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| Winter 2001-2002 Bulletin |
| New 'Molywatch' Website - and Much More |
| Several years ago, as part of our Red River Reclamation/Molycorp campaign, Amigos Bravos made a significant addition to our main website, which we called “Molywatch”. The purpose, as the name suggests, was to keep the interested public informed about developments in our campaign to hold the corporation accountable for pollution, and to ‘watchdog’ Molycorp/Unocal by providing links to other websites with pertinent information – such as EPA’s Superfund website and Unocal’s homepage where its official pro-environment stance is spelled out. This has all been part of a process to empower citizen activists through information: as the old saying goes, knowledge is power, and rich corporations usually have much more of both than the rest of us. Molywatch was the brainchild of Projects Director Ernie Atencio, and when he left the research staff took, er, a little while to get up to speed with the whole system. Our computer overhaul last year added to the delay, although it now puts us virtual light-years ahead in connecting to and working with the Worldwide Web. Now, thanks to David Douglas, star Amigos Bravos volunteer who doubles as a web design consultant, we are launching a completely updated Molywatch site. David has used his graphics skills to help demystify some of the arcane terms with which we have become all too familiar here at Amigos Bravos: just what are those WRDs (waste rock dumps) we mention so frequently, for example? A graphical ‘Tour the Mine’ opening page helps make these features, including their huge scale, more comprehensible. Second, there’s a new general summary which brings readers up-to-date with all the changes at Molycorp and Questa that have occurred over the last year, including major campaign breakthroughs such as draft Superfund listing, the pollution control (NPDES) permit now protecting the Red River, the $152 million reclamation bond, and our economics study indicating nearly $1 billion of benefits that could accrue to the regional economy from mine restoration. Some of the new information is quirkier and less narrowly focused on Molycorp – for example, did you know that Unocal, Molycorp’s parent company, not only has large investments in Burma, one of the world’s most repressive regimes, but now also Turkmenistan and Afghanistan? Perhaps the main feature of the new site, though, is the number and variety of links it provides. First, there are links to the full text of reports, such as Amigos Bravos’ economics and mine restoration studies, and the NM Environment Department’s comprehensive review of Red River watershed conditions, the 1995 ‘Slifer’ report. Second, the new site provides a large number of relevant contacts, from Governor Gary Johnson to our allies in the NM Mining Act Network and regional newspapers. Third, it links to Molycorp campaign news and events pages (which will now be updated on a more regular basis). And fourth, it provides an accessible and very comprehensive technical glossary, to explain all those dry terms like ‘Acid Mine Drainage’ in a user-friendly way and generally to help demystify the scientific and regulatory process. The glossary itself is quite an education on mines and water pollution laws – and in fact we hope the site as a whole will be a valuable research tool for a variety of users. Amongst these we hope will be the new Technical Assistance Grant (TAG) group at Questa, the Rio Colorado Reclamation Committee, which is the community organization charged with overseeing the mine restoration process under the quasi-Superfund process (AOC) reported elsewhere in this Bulletin. As TAG groups have shown elsewhere, such as Summitville, Colorado, motivated local citizens’ groups armed with usable and credible technical information can prevent government failures and push hard for restoration that fully benefits the local community. The new Molywatch site aims to underpin the combination of citizen advocacy and technical competence which have been so successful at Molycorp so far. The web address is: www.amigosbravos.org/molycorpwatch |