Fairview residents, Ronne Hearn and Jaye Bell have been dogging the commissioners on the ORC mining venture and wrote this well crafted and thoughtful letter.

Dear Commissioners,

We all out here seem to be lacking that magic one page sheet (written after the fact) that says that Nollan and Dolan have any thing whatsoever to do with road proportionality, let alone when we, the county, currently have no stake in the deal and thereby, presumably, are not the ones destroying the road. Counsel may be busy but she’s the one who brought up this “one page” piece of elusive information. She works for you. Ask for it. You work for us. We want the page.

Chromite mine in the Philippines The DVD. Copying DVDs is generally not difficult, particularly in light of a $340,000 computer upgrade which might include the ability to copy DVDs. That meeting was the 1st of May. We are now celebrating Memorial Day weekend. If the county can’t do it, give it to Bob Arnold along with a few bucks for his effort and some blank DVDs and he’ll take care of it. If, as was suggested, the DVD is flawed, then contact Mr Ralls and suggest a new copy. I’m sure he’d be on it in a heart beat.

As to the ORC Letter to the Editor in Saturday’s World: It sounded so much like Mr PubEd that we looked up the guy in the phone book to see if he was for real.

Did you notice any of the flaws in the rationale in that letter? Russell Ralls, not ORC, did say there was gold and platinum in the sands and that because their specific gravities were substantially heavier than the other minerals, they would spin off first. Perhaps it is a thought that the county, rather than ORC, determine for the sake of the county whether the gold and platinum are “worth” saving. I’m sure you’d be a lot more solicitous of your gold and platinum than would be ORC.

1.5 million dollars. Based on what? All the commodities – except for gold and platinum…. – are way down. Just get in there and sign some stupid deal or the voters will get you in 2010. Hello…… We ARE the voters. You work for us. We don’t want you going off on some NWN/Methane type of deal. Neither has served the county well as all of you may have noticed. You were told in advance that these were boondoggles. You didn’t listen

And we’re telling you now: Go Slow. Hire your own expert attorney, Drag your feet all you want. Unless there’s something going on under the table, you have no obligation to ORC. And the mineral sands are yours, which is to say the mineral sands are ours. We want them taken care of for the valuable commodities that they are. They are precious. Treat them that way.

Also, we need to determine what our timber losses and related timber job losses are going to be if we destroy our younger stands. County says an acre of saleable timber produces from $16,000 to $33,000, while ORC says that a mined acre will likely yield $32,000. Based on what? What weight? What sales price? What royalty? Over what time?

Which brings us to the cost of road repairs. The URS Pavement Analysis Report from June 3rd, 2008 suggests all sorts of ways we can spend county money to benefit ORC, one of which was an outlay of some 1.2 million dollars to upgrade the road to industrial grade to accomodate the huge and weighty mining trucks. An outlay of up to one million dollars in the face of a potential income of 1 to 1.5 million dollars doesn’t make any economic sense, especially when the 1 to 1.5 million dollar income figures are drawn from thin air.

Do some of your own drilling and assaying. Know what you have from someone independent. Might not be a bad idea to have more than one assay done of the same core drills. Could be very enlightening.

There is no rush. If ORC won’t mine without the county’s 6,000 acres, so be it. If they have enough to mine the private lands, so be it. ORC is not your concern. We are your concern. Our land and its wealth are your concerns. We want all of this open, above board, and as transparent as a framed space with no glass, no glass to reflect or refract the images seen through the opening.

Ronnie and Jaye

Especially appreciate the reference to counsel and the constant claims of attorney client privilege. Surely privilege cannot be applied when rationalizing a decision to commit public funds to something like road improvements.