LD253

An Act To Repeal C.653 PL2011 In Its Entirety

January 30, 2017

Dear Co Chairs Tucker & Saviello & Members of Maines 128th Legislative Session  Joint Standing Committee on On Environment & Natural Resources.

Bowker Associates writes to ask you to take this bill up and hold public hearings on it immediately after taking up and unanimously approving the companion moratorium bill, LD254, also sponsored by Representative Ralph Chapman.

There is almost certainly a strong consensus by  people of Maine and a Bipartisan supermajority of their elected  legislative representatives  that repeal of c653 PL2011 is the right action.  Public Hearings are not needed to establish that but they would afford an open collaborative and broad based discussion about what to do after that.

As Bowker Associates wrote this morning on LD254 it would be a shame, in our opinion, to simply settle for repeal.  Mining in Maine under both the original statutory mandates for the old Chapter 200 rules and mining under Maine's Title 12 provisions for Mining on public lands could still go forward and that legal framework is almost as unsound and ineffectual as the framework that would be rejected by LD253.

As we wrote this morning in support of LD254, the moratorium in anticipation of repeal, there will sometime in the future, perhaps soon after 2020,  be a recovery cycle for global mining that could once again peak interest in mining in Maine, especially at Bald Mountain.  It is important that we have the right legal framework in place when that moment comes.  We don't want to have yet another rushed reactive legislative response as we have  done three times in our history.

C. 653 PL 2011 was huge mistake .

Its aims and strategies and as claimed by Tom Doyle in Engineering Journal  its actual authorship was by landowners and their attorney's who know absolutely nothing about mining.  They took the history of expert guidance to the many prior Pierce Atwood  clients with an interest in Bald Mountain pointing to specific environmental laws applicable to all enterprise in Maine, public and Private, and simply removed mining from accountability to those laws.  That in essence is c 653 pl2011.  Not a worthy or sensible way to build law for a high public risk enterprise like metallic mining in VMS deposit like ours.

Last year in the JSCENR's questionably meritorious decision to allow reconsideration of the same implementing rules that had been rejected by the legislature  the prior year, then Representative Robert Foley  who had been Chair of the BEP that framed those rules, testified that he and the Board as a whole found no guidance and no answers to their many questions in framing rules. It was clear in this round of rulemaking, which we have in its entirety on video, that the many aspects they wanted to include that afforded better protection and more informed oversight were specifically  blocked  by C.653 PL 2011.

C653 PL2011 is without question the worst mining statute we have ever encountered and in our work we have cause to examine dozens of statutes all over the world. Globally we are best known for the work we have teamed up with the distinguished Dt. David M. Chambers to undertake mapping the in fundable public liability risks associated with poor management of tailings wastes. Hoping to influence DEP/BEP's third try at implementing rules for the 2011 mining statute Bowker Associates offered a rating of the statute and the rules as initially brought forward as the third  try at implanting Chapter 200 Rules. The rating is based on adequacy of provisions in effective loss prevention accruing to poor tailings management .  Poor tailings management is the source of the largest catastrophic mine failures and their associated in fundable public liabilities and their non remediable impacts.

Maine’s statute scored 43 out of a maximum “worst case” score of 50 and is classified as “High Risk”, against 5 key criteria focused on most commonly found root causes of catastrophic failure.

DEP's guidance to BEP which is reflected in the rules as transmitted to the legislature don't begin to address or even comprehend the complexity of tailings management and will have no effect whatsoever in preventing catastrophic loss from poor tailings management.

If you work through our ratings you will see that it was possible for DEP/BEP to make a significant improvement in protections against catastrophic loss with no changes whatsoever in the present terrible C.653 PL2011.  DEP/BEP simply elected not to do that.  My point being that the chapter 200 rules that have been put forward are not a good faith effort to either recognize or address the huge public liabilities attributable to poor tailings management. They are not worth the time and effort of serious consideration and should simply be voted out ought not to pass with no public hearing.

Thank you for your earnest and careful consideration of what we have offered you here.  We stand ready to provide you pro-bono  with whatever technical assistance you may need to frame the most efficient JSCENR "master plan" on mining this term.

Lindsay Newland Bowker, CPCU, ARM Environmental Risk Manager

Bowker Associates

Science & Research In The Public Interest

15 Cove Meadow Rd.

Stonington, Maine 04681

207 367 5145

lindsaynewlandbowker@gmail.com

Lindsaynewlandbowker.wordpress.com