State lawmakers on Thursday revived a proposed three-year ban on mining near the Okefenokee.
The House Rules Committee approved by substitute Senate Bill 132 to “provide for a three-year moratorium on the acceptance of applications for new permits by the Environmental Protection Division of the Department of Natural Resources for surface mining utilizing dragline mining for heavy mineral sands.”
The new legislation removes a controversial provision found in an earlier moratorium measure, House Bill 1338, that limited judicial review of petitions and allowed rulings to be issued by default.
The proposed moratoriums are a response to Alabama-based Twins Pines Minerals’ plans to strip mine for titanium dioxide and other minerals on 582 acres about three miles away from the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge on a elevated area called Trail Ridge. Georgia regulators issued Twin Pines’ draft permits for the mine in early February. Opponents argue the demonstration mine will alter the flow of water in the swamp. Twin Pines insists the demonstration will prove the mining can proceed safely. Their plans include future mining on thousands more acres on Trail Ridge.
The Georgia Conservancy applauded the amended bill, which has the support of House Speaker Jon Burns (R-Newington).
“Our organization strongly believes another path forward in protecting Trail Ridge and the Okefenokee is needed,” Georgia Conservancy President Katherine Moore said in a prepared statement.” Senate Bill 132, if passed, would provide this opportunity by allowing for methodical and intentional steps to be made towards a potential long-term conservation solution for the eastern barrier of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.”
But other Georgia environmental groups remain skeptical of even the revised moratorium. They point to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s recommendation of a minimum 10-year moratorium.
“It’s something, but it falls well short of what is needed to protect the Okefenokee,” Rena Peck, the executive director of the Georgia River Network texted The Current. “It’s like a doctor telling a heart patient to lay off the bacon for three years. We will continue to work towards ways to permanently protect Trail Ridge because we can’t protect what’s inside the swamp without protecting what’s outside the swamp. We can’t protect the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge without protecting Trail Ridge which holds the water in the swamp.”
Josh Marks, president of Georgians for the Okefenokee, and a leader of the successful fight against DuPont’s strip mine at the Okefenokee in the 1990s, listed multiple objections to revised legislation.
“While marginally improved, this moratorium bill is still deeply flawed,” Marks emailed The Current. “It only applies to TPM’s technology, whereas the technology used by Chemours who tried to mine on Trail Ridge previously is exempted. It only lasts for three years, and TPM has already said it would wait the four years its demonstration project will take to be completed before filing new permits, so this accomplishes nothing.”
He also addressed a line in the bill that calls for the permitting deadlines already in place in Georgia law to be “strictly enforced.”
“And it mandates that EPD make permit decisions in 5 months, which is completely unrealistic, and likely would lead to litigation by Twin Pines to force EPD to act,” Marks wrote.
“But more importantly it serves as a distraction to the urgent effort to expose the threat posed by TPM’s current permit application, which the scientific community and general public have universally condemned,” he wrote. “We don’t need more time to understand what the scientific community has already told us: mining along the swamp’s boundary will damage the Okefenokee and shouldn’t be allowed under any circumstance.”
Lawmakers’ first attempt at a moratorium, House Bill 1338, failed to meet the legislative deadline of the crossover day — February 29 this session — when at least one chamber of the General Assembly must approve a bill for it to advance. Instead, the House Rules Committee passed the legislation by stripping Senate Bill 132 of its original content about the sale of farmland to foreigners and replacing it with language about the mining moratorium.
(Read a full explanation here of how these last-minute substitutions work.)
The amended Senate Bill 132 must now pass the full House and then be agreed to by the Senate before the moratorium can move to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk to be signed into law.
The Tide brings news and observations from The Current’s staff.
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