The fight over molybdenum mining on Mount Emmons — the pink-hued peak that Crested Butte locals call their Red Lady — is over. After nearly 50 years of impassioned battle to block hard-rock blasting on the Red Lady, the Forest Service has approved a deal that will forever remove the prospect of mining on thousands of acres in the watersheds above Crested Butte.
The decision by Chad Stewart, the supervisor of the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests, still requires deal-closing signatures in September from the Mount Emmons Mining Co., the Crested Butte Land Trust and the Forest Service.
The decision marks a final step in a culture-defining campaign that began in the 1970s as the end-of-the-road community began to transition away from mining and embrace a less impactful appreciation of natural amenities. The deal ends the longest running mine clash in the Lower 48.
“Most mine fights do not end in a collaborative agreement to end mining,” said Julie Nania with High Country Conservation Advocates, or HCCA, who has spent a decade working with the Mount Emmons Mining Co., local leaders and environmental groups on the complex deal to eliminate mining above Crested Butte. “It’s finally here. It is so amazing.”
The Keystone Mine began blasting on Red Lady for silver, lead and zinc in the 1880s. The mine shuttered in the 1960s. The American Metals Climax company, owned by U.S. Energy Corp., in the late 1970s proposed a 30-year plan to mine as much as 25 million tons of high-grade molybdenum — and 220 million tons of lower-grade ore — from Mount Emmons, igniting opposition in the community where skiers were replacing miners. (Silver-white molybdenum — everyone calls it “moly” to avoid the tongue-twisting b-to-d — has a high melting point making it a valuable strengthener for alloyed steel.)
The moly-mining plan weathered lawsuits filed by Crested Butte, Gunnison County and HCCA from the late 1990s through the 2000s that focused on the federal government’s leasing of mineral rights in the Red Lady basin. In 2013, the Forest Service gave preliminary approval to U.S. Energy’s plan to mine moly on the peak and route mine trucks through Crested Butte, spurring vehement opposition.
A financially struggling U.S. Energy Corp. sold the Mount Emmons Mining operation on Red Lady — and a water treatment plant on Coal Creek upstream of Crested Butte it opened in the early 1980s — to international mining giant Freeport-McMoRan in 2016. Freeport-McMoRan’s predecessor, Phelps Dodge, had owned the mine briefly in the 1990s, leaving it on the hook for cleanup should U.S. Energy declare bankruptcy.
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As Freeport-McMoRan studied the costs of operating the water treatment plant and reclamation around the Keystone Mine, the company negotiated a deal with Crested Butte to surrender more than 1,300 mining claims on 9,000 acres above town in exchange for a land swap that would enable more efficient operation of the water treatment facility. Voters in Crested Butte in 2016 approved $2.1 million in bonds — to be repaid by the town’s real estate transfer tax fund — to help Mount Emmons Mining Co. manage water treatment and reclamation.
A year before, reclamation workers at the dormant Gold King Mine above Silverton breached a tailings dam, spilling 3 million gallons of orange toxic mine waste into the Animas River watershed.
The Gold King Mine blowout spurred the state and federal government to crack down on owners of dormant mines and their reclamation work. And it played a role in the Mount Emmons Mining Co. stepping up to negotiate a better plan for treating Coal Creek water flowing into Crested Butte.
The land transfer plan is the final step in that process that began in 2016.
The swap includes the Forest Service taking over management of 625 acres of undeveloped parcels and inholdings across four ranches.The deal includes wetlands along Carbon Creek inside the 15,000-acre Whetstone Roadless Area in Gunnison County. The Forest Service also gets habitat for the federally threatened Gunnison sage-grouse along Monchego Creek in Saguache County, sections of the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail and Colorado Trail, and wetlands along Sheep and Spanish creeks in Saguache County.
Mount Emmons Mining Co. gets 539 acres on three federally managed parcels east and west of the Keystone Mine that includes the company’s water treatment plant, tailings storage and retention ponds. It also gives the mining company ownership of a small parcel where it can collect materials needed for reclamation work.
A federal appraisal estimated the value of the 539 acres taken over by the mining company at $2.49 million. The value of the four ranches the Forest Service gets was appraised at $1.94 million. The mining company will pay the Forest Service $550,000 in cash to balance out the agreement.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife supports the swap as an opportunity to protect Gunnison sage-grouse habitat as well as migration corridors and winter ranges for mule deer and elk. The agency encouraged the Forest Service to limit new trails in the Whetstone Roadless Area and maintain the area’s wilderness travel limits that prevent motorized or mechanized access.
The Colorado Water Quality Control Division, Gunnison County and Crested Butte will continue to safeguard water at the mine’s treatment plant.
The mining company can now own the land beneath the water treatment plant, allowing it to make improvements and manage the facility without going through lengthy review by the Forest Service and Environmental Protection Agency.
“It was better for them to have control over that liability instead of the EPA having control and the mining company getting stuck with EPA cleanup bills,” Nania said.
Freeport-McMoRan spokesman Jim Telle said the Mount Emmons Mining Co. spent three years hammering out details for the land exchange that gives the company land to better manage reclamation work at the historic mine site.
“MEMC will immediately place the exchanged lands into conservation, ensuring that the local communities can continue to enjoy the Red Lady for present and future generations,” Telle said in an email.
The agreement includes the Mount Emmons Mining Co. placing conservation easements and surrendering mineral rights on all the land it owns, creating two levels of protection to prevent mining. The conservation easements also prevent any residential or commercial development on the mine-owned land, while allowing nonmotorized recreation.
“I am convinced that this land exchange is in the public interest,” Forest Supervisor Stewart wrote in his decision, which excluded the land exchange from environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act. Stewart said his decision was based on the conservation easement and mineral extinguishment plan between the mining company and the Crested Butte Land Trust.
Another layer of protection includes the Biden administration’s April 2024 withdrawal of 221,898 federally managed acres in the Thompson Divide south of Glenwood Springs from any mining and energy development for 20 years. But that withdrawal does not include “valid existing rights,” which could be argued to include the 1,300-plus mining claims owned by the Mount Emmons Mining Co.
“The underlying analyses by the federal government supporting the recent Red Lady decisions are unique in that they clearly articulate that the economic importance of tourism and biodiversity supported by our natural ecosystems outweighs the value of mining,” Crested Butte Mayor Ian Billick said in a statement.