[meteorite-list] Latest updates on Ivanpah status

From: Adam Hupe <raremeteorites_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue Dec 14 15:04:10 2004
Message-ID: <00a001c4e216$9e6fc720$6401a8c0_at_c1720188a>

Dear List,

Several have expressed concern about the information I provided the other
night. I will share some comments that make since to me provided by another
List member with permission after a few clarifications.

A question about getting a permit came up. We were told that we were not
even allowed to walk on the dry lake surface without a permit. We asked
about a couple of wind sailors on the bed and were told they had permits.
We asked how to get the permits and were told you needed to have political
clout in order to obtain one. The park ranger asked how we entered the lake
bed and we showed him a gate that had been opened earlier with no signs
warning people to stay off. It was now locked and magically there was a
crooked and faded sign saying the lake bed was closed. This appeared to our
team to be a catch-em-alive trap in order to generate revenue. We split the
cost of the ticket between team members and vowed to get permits for next
year.

Here are some insights provided by another List member that make sense to
me:

At Primm or Ivanpah dry lake......Molycorp dumps their mine tailing wash
into the lake bed about center of the bed.....that may be the fenced area
you talked about. There is no experiments going on there that I know of.
Just several years ago the dry lake was free to all craft including land
sailors and airplanes. Just like the BLM to close it off.

Molycorp is mining rare earths up in Mt. Pass.....they pipe their waste
water down the canyon and dump it into ponds where the water seeps into the
ground water and also evaporates. There is a lot of push pull going on
between Molycorp and the Feds and The State of CA....over Molycorp's
expansion plans.....Molycorp brought up this idea that there was radiation
in the ore and that no one should be living there....so they wanted the CHP
and Caltrans housing taken out so they could expand...using the radiation
scare as a tactic...however the State is holding firm and our employees have
even worn rad detector badges. Out here in the desert there is quite a bit
of background radiation and some deposits of uranium.

In any case, Ivanpah is now closed without a permit.

All the best,

------------------------------------
Adam Hupe
The Hupe Collection
Team LunarRock
IMCA 2185
raremeteorites_at_comcast.net
Received on Tue 14 Dec 2004 02:53:44 PM PST