Op-Ed: Proposed Strip Mine Would Be Larger Than Eagle Pass
Source: Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.
URL: http://www.window.state.tx.us/specialrpt/energy/nonrenewable/coal.php
By: Roberto R. Calderón
We asked ourselves a very basic question: How big would the proposed Eagle Pass Coal Mine be? How big would it be at 6,700 acres? How big would it be at 25,000 acres? The answers to these questions are quite striking and Eagle Pass and Maverick County residents should be able to understand it better we hope once they know the following size comparisons.
To start, in 2013 the City of Eagle Pass, Texas officially covered an area that is 7.4 square miles large (or, 19.2 square kilometers).
The proposed Eagle Pass Mine would be 6,700 acres, while the newly proposed permit size for the Eagle Pass Mine would be 25,000 acres. These are points to be discussed at the hearing scheduled by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Uvalde, Texas tomorrow, Tuesday, December 3, 2013, per the Eagle Pass Business Journal article published online on November 27, 2013.
Did you notice that the hearing is not being held in Eagle Pass, Texas proper, which is the area and community that would be immediately impacted by the proposed strip mine. In all their wisdom the proverbial powers-that-be managed to have it scheduled instead in Uvalde, Texas, a distance of at least seventy miles. Was this intended to minimize the participation of the people of Eagle Pass, Texas whose opposition to the Texas-sized strip coal mine has been continuous and unanimous? Sadly, the arrangements certainly indicate as much. There is influence being peddled when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers does not respect the people of an entire community that would be affected by the operation of the State of Texas’s largest (or one of its largest) would-be strip coal mines by holding its announced public hearing in that community, but instead decides to hold it 70 miles distant in Uvalde, Texas, which is a town located in an entirely different county. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in deciding to allow the non-local siting of the public hearing has imposed these conditions on the residents of Eagle Pass and Maverick County.
Let’s continue our query on determining the size of the would-be strip coal mine.
And here it is: 6,700 acres is the equivalent of an area that’s 10.5 square miles large (or 27.1 square kilometers).
And here’s another figure: 25,000 acres is equivalent to an area that’s 39.1 square miles (or 101.2 square kilometers).
Therefore, at 6,700 acres the proposed strip coal mine would be 1.42 times as large as the City of Eagle Pass, Texas. That is, it would cover an area nearly one-and-a-half times as large as the entire current city limits of Eagle Pass.
Therefore, at 25,000 acres the proposed monstrous strip coal mine would be 5.3 times as large as the City of Eagle Pass, Texas. That is, there would be the strip coal mine of ginormous proportions, and then there would be the city of Eagle Pass proper, which would be dwarfed by the scale of the indicated proposed strip mine. What an ugly sight (and site) that would make. And who wants their city and county to be ugly? On the contrary, we want our city and county to be beautiful. Who in their right mind wouldn’t want this to be the case?
Let’s imagine the size of the proposed strip coal mine differently. Let’s ask the question this way instead: How many American football fields are there in 6,700 acres of land, and similarly, in 25,000 acres of land? The answers are fairly startling. Consider that 6,700 acres of land is equivalent to about 5,067 American football fields, and by the same measure, 25,000 acres of land is equivalent to about 18,906 football fields. That’s a lot of football fields, and a lot of strip mining as well. Think housing developments, streets, schools, libraries, neighborhoods, parks, medical facilities, churches, people, and so forth; think future growth.
Or, to consider it differently, let’s try and imagine the size of the huge proposed strip mine in terms of our neighboring cities in Texas including Carrizo Springs, Crystal City, Del Rio, Laredo and Uvalde. How do the proposed 6,700 and 25,000 acres of strip mine compare relative to the size of these South Texas cities? The table that follows illustrates the results at a glance.
City Land Area in Square Miles Eagle Pass Coal Mine Land Area in Square Miles
6,700 Acres 25,000 Acres
Carrizo Springs 3.1 square miles (8.0 km²) 10.5 square miles (27.1 km²) – 39.1 square miles (101 km²)
Crystal City 3.6 square miles (9.3 km²) 10.5 square miles (27.1 km²) – 39.1 square miles (101 km²)
Del Rio 20.2 square miles (52.3 km²) 10.5 square miles (27.1 km²) – 39.1 square miles (101 km²)
Eagle Pass 7.4 square miles (19.2 km²) 10.5 square miles (27.1 km²) – 39.1 square miles (101 km²)
Laredo 90.0 square miles (233.1 km²) 10.5 square miles (27.1 km²) – 39.1 square miles (101 km²)
Uvalde 7.7 square miles (19.8 km²) 10.5 square miles (27.1 km²) – 39.1 square miles (101 km²)
Clearly, at 6,700 acres the proposed strip mine would be larger than the entire land area of four of the six cities in our section of South Texas including Carrizo Springs, Crystal City, Eagle Pass, and Uvalde. At 25,000 acres of land area the proposed strip coal mine would be many times larger than the land area of these South Texas cities. At this proposed size, the giant-sized strip coal mine would be nearly 13 times larger than the entire town of Carrizo Springs (12.6 times as large) and nearly twice as large as Del Rio (1.9 times as large). At 25,000 acres the proposed strip coal mine would be more than five times as large as Uvalde (5.1 times as large) and nearly 11 times as large as Crystal City (10.9 times as large). If the land area of the strip mine were a perfect square (measured at forty square miles), it would measure 6.32 miles on each of its four sides meaning that it would take a human being about two hours to walk from one side of the mine to the other. Only Laredo, with its far larger land area would be bigger in size than the proposed strip mine at 25,000 acres. At this size the proposed strip mine would only take up a tad more than 43 percent of the City of Laredo’s current land area.
What the proposed strip mine does at either the 6,700 and/or 25,000 acre-size that is being considered at tomorrow’s U.S. Army Corps of Engineers environmental impact public hearing is also a mine (and incorrectly called “economic development project” by some) that will surely undermine the future and immediate economic development decisions readily available to the City of Eagle Pass and the residents of Maverick County. Why? Because any and all development to the north and northeast of the existing city boundaries lying in the path of the proposed strip mine would be subjected to an effective moratorium on growth (if not a formal one) because such projected growth would be in the path of the already proposed strip coal mine.
Decisions made in the best interest of the fully operational strip mine would be made to further the profits of the company’s shareholders, and not the best interests necessarily of the city’s and county’s residents. This means that any and all future economic development and growth for the residents of Eagle Pass and Maverick County would have to occur to the south, east, and southeast of the city’s existing boundaries. Perhaps landowners in these other directions might profit from the economic development moratorium imposed by the mine’s would-be presence to the north and northeast, but this would also distort the otherwise natural simultaneous growth in all directions that could otherwise occur. There will a belt of economic development in Eagle Pass and Maverick County for decades to come presumably that will avoid the mine’s effective exploited land area by going around it rather than through it. Whoever controls that large a land area to the north and northeast of the city unavoidably determines the course of short- and long-term economic development in the city and county and they do so without having been elected by the people of the immediate governing jurisdictions. They therefore impose their corporate greed, power, and will (economic agenda) over the majority of the residents in these geographic entities. This means that a majority of current and future residents have no say over what occurs where their own best interests are concerned in a major portion of the available immediate land area.
To wit, the above table and the comparison it provides makes clear that the City of Eagle Pass claims an area that is far too small for a city of its size and that the region’s cities that have arguably pursued growth more effectively and successfully such as Laredo and Del Rio, have also claimed far larger land areas to be able to do so than Eagle Pass’s past elected city council members and appointed administrative leadership have done. The Eagle Pass City Council and Maverick County Commissioners’ Court could through the use of their power of eminent domain effectively counter (or neutralize) the existing public health danger and deteriorated economic development model being proposed (and imposed) by the owners of the would-be strip coal mining conglomerate. The air and water quality, and the quality of the city’s and county’s residents’ health will suffer over the short- and long-term due to the working of the proposed strip coal mine. The project is entirely and completely counterintuitive to an effective healthy and environmentally sound economic development model. But this is a discussion that for the most part has not been entered into public discussion to date.
The courage and leadership of a smart elected local government and that of a public determined to claim their own future in their own best interest and collective destiny, is all that stands in the way of making the best of what is sure to be a dangerous and damaging situation for decades to come in the City of Eagle Pass and the County of Maverick. In no way does the working of the proposed strip coal mine benefit the majority of the people in this binational and bicultural region, and much the same can be said for the environment which will end up more toxic than it has ever been and certainly more so than it already is.
