, who wore denim overalls, leather boots yellow laces up to the knees, a green bandana tied around his neck, and a cowboy hat. “I was accused one time of giving a Sierra Club director gold fever.”

But it’s not Sierra Club who is demanding that gold mining enforces stricter environmental and social standards. It’s jewelry giants such as Wal-Mart and Tiffany & Co. The non-profit organization Earthworks has also been running a “No Dirty Gold” campaign.

The plans for Cross Mine, Hendricks said, include recycling drill bits and oil, giving Boulder County crushed waste to be used as road building material, painting facilities to blend with the landscape, carpooling for employees, and donating money to Nederland community centers.

Hendricks is committed to public awareness. “If you want to find out something about the mine, call me up at midnight or on a Sunday and I’ll take you through every inch of it,” Hendricks said.

Gold is usually found underground in concentrations less than 0.1 ounce per ton. That means 250 tons of rock could be mined for the gold in one wedding ring. The most destructive aspects of gold mining are the piles of waste rock it leaves behind and the potentially dangerous chemicals – like cyanide and mercury –used to leach gold from ore.

There were two brothers, Hendricks said, who discovered $3 million worth of gold in an Eldora mine by throwing a hat into the air and digging where it landed.

“That was a pretty smart choice,” Hendricks said as he took of his own hat and tossed it across the stage. But Hendricks isn’t leaving anything to chance at Cross Mine. He will minimize waste by using precise core drilling to locate the most concentrated veins of minerals. Flotation processes – where ground-up ore is mixed with oil and gasses are bubbled through to separate out the minerals –will eliminate the need for cyanide or mercury. After he’s through extracting gold and silver, he’ll inject the rock back into the ground.

William Atkinson, a geology professor at the University of Colorado, has faith in Hendrick’s plans for Cross Mine. “If you put it all back like it was, the fact that the gold is gone is not going to hurt the environment,” Atkinson said. He’s observed mines where in the active site, “it looks like a disaster area, but if you look at the areas they’ve reclaimed…you cannot tell where the mines were.”

At the talk, Hendricks won over many of the about 80 people who attended. “If we have people with the concern Tom has and a feel for the region and the ecology, mining is fine,” said Jim Gigone after the talk.

“Tom Hendricks is the man,” said Carrie Courtney-Trujillo, of Nederland.

Even with careful practices, opponents argue that mining gold isn’t justified because most of it is used for jewelry, not necessities. But Atkinson argued that many people around the globe rely on gold, not banks or creditors, to store wealth.

“It’s necessary for our financial health to have some commodity,” Atkinson said.

Hendricks sees gold as immune to the current economic crisis. “I love it. Gold’s gonna skyrocket.”

If gold prices stay high, Cross Mine could make $12.5 million to $15 million a year.

ld’s gonna do very well, and silver’s gonna do very well,” said Hendricks. Then he paused. If prices fall to what they were a decade ago, around $300 an ounce, the mine could lose millions. “At least I hope they do.”

That’s the danger, and thrill, of mining. No matter how environmentally sound it becomes.