Susan Moree:
So Nick, tell me about what's going on in Hurley. There's a new mayor.
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, of course. The longtime Hurley mayor, Ed Stevens, passed away in December, less than a month after he had been reelected to another term out there. And so, the town council in Hurley advertised for applicants. And by the time appointment day rolled around, they only had one. And that's Reynaldo Minas, who had served on the council in Harley. He had also been working with the town to set up some security cameras.
Susan Moree:
But in Silver City, there is not a new city council. Can you tell me about that?
Nick Seibel:
No, there is not. We talked about last week before folks had applied to fill the District 1 seat on the Silver City Town Council that had been left vacant when Rudy Bencomo stepped down just after the November election and left that seat vacant. The old mayor and council decided to wait until the first of the year when the new council and mayor took office. New Mayor, Simon Wheaton-Smith, basically said he couldn't make up his mind and so opened it up to the town council, invited them each to make a nomination, and he said whoever got the majority vote would be the person that he would appoint, which is not usually the way that works. As it turns out, out of the four folks who had put their names in the hats, the three remaining town councilors each picked one. And when it came down to it, they each voted for the one that they had nominated. And so it was a deadlock. The mayor's intention, he said, is to revisit that at the council's next meeting, which is next Wednesday.
Susan Moree:
Okay. And tell us about there are some mining claims in Pinos Altos. Tell us about that.
Nick Seibel:
Yeah, a big deal. A lot of folks are concerned about that. A large swath of territory, over 13,000 acres, that stretch from Signal Peak over to the Our Lady of Guadalupe Monastery, which is off of Bear Mountain Road. A big swath of land just north of Silver City, where a mining company has been staking claims. The company is called the Pinos Altos Exploration Company, which is a subsidiary of a company called Ivanhoe Electric, which is based in the United States. They have a lot of mining interests around the country. And if you look at their website, they say they basically mine anything that involved in electricity, batteries, that sort of thing. Here, it seems like they're primarily interested in copper, which, as we all know, there's a lot of around Silver City. But it’s a huge area, and some of those claim markers that they've placed have actually been on private property, including on property owned by the monastery, more property over in the Little Cherry Creek area owned by a former county commissioner. So obviously just some, you know, sort of miscommunication there. But the Trump administration has issued a couple of executive orders that aim to make it a lot easier to start new mining operations on public land, and there's a lot of public land up there. We also understand that this company, Pinos AltonExploration, is just the first of several companies that are looking to do mining exploration up in the Gila north of Silver City. So potentially a major change there in a community, of course, that was built on mining.
Susan Moree:
And how does the community feel about this now?
Nick Seibel:
I mean, as you can imagine, the folks immediately adjoining the potential claims have some issues with it, particularly the monks at the monastery. They were at the forefront of raising the alarm about this just because they had kind of specifically chosen that property to found the monastery based on its proximity to the national forest and sort of that peace and solitude that you would associate with that. And I think a lot of the folks that live on land adjoining that forest service property have similar feelings about it. On the other hand, certainly there is a need for mining, for the things that mining provides. And a lot of folks in the area are certainly still very supportive of mining operations. So as with so many things, the devil is going to be in the details. We'll have to see how all of this shakes out. But certainly, it's a scale of exploration that we haven't seen around here in a long time.
Susan Moree:
Okay, that's really interesting. And where can we find Silver City Daily Press?
Nick Seibel:
You can find us online 24/7 at scdailypress.com.