contentious plan for an exponential expansion of the mine should be expedited under the 1872 Mining Act, which reduces regulatory hurdles to encourage mining of uncommon minerals with distinct values.
It turns out, the company that owns the Mid-Continent Limestone Quarry a mile above Glenwood Springs has not been able to prove it is selling valuable limestone. And the Department of the Interior last week said it must apply for a new permit — with more strict environmental scrutiny — to continue operating the 16-acre quarry on a ridge above town.
It’s the latest hurdle — and possibly a fatal blow — for a money-losing mining company with big plans.
The Interior Department on Jan. 3 sent a letter to Greenwood Village-based Rocky Mountain Industrials, or RMI, announcing that the agency has determined it is mining “common variety” limestone at the quarry, which is not authorized, and the company must stop operations and pay the government royalties for the value of the minerals it has mined over the past six years.
The company bought the mine in 2016 and two years later announced plans to expand to more than 400 acres. RMI argued that the 1872 Mining Act should allow the company’s expanded mining of high-grade limestone to proceed while paying lower royalty rates and facing fewer environmental regulations.
The expansion plan has faced ardent local opposition, with few wins for the mining company, which also owns a 620-acre rail terminal park east of Denver International Airport. The company’s larger plan is to ship limestone for concrete from Glenwood Springs to the railpark for use in Front Range projects.
A year ago the Bureau of Land Management, which is reviewing the RMI expansion plan, determined there was nothing particularly special about the limestone being mined at the Mid-Continent Quarry. The agency’s 205-page Determination of Common Variety study, which began in 2019, found that minerals mined from 44 mining claims owned by RMI were used for asphalt shingles, rip-rap, backfill and construction boulders. That use is considered “common variety” and not protected by the 1872 Mining Act.
But the manager of the BLM’s Colorado River Field Office, Larry Sandoval, said RMI could prove the limestone was high-grade with a detailed accounting of its sales of the limestone. According to the most recent letter from the Interior Department, the company was unable to provide proof it was selling high-grade limestone for things like airport runways. The company did provide a 2021 market study that proposed the mine would sell limestone for cement, but that would require shipping the limestone by train to manufacturing plants serving the Front Range.
“To date, BLM has not received significant evidence from RMI that it has taken steps to establish market entry for cement, including securing city and county permits that may be required to access rail loadout facilities from the mine,” reads the Jan. 3 letter from Steven Feldgus, the deputy assistant secretary of land and minerals management with the Interior Department.
Feldgus said the company owes royalty payments for the common limestone it has mined during the six years of the BLM study.
“This decision affirms the fundamental argument we have been making in federal court: that RMI has been mining and selling limestone from our public lands for end uses that aren’t allowed under its federal mining permit,” said Jeff Peterson, the head of the Glenwood Springs Citizens’ Alliance, in a statement.
The alliance, which had led the fight against the mine expansion, and Garfield County commissioners sued the BLM in 2020 in U.S. District Court in Denver arguing the agency was not properly enforcing regulations around the mine. RMI sued Garfield County arguing the federal government, not the county, should be in charge of regulating the mine. A Garfield County judge threw out RMI’s lawsuit in 2021.
The BLM has served RMI with notices that it is out of compliance with several regulations at the mine. In January 2023, a massive rockslide at the quarry halted operations and led the company to request a permit modification from the BLM to allow it to work around the rockslide. The letter from Feldgus did not address the expansion plan, the noncompliance issues or the permit change from the rockslide.
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BLM deals “big setback” to plan for massive expansion of limestone quarry above Glenwood Springs
12:04 PM MST on Feb 1, 20247:37 AM MST on Feb 2, 2024Massive rock slide halts operations at Glenwood Springs quarry. Mine opponents call for shut-down, investigation.
3:50 AM MST on Jan 27, 202311:53 AM MST on Jan 27, 2023County suspends new mining permit applications, blocking expansion of limestone mine near Glenwood Springs
1:36 PM MST on Nov 19, 2019Rocky Mountain Industrials paid $2.8 million for the quarry in 2016 and two years later proposed increasing limestone production to 5 million tons a year for 20 years, up from about 60,000 tons a year. The company’s plan would route as many as 400 trucks a day through town, up from about 20. RMI at the end of 2023 reported assets of $7 million and debts of $8.4 million, following a loss of $4 million in the last nine months of 2023. That’s down from a loss of $6.4 million in the same nine months of 2022. Since the company first formed in 2014 it has accumulated losses of $69.1 million.
“The city of Glenwood Springs has long been opposed to the expansion of the Mid-Continent Limestone Quarry and is glad to see the Department of the Interior taking decisive action here to show that the mine is nothing special and should be regulated just like any other quarry in Garfield County — not like a gold or lithium mine that provides critical minerals,” Mayor Ingrid Wussow said in an emailed statement. “The mine remains in noncompliance with multiple federal mining regulations and we urge the Bureau of Land Management to enforce the laws that are on the books. We thank Garfield County and the Glenwood Springs Citizens Alliance for their leadership in the federal courts and look forward to continuing our partnership to ensure that this decision stands.”
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