The Storey Teller News and commentary on what’s really going on in Storey County.
The Comstock is rich in what matters most: friendships, community co-operation and love and respect for our neighbors.
Comstock Mining Inc. (CMI) has never been a friend, has never shown respect for its neighbors. CMI is an intruder, a self-serving braggart, conniver and bully that seeks to impose outrageously disruptive heavy industry on our peaceful towns over the vehement resistance of the local people.
CMI has never earned our communities’ consent. Instead it has wooed the County Commissioners in Lyon and Storey Counties to ignore the local residents in favor of the mining industry’s golden promises.
Clandestine meetings with some Lyon County Commissioners and the Commissioners’ subsequent votes hare resulted in two Supreme Court cases now pending. In Storey County the County Manager in a public meeting announced Storey County would not enforce the company’s long-standing Special Use Permit so that CMI could run haul trucks on the public highway. Ore trucks on the road we all use every day!
Over the years — work on the Lucerne Pit began in 2010 — the landscape above Devil’s Gate was ripped away and the pit dug deeper and deeper — until the fragile east wall collapsed and the highway fell into the pit. After spending $200,000,000 of investors’ money the company still hadn’t made a profit. In September 2012 CMI share price was $3.27; the stock opened this morning at 16 cents and falling.
CMI has failed utterly. Its golden promises have proven empty, its pretenses and posturings recognized for what they are. Yet it clings precariously to life as it peddles the properties it was buying up as the stock was going down.
CMI will hold its annual stockholders’ meeting at the Gold Hill Hotel (on the market for $1.4 million) on June 1st, 2017. CRA will hold a spring rally and Open House at Maynard Station to plan a celebration for the day that CMI finally goes toes-up.
May 31, 2017
David Toll
Joe McCarthy
Did the Editor happen to see CMI’s submitted press release in last week’s “Chronicle?” It filled me with amazement how they extolled the beauty of their highway restoration at Devils Gate, and provided a litany of the countless way in which they have benefited the county with their financial largess and genuine efforts in improving the Comstock.
Funny thing, the provided photo did not include the mountain that was literally cut away, leaving a canyon of sizable proportions, whose terraced sides evoke something akin to the rape of nature. Folks may recall when they first made their mining proposals, nothing of this sort was supposed to be left, due to the effort they’d make in reclaming the land they mined, and that a substantial fund would be set aside for this.
Well, only one small area got a scattering of fill and sagebrush seeds, and the rest was left so that tourists and residents could enjoy what mining actually looks like, filling a need for humankind to be reminded of how man can outdo nature in destructiveness when it has the notion.
It appears that the Commissioners wanted to spread the “wealth” when they deemed one HUGE pit at the south end of VC, deserved to have a complimenting eyesore at Devil’s Gate, thus having bookended catastrophes to serve as reminders that the Comstock is always willing to buy a bridge. Who will be the next Professor Harold Hill to visit our fair land?
One of the reasons I included the two photographs I did was to Illustrate the remarkable view of the landscape that will never again be enjoyed.
The Comstock Chronicle oozed enraptured by the civic-mindedness without revealing the reason the spectacular new roadway was bestowed upon the deserved public; a reckless pursuit of the elusive and now proven non-existent bonanza beneath the highway.
Also omitted from the article was mention of the stunning views of the Truck Route and the hours of added windshield time donated to the residents of the County thanks to the closing of 342 after CMI collapsed the highway.
The Comstock Chronicle can not be mistaken for an actual news source; since the Spencer-Barksdulls bought the paper from Angela Mann with CMI money they remain the Public Relations arm of CMI.
Only in Storey County…