Local mining ordinance eyed for Pembroke

The Pembroke Town Hall was packed with an interested if noisy crowd the evening of April 6 when an information meeting was held to discuss the proposed metallic mineral mining ordinance. A special town meeting will be held on Wednesday, May 4, at 6 p.m. at the town hall for residents to vote by ballot on whether or not to approve the ordinance.
While there were moments of rancor, with noise levels ebbing and flowing as pockets of the room heckled, booed or applauded, Aga Dixon, an attorney with Drummond Woodsum who specializes in municipal law and who drafted the proposed ordinance, summed up the feeling in the room when she said that as a member of a family who were political refugees from Poland many years ago, there is "nothing more precious than participatory democracy -- there is no more valuable ore," and she ended by encouraging everyone to cast their vote on May 4 no matter what their opinion about the ordinance. Loud applause followed. And another speaker, 16 year-old student Joey McGlaughlin, said, "I speak with my voice. I need you to speak with your ballot."
On hand at the April 6 meeting were Katherine Swann and Jason Barrett, both with Friends of Cobscook Bay; Jeremy Ouellette, vice president of product development with Wolfden Resources Corporation, the mining company that is eyeing the Big Hill area for a potential metallic mining operation; and Town of Pembroke attorney Dennis Mahar. Swann opened by summarizing the ordinance. If the town doesn't have an ordinance, the decisions about a mining operation like Wolfden are up to Augusta, she said, without any local input. Barrett described a months long process of trying to get answers from Wolfden about the veracity of the company's ownership of mineral rights to land that he and his brother own. It turns out that Wolfden does own the rights because of a sale many years ago that Barrett was unaware of, but it was the length of time it took to get a satisfactory response with documentation that caused his frustration with the company.
Ouellette apologized to Barrett and then spoke to three areas: the Maine Department of Environmental Protection's Chapter 200, which sets out rules for large scale mining operations; his view of the proposed ordinance; and Wolfden and Ouellette's mining experience. The audience provided some heckling when Ouellette explained that, while Wolfden "has no operations experience," it had over 400 years of experience in mining spread among all of its employees. Ouellette worked for the Halfmile Mine in northern New Brunswick, operated by a different company. "The water was tested regularly and there was no impact," he said.
The proposed ordinance was "drafted very clearly to protect the environment," Ouellette said. "It seems that its rules are parallel to what's in Chapter 200 already." He added that he didn't support it because it prohibits large scale mining. Chapter 200, he said, is focused on water management.
Dixon explained that Maine DEP Chapter 200 water quality regulation "is aimed at massive-scale mining, nothing else." When the legislature created the regulations, she noted, they left everything else up to towns and local control. She elaborated with examples such as how a town might govern the impacts and costs of a mining company's heavy transport trucks on local roads, or the blasting impacts on building foundations. A local ordinance "deals with the issues that the state has expressly carved out for local control" to create for itself.
During the introductions, Mahar had stated that there was one item in the ordinance that he was concerned about, page 1 item E, the date of applicability of "any proceedings and applications that were or are pending on or any time after December 20, 2021." He also suggested that enforcing the ordinance might be an expensive and legally taxing endeavor. However, audience members suggested otherwise, pointing out that without large scale mining, there wasn't much left to enforce that wasn't already in existence. Code Enforcement Officer Jim Slowe begged to differ, adamant in his belief that he was not qualified to enforce it and didn't want to be. Dixon responded, noting that the threat of lawsuits is generally a red herring, that she could sit down with Slowe and explain how to enforce the ordinance and that it wasn't difficult.
When asked if the Wolfden land would be used as a tailings site if its Pickett Mountain project in Penobscot County were to operate, Ouellette said, "We have no plan to bring tailings to Pembroke." He explained that it had been an option for an alternative assessment that was required by the Land Use Planning Commission for Wolfden's Pickett Mountain application, which has since been withdrawn.
Stephen Sanfilippo said that the decision the voters make is perpetual. "It's not even for your children or your grandchildren," he stated. "Ultimately you have to answer to your descendants if something goes wrong."
Summary of ordinance
In summary, the metallic mineral mining ordinance prohibits industrial scale metallic mineral mining operations and sets new standards for community scale metallic mineral mining. It does not regulate gravel pits or other types of non metallic mineral extraction. Nor does it regulate other types of excavation or mining operations such as excavations of sand, fill, gravel, clay, topsoil, peat, silt or rock.
Industrial scale metallic mineral mining is defined by the ordinance as: an operation that extracts 10,000 or more tons of mine waste per calendar year; has a mining area of three acres or more; or extracts 10,000 or more tons of bulk sampling material during exploration.
Community scale metallic mineral mining is defined as any operation that is not industrial scale. Such a mining operation would need to secure a planning board permit to ensure water quality protection and that the operation is not a nuisance to neighbors. In addition, the ordinance requires written notice for exploration activities to the town and to abutting landowners.
The ordinance can be found at www.friendsofcobscookbay.wordpress.com.