Proposed borrow pit near Lakeshore Highlands has homeowners perturbed

by Kathleen Sloan | May 2, 2020
5 min read
​Last February, Sierra County Roads Superintendent Clay Spears applied for a “new mine site” on land owned by the Bureau of Land Management that abuts Lakeshore Highlands–a lovely residential neighborhood known for its elevated views of Elephant Butte Lake–and at least two couples who are homeowners are concerned.  

Mary Ann and Jim Leffingwell and Teddy and Patrick Kearny learned of the application by accident in May. The two families live near or on Arabian Lane and are dismayed a mine will be sited at the end of Arabian Lane, with truck traffic going by their homes, with dust possibly blowing around, ruining their peace and quiet enjoyment of their property. 

They were also surprised Sierra County could contemplate opening a mine without putting it on a public-meeting agenda and without contacting everyone in Lakeshore Highlands. 

Patrick Kearny learned from County Commissioner Travis Day that he was unaware of the application. “It makes you wonder what else is going on without the Commission’s knowledge,” Kearny said. 

The Leffingwells and another Lakeshore resident, Manion Long, spoke at the May 21 commission meeting, the former expressing disapproval and the latter approval of the mine, but with no further contact or assurance from the Commission, according to Mary Ann Leffingwell. 

Patrick Kearny, in touch with the Leffingwells, took over the next round of contact with the County Commission. He sent an Inspection of Public Records Act request to County Commissioner Frances Luna on June 21, asking for County documents “preparatory to the mine application,” such as planning, cost analysis and a public-notice contact list. “No such documents exist,” was the July 19, belated response. 

Kearny emailed all the County Commissioners on July 31. Kearny said he was disturbed commissioners were unaware of “a U.S. Department of the Interior mining permit being tendered on behalf of Sierra County in the absence of Sierra County Commission inclusion.” 

“Equally disturbing,” said Kearny, was the lack of notification to property owners by the County, the very limited notification being done by the BLM. He asked Paxon to forward all County and BLM documents and correspondence concerning the mine, with none received. 

Paxon responded Aug. 1. “You are welcome to come before the commission and express your views on any subject at one of our meetings as well as provide us written comments such as your email. However, I take exception to not notifying you or the general public on a minor action for a free use borrow pit permit from the BLM. Sierra County has not abdicated any of our responsibilities for good governance.” 

Paxon said Road Supervisor Clay Spears “knocked on most of the doors in Lakeshore Highlands” and “Now the BLM is doing an environmental assessment, for which you will be able to submit comment.” 

Spears, in an interview Oct. 29, said he did as the BLM instructed. He only had to contact the people whose property is adjacent to the mine, which he did, as well as “a few other people.” 

“There will be no environmental assessment,” Spears said, “only an archeology assessment, which is not done yet.” 

Spears said the mine is a “borrow pit,” which material will only be used in Lakeshore Highlands to repair its roads after heavy rains. “There will be no crusher, it’s only for emergencies,” he said. 

As far as truck traffic on Arabian Lane is concerned, Spears said, “We’ll probably take material from there every three to five years.” 

There is no pit nearby to fix Lakeshore Highlands’ roads, Spears said. That is the reason for locating it adjacent to the neighborhood. “That material will only be used for Lakeshore Highlands,” he said. “They are going to be glad it’s there after a heavy rain.” 

The sandy soil will be used “to build up the road. We’ll wet it and compact it at different levels,” Spears said. “Then we’ll put a base course and chip-seal or pave it.” 

Lakeshore Highlands has moved up the list for road improvements over the years, Spears said, who has been roads supervisor for about two years. “We’ll probably do the rest of Greer Lane next.” 

According the county’s BLM application, the “mine” will have 20,000 cubic yards removed from 2.5 acres over 10 years. 

With the lack of transparency over the mine, the Kearnys and Leffingwells would like the county to put it in writing that the material from the borrow pit will only be used for Lakeshore Highlands. 

Kearny’s responses from Leighandra Keeven, geologist with the BLM Las Cruces District Office, show the county could extend the area of the mine and the permit’s limit beyond 10 years by reapplying, with preference given to extending already-existing mines to limit disturbing a new area. 

The Kearnys and Leffingwells are also concerned about a reduction in their property values. 

President of the Sierra County Board of Realtors Earl Greer confirmed that real-estate agents should apprise any seller or buyer of an “adverse” condition affecting the property. “They may think truck noise is an adverse condition. If we know about it we’re supposed to disclose it.” 

According to Chief Deputy Assessor Keith Whitney, Lakeshore Highland’s full property value is $16.5 million. Its taxable value is one-third that amount or about $5.5 million. The whole county’s taxable value is $317.5 million, making Lakeshore Highland’s taxable value about 2 percent of the county total. Owners pay about $134,000 in taxes a year, certainly making them deserving of county notice a mine is going in adjacent to their subdivision. 

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Kathleen Sloan is the Sun’s founder and chief reporter. She can be reached at kathleen.sloan@gmail.com or 575-297-4146.
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Understanding New Mexico's proposed new social studies standards for K-12 students

“The primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.”
—National Council for the Social Studies 

Reader Michael L. Hayes of Las Cruces commented: What impresses me is that both the proposed standards and some of the criticisms of them are equally grotesque. I make this bold statement on the basis of my experience as a peripatetic high school and college English teacher for 45 years in many states with many students differing in race, religion, gender and socioeconomic background, and as a civic activist (PTA) in public education (My career, however, was as an independent consultant mainly in defense, energy and the environment.)

The proposed social studies standards are conceptually and instructionally flawed. For starters, a “performance standard” is not a standard at all; it is a task. Asking someone to explain something is not unlike asking someone to water the lawn. Nothing measures the performance, but without a measure, there is no standard. The teacher’s subjective judgment will be all that matters, and almost anything will count as satisfying a “performance standard,” even just trying. Students will be left to wonder “what is on the teacher’s mind?” or “have I sucked up enough.”

Four other quick criticisms of the performance standards. One, they are nearly unintelligible because they are written in jargon. PED’s use of jargon in a document intended for the public is worrisome. Bureaucrats often use jargon to confuse or conceal something uninformed, wrong or unworthy. As a result, most parents, some school board members and more than a few teachers do not understand them.

Two, the performance standards are so vague that they fail to define the education which teachers are supposed to teach, students are supposed to learn, and parents are supposed to understand. PED does not define words like “explain” or “describe” so that teachers can apply “standards” consistently and fairly. The standards do not indicate what teachers are supposed to know in order to teach or specify what students are supposed to learn. Supervisors cannot know whether teachers are teaching social studies well or poorly. The standards are so vague that the public, especially parents or guardians, cannot know the content of public education.

Three, many performance standards are simply unrealistic, especially at grade level. Under “Ethnic, Cultural and Identity Performance Standards”; then under “Diversity and Identity”; then under “Kindergarten,” one such standard is: “Identify how their family does things both the same as and different from how other people do things.” Do six-year-olds know how other people do things? Do they know whether these things are relevant to diversity and identity? Or another standard: “Describe their family history, culture, and past to current contributions of people in their main identity groups.” (A proficient writer would have hyphenated the compound adjective to avoid confusing the reader.) Do six-year-olds know so much about these things in relation to their “identity group”? Since teachers obviously do not teach them about these other people and have not taught them about these groups, why are these and similar items in the curriculum; or do teachers assign them to go home and collect this information?

Point four follows from “three”; some information relevant to some performance measures requires a disclosure of personal or family matters. The younger the students, the easier it is for teachers to invade their privacy and not only their privacy, but also the privacy of their parents or guardians, or neighbors, who may never be aware of these disclosures or not become aware of them until afterward. PED has no right to design a curriculum which requires teachers to ask students for information about themselves, parents or guardians, or neighbors, or puts teachers on the spot if the disclosures reveal criminal conduct. (Bill says Jeff’s father plays games in bed with his daughter. Lila says Angelo’s mother gives herself shots in the arm.) Since teacher-student communications have no legal protection to ensure privacy, those disclosures may become public accidentally or deliberately. The effect of these proposal standards is to turn New Mexico schools and teachers into investigative agents of the state and students into little informants or spies.

This PED proposal for social studies standards is a travesty of education despite its appeals to purportedly enlightened principles. It constitutes a clear and present danger to individual liberty and civil liberties. It should be repudiated; its development, investigated; its PED perpetrators, dismissed. No state curriculum should encourage or require the disclosure of private personal information.

I am equally outraged by the comments of some of T or C’s school board members: Christine LaFont and Julianne Stroup, two white Christian women, who belong to one of the larger minorities in America and assume white and Christian privileges. In different terms but for essentially the same reason, both oppose an education which includes lessons about historical events and trends, and social movements and developments, of other minorities. They object to the proposal for the new social studies standards because of its emphasis on individual and group identities not white or Christian. I am not going to reply with specific objections; they are too numerous and too pointed.

Ms. LaFont urges: “It’s better to address what’s similar with all Americans. It’s not good to differentiate.” Ms. Stroup adds: “Our country is not a racist country. We have to teach to respect each other. We have civil rights laws that protect everyone from discrimination. We need to teach civics, love and respect. We need to teach how to be color blind.”

Their desires for unity and homogeneity, and for mutual respect, are a contradiction and an impossibility. Aside from a shared citizenship, which implies acceptance of the Constitution, the rule of law and equality under the law, little else defines Americans. We are additionally defined by our race, religion, national origin, etc. So mutual respect requires individuals to respect others different from themselves. Disrespect desires blacks, Jews or Palestinians to assimilate or to suppress or conceal racial, religious or national origin aspects of their identity. The only people who want erasure of nonwhite, non-Christian, non-American origin aspects of identity are bigots. Ms. LaFont and Ms. Stroud want standards which, by stressing similarities and eliding differences, desire the erasure of such aspects. What they want will result in a social studies curriculum that enables white, Christian, native-born children to grow up to be bigots and all others to be their victims. This would be the academic equivalent of ethnic cleansing.

H.E.L.P.

This postmortem of a case involving a 75-year-old women who went missing from her home in Hillsboro last September sheds light on the bounds of law enforcement’s capacity to respond, especially in large rural jurisdictions such as Sierra County, and underscores the critical role the public, as well as concerned family and friends, can play in assisting a missing person’s search.

Reader Jane Debrott of Hillsboro commented: Thank you for your article on the tragic loss of Betsey. I am a resident of Hillsboro, a friend of Rick and Betsey, and a member of H.E.L.P. The thing that most distresses me now, is the emphasis on Rick’s mis-naming of the color of their car. I fear that this fact will cause Rick to feel that if he had only gotten the facts right, Betsey may have been rescued before it was too late. The incident was a series of unavoidable events, out of everyone’s control, and we will never know what place the correct color of her car may have had in the outcome. It breaks my heart to think that Rick has had one more thing added to his “what ifs” concerning this incident.

Diana Tittle responded: Dear Jane, the Sun undertook this investigation at the request of a Hillsboro resident concerned about the town’s inability to mount a prompt, coordinated response to the disappearance of a neighbor. From the beginning, I shared your concern about how our findings might affect Betsy’s family and friends. After I completed my research and began writing, I weighed each detail I eventually chose to include against my desire to cause no pain and the public’s right to know about the strengths and limitations of law enforcement’s response and the public’s need to know about how to be of meaningful assistance.

There was information I withheld about the state police investigation and the recovery. But I decided to include the issue of the car’s color because the individuals who spotted Betsy’s car emphasized how its color had been key to their identification of it as the vehicle described in Betsy’s Silver Alert. Because the misinformation was corrected within a couple of hours, I also included in this story the following editorial comment meant to put the error in perspective: “The fact that law enforcement throughout the state was on the lookout in the crucial early hours after Betsy’s disappearance for an elderly woman driving a “light blue” instead of a “silver” Accord would, in retrospect, likely not have changed the outcome of the search” [emphasis added].

I would also point to the story’s overarching conclusion about the inadvisability of assigning blame for what happened: “In this case, a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances, many of them beyond human control, hindered the search that it would fall to Hamilton’s department to lead.”

It is my hope that any pain caused by my reporting will eventually be outweighed by its contribution to a better community understanding of what it will take in the future to mount a successful missing person’s search in rural Sierra County.

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