2008-05-13_REVISION - M1980244 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Keffelew, Berhan From: Carl Poch [cpoch99 @yahoo.com] Sent: Saturday, May 10, 2008 9:14 AM To: Keffelew, Berhan Subject: Re: M- 1980 -244 amendment Hi. I thought you would like to read how others feel about the destruction of our hillside. 5/7/2008 PO Box 158 345 County Rd 821 Cripple Creek, CO 80813 Teller County Colorado Board of Commissioners PO Box 959 112 North "A" Street Cripple Creek, CO 80813 Dear Commissioners, This letter is to express our opposition to the Cripple Creek and Victor (CC &V) mine expansion, currently being reviewed for approval by the appropriate County and State offices. We've read about all the good things the mine extension project is supposed to bring to some Teller County residents and interests. As County Commissioners, you need to give full consideration to an organization that, while hauling out tons of stuff worth $900 /ounce, can bring so many goodies. We realize you were elected to make decisions for greater good. But none of the CC &V's silky smooth Power Point presentations or deft outreach efforts, touting the Mine's wonderful benefits, tells us what Cripple Creek residents will lose in the exchange. We believe that loss should be reconsidered. For most of the folks who live south of the HW 67 tunnel, and within sight of the Cripple Creek caldera, it's pretty obvious. Just look south and east from Gillett flats on Highway 67, and you get a hint of what state -of -the art strip mining and mine reclamation look like. A couple miles closer to Cripple Creek, say from the scenic overlook or the Pikes Peak Heritage Center, the spectacle of modern, open pit mining and the miracle of mine reclamation come into full view. It isn't pretty. As a contrast, we enclosed a couple photos which show some of the natural beauty of the Poverty Gulch area which thousands who live or visit here thoroughly enjoy. The mining extension will destroy Poverty Gulch's beauty for generations; quite probably for longer. No reclamation process will restore the pretty scenery, the ecosystems and wildlife it contains, or the simple, historical features that still dimly connect us to Cripple Creek's fading past. What goes along with the views shown in these inadequate photographs are the sounds, smells and feel one can experience only by actually being here. Just a quarter mile out of Cripple Creek, in nearly any direction, one can still hear the wind in the pine and aspen, the low hoot of a Great Horned Owl at night and the proud screech of Red - tailed hawk by day. On clear nights, because of the current lack of offending light pollution, one can see stars, constellations, and meteor showers down to the horizon in nearly every direction (except over the Cresson mine area). The mine extension will change nearly all of that. In the near term, Cripple Creek residents looking east will instead get to enjoy round - the - clock, sun- bright stadium illumination showing impressive, grunting machines carve away decades -old forest. We can watch them gouge Globe and Gold Hills, 400 tons at a time, down to brown -gray nothingness. And long after all the gold gets shipped to whatever off -shore company it's going, we, the hearty, second - string residents of Teller County, will be the beneficiaries of huge shapeless, colorless, odorless and lifeless piles of rubble, trying to give life to sprigs of grass and pathetic 16 -inch saplings. At current gold prices, and with enough imagination, CC &V can surely be incentivized to figure ways to extract resources without destroying whole ecosystems in the process. This is our home, so we'll stay here regardless. But the results of your decision to approve the mine extension will surely destroy a lot of what is wonderful about Cripple Creek. 1