D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
April
2008
Getting GRIP
The Gila Resources Information Project celebrates a decade of serving as a watchdog on mining and an inspiration to environmental activists.
By Donna Clayton Lawder
Dust off your coatimundi costume, limber up your piata-whacking arm and get ready for a day of free family fun. The Gila Resources Information Project, the Silver City-based environmental protection and education group better known as GRIP, will celebrate its 10th year of local efforts to protect land, air and water on April 26, from 3-7 p.m.
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The Gila Resources Information Project
began 10 years ago as an effort to push mining cleanup and reclamation.
In this 1998 photo, Harry Browne (plaid shirt), mine reclamation specialist
Sally Smith and GRIP technical consultant Jim Kuipers (speaking) talk
with others in front of a mine stockpile. |
The outdoor event will be held at The Hub in downtown Silver City, and things might get a little, well, corny. Literally. Attendees are invited to come dressed as their favorite animal or native plant.
GRIP executive director Allyson Siwik gives a good-natured laugh and declines to reveal if she'll attend the celebration dressed as a giant yucca plant or a coatimundi. "Well, it'll add a fun, little zany aspect to the event. And people in this town, even grown-ups, do love an excuse to dress up. . .," she adds, trailing off with a laugh.
The event will include food, refreshments and live music by local performers Trio Los Guapos and Edie & the Silver Blue Notes. There'll be an "Eco-piata" and the ceremonial burying of an "Eco-Time Capsule" — for which attendees will create ecological messages to be buried and dug up in the future, a future that GRIP hopes to help shape with education and an eye toward sustainability.
In addition to the more festive components, attendees will have a chance to learn what GRIP has been up to the past 10 years. That's an intriguing possibility in itself, as the multifaceted group can be hard to pin down due to its partnerings with other groups, its name sometimes lost in the shuffle.
With plans for the celebration well underway, Siwik settles into a chair in a small living room-like arrangement that greets visitors to GRIP's office on Cooper Street. It's a welcoming little space with a couple of desks, one good-sized conference table and a few framed prints of breathtaking outdoor scenes. Sally Smith, GRIP's president and the director of the group's Responsible Mining Program, sits in another seat off a little to the side. And Harry Browne, the organization's treasurer and financial manager, hunkers down on the couch. Browne served as GRIP's executive director for its first seven years and is one of a handful of founding members, along with Smith. Siwik served as interim executive director from 2003 to 2004, while Browne took a sabbatical to pursue an opportunity abroad; she then took over the executive director position fulltime in 2005.
Between the three of them, Siwik, Browne and Smith represent GRIP's origins and growth, its past, present and plans for the future.
Browne acknowledges that the environmental impact of local mining was the driving force behind the group's inception. In a retrospective Browne has written to mark the group's 10th anniversary, he notes that back in 1997, "there was no indication that Phelps Dodge would get serious about its cleanup and reclamation obligations under the New Mexico Mining Act any time soon."
"Oh, yes, it was issue number one," Browne says. "It's what got us off the ground, what started the ball rolling."
With some financial help from family and friends, the small band of activists rented a tiny artist's studio overlooking Bullard Street, borrowed some office equipment from generous individuals and businesses, and set up shop. They landed a Department of Health mini-grant that paid for half of a copy machine, and set about gathering information and educating themselves. They accumulated enormous volumes of paper regarding the environmental impacts of mining, how the industry was regulated, and what it would take to reclaim Grant County's mines in an environmentally safe manner.
In March 1998, the Gila Resources Information Project was officially incorporated as a nonprofit organization.
Browne laughs and acknowledges that these days, most of the time, GRIP just goes about its business quietly, with behind-the-scenes activities like legislative action and report monitoring — stuff that might seem, well, a bit dull to most of the public.
"They support what we do, they know it is important and that we're fighting to keep their air and water clean," he says of GRIP's public supporters. "But a lot of what we do is boring stuff like reading reports, tracking legislation, and frankly, the average citizen would just like to support us by sending us some money so we can go about our business."
Smith gives out a laugh and raises her hand. "Yeah, that's me, that 'boring' stuff!" she says. As director of the responsible mining program, Smith says the bulk of her work for GRIP centers around reading lengthy reports. "I study a lot of documents, scintillating stuff like Operational Closure Permits. We have had some open houses that people can come to learn about what it is we are doing, but. . ." She leaves the sentence unfinished, acknowledging that besides a few diehards, such meetings are less than thronged.
"Honestly, most of what we do is what most people would call drudgery," Browne admits.
Despite the group's small size, GRIP has taken on some of the largest challenges facing southwestern New Mexico. The High Country News in 2001 described GRIP as "a plucky group of activists" for prodding Phelps Dodge and the state of New Mexico to develop acceptable plans for mine closure and reclamation. With an eye to sustainability, the group also promotes planning, groundwater protection, and free-running rivers in the face of unsustainable development practices.
Browne allows that GRIP was far from being the only mining activist group in the region. The group joined with six other environmental organizations to form the New Mexico Mining Act Network, coordinating their political, legal, technical and fundraising strategies. And, in keeping with its "partnering" approach, GRIP joined dozens of groups in the United States and Canada as founding members of the Western Mining Action Network. Those two networks, the group states on its Web site, helped it identify expert technical and legal assistance, as well as much of the funding needed to pay for it.
Now, 10 years after its inception, GRIP's leaders are happy to note some of their achievements toward the group's mining goals:
* closure and reclamation plans in place at the Chino, Cobre and Tyrone mines;
* success in urging the state regulatory agencies to strengthen the financial assurance measures through which mining companies like Phelps-Dodge (now Freeport-McMoRan) receive back-posted assets as they conduct reclamation;
* success in defending the New Mexico Mining Act itself, as well as the state's Water Quality Act;
* raising awareness of mining's real and potential environmental impacts;
* creating jobs through mine reclamation, which creates financial incentives for companies to reclaim inactive areas sooner rather than later (or perhaps not at all, the group says).
Siwik says that one of GRIP's important accomplishments is to have "earned a seat at the table with PD." Beginning in 2005, Phelps Dodge invited GRIP to meet regularly to discuss the company's most environmentally sensitive projects. She adds, "The fact that there is this ongoing communication, that they are being open with us, is really very significant."
Having gotten its start with mining, and gained some traction in that field, GRIP also has other concerns and goals that, in ways large and small, connect to its desire to ensure the local community's water quality and quantity for years to come. These include ensuring local forest health, watershed restoration, enforcing zoning to prevent unsustainable sprawl, and protection of the Gila and Mimbres rivers.
According to the literature of the Gila Conservation Coalition, a group in which GRIP is a partner, the Gila River is one of the last wild, free-flowing rivers in the Southwest. Its headwaters, protected as America's first wilderness area by naturalist and outdoorsman Aldo Leopold, also is one of the largest roadless areas in the lower 48 states.
The Gila River is a particular point of history for the area, having had gunslingers holed up along its banks and nomadic Apaches and ancient cliff-dwellers building their homes in its tributary canyons. Famed Apache chief Geronimo was born at the river's headwaters.
The group contends there is a need to protect and save this natural wonder and resource, pointing a warning finger at an amendment to the 2004 Arizona Water Settlements Act. This addition could lead to a diversion project, which the group decries as a boondoogle, with costs for the project far outweighing any benefits, and changing the wild nature of the river forever.
Looking to the future and how GRIP plans to increase its grassroots efforts toward conservation and preservation, Siwik details some practical, tangible "community building projects" that are taking root and growing. GRIP's motto, proclaimed on its "Get A GRIP" newsletter masthead, is "promoting healthy communities by protecting our environment," and the organization works toward that end in a number of ways.
GRIP served as the fiscal agent for a forest health project, the community development effort called Hometown Initiative, and the Gila Conservation Coalition. The organization provided start-up staffing support to the Gila Conservation Education Center (GCEC, see the November 2006 Desert Exposure) and Aldo Leopold High School, where Browne now serves as business manager. The Gila-Mimbres Community Radio station, currently still working toward getting on the air, was set in motion at an event organized by GRIP and periodically uses GRIP's office as a meeting space. And the group has an ongoing collaborative relationship with community members providing regular institutional support for events such as the Peak Oil/Climate Change conference (see the January 2008 Desert Exposure).
"The 2020 Visions was supported by a McCune (Foundation) grant," Siwik explains. "We got a one-year grant to produce a series of presentations and public dialogues. That spawned six more action groups," among them a sustainable agriculture collective and community greenhouse group.
In 2007, Siwik notes, GRIP's Living Green Series hosted educational, experiential workshops and presentations in natural remodeling, permaculture, wind and solar power and biodiesel.
"This year we'll have even more hands-on workshops, experiential sessions on gardening, composting, native plants, water conservation and green building," Siwik says. "Our goals are two-fold: to protect and preserve, and to educate the public and encourage their participation. People do care, and putting tools like these into their hands helps them to do something positive."
GRIP's 10th anniversary celebration takes place April 26, 3-7 p.m., at The Hub in downtown Silver City. Office and mailing address: 305A N. Cooper St., Silver City, NM 88061. 538-8078, grip@gilaresources.info, www.gilaresources.info.