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The Rocky Mountain Industrials’ quarry and mill site in January 2021. If the company’s quarry expansion plans get BLM approval, it will ultimately need to make significant updates to Transfer Trail in order to accommodate the proposed increased operations.
The Rocky Mountain Industrials’ quarry and mill site in January 2021. If the company’s quarry expansion plans get BLM approval, it will ultimately need to make significant updates to Transfer Trail in order to accommodate the proposed increased operations.
Rocky Mountain Industrials received informal notice that Mid-Continent Quarry operations outside downtown Glenwood Springs were out of compliance with its approvals back when the company purchased the quarry in 2016 — but on Tuesday, the Greenwood Village-based company was the subject of an official noncompliance order from the Bureau of Land Management.
Now, RMI has 30 days to submit a plan to the BLM about how it intends to get its operations back in compliance, said Eric Coulter, BLM spokesperson for the Upper Colorado River District.
“It’s kind of a typical policy-driven notice. And it really just addresses some of the items that are currently outside of their plan of operations,” Coulter said.
Specifically, the notice — issued by BLM Field Manager Larry Sandoval against RMI, addressing RMI CEO Brian Fallin — outlines four arenas of concern: the grading and sloping for the mill site and the lower access road are not “within the authorized area in the approved plan of operations;” the current highwall portion of the quarry does not comply with the approved plan; stormwater structures have been constructed outside the approved area; and the mill bench topsoil storage pile is inadequate for future site reclamation and not properly graded.
Some of these noncompliance issues were inherited by the previous quarry operators, and the BLM offered RMI a “reasonable” timeframe to address the concerns. RMI did just that in 2018 — as part of its much larger proposal to expand the quarry, from roughly 23 acres to about 321. It was met with dogged local opposition, and that same year, the nonprofit Glenwood Springs Citizens’ Alliance formed. Today, 310 businesses and organizations have officially endorsed the group’s efforts, and it has collected more than 2,600 individual signatures.
“We are encouraged to see that BLM is finally dealing with RMI’s failure to comply with its permits, which the Alliance and the Glenwood Springs community have been urging for years,” Jeff Peterson, president of the Glenwood Springs Citizens’ Alliance, said in a statement.
Still, Peterson and his group allege that RMI shouldn’t be able to continue with its current operations at all — at the center of the issue, and what could be evaluated by a mineral exams study, is a disagreement surrounding the quality of limestone in the quarry. RMI leadership has maintained that the purity of the limestone is such that it is protected under an 1872 mining law that trumps federal regulations. Local opposition groups contend that the purity is only of a common grade.
“Unfortunately, BLM’s notice doesn’t address another, more serious compliance problem. RMI continues to mine, process and sell common variety limestone from our public lands while lacking the proper approvals for that type of sale,” Peterson said.
The Glenwood Springs Citizens’ Alliance sued the BLM in 2020 for allegedly not enforcing its own rules.
“RMI’s continuing business model of selling limestone for ‘common variety’ purposes, such as road base, riprap and decorative rocks, is what necessitated GSCA’s lawsuit against BLM in 2020. This violation still hasn’t been resolved,” Peterson added.
The current noncompliance order only pertains to RMI’s present operations.
“The notice and order will not address potential expansion that Rocky Mountain Industrials proposed with their 2019 Plan Modification,” Coulter wrote in an email.
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