Gem Hill Quarry3 Sep 2022 10:29
I suspect this piece of research may not be too welcome, but it's always better to be aware of these things. I picked it up about a week ago when the Draft Environmental Impact Report was published, and have since reduced my SRES holding somewhat. Perhaps I'm not the only one to have noticed it, given the recent volume of selling, and consequent fall in SP.
https://kernplanning.com/environmental-doc/gem-hill-quarry-project/
The PDFs are quite large, so I'll summarise: CalPortland are proposing to build a pozzolan mine in Kern County, California, just a few tens of miles from their Mojave and (recently acquired) Tehachapi cement plants. This is the location:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@34.9181644,-118.2179232,2809m
The size and longevity of the mine are very similar to our CS project. The main difference is that their pozzolan (volcanic tuff) will require drill & blast mining, with blasting approximately once a week. The DEIR is currently in a public review period, with a Public Hearing scheduled for 10 November.
Comparing with CS economically, the added cost of blasting, of the order of $1/ton, is low compared with trucking costs from CS, which would be something like 200-300 miles at ~12cents/ton-mile.
Will it get permitted? California is known to be much tougher than Nevada for permitting. About 4 miles away is Rosamond (population ~21,000) whose residents may not be too keen on weekly blasting. Also there's a groundwater requirement of 16,000 gallons/day (18 acre-feet per year), which sounds like a lot, though the impact has been deemed "less than significant". Given the amount of effort that has gone into this EIR, CalPortland must think there's a fair chance of it getting through, and of course like us they're pushing the "green" argument.
To end on a more positive note: as part of the obligatory investigation of alternatives, they were unable to locate any other comparable sources of pozzolan nearby. So if it does get rejected then they may see CS as a very attractive Plan B.
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