EDITORIAL
Last week’s Reporter carried an interesting story that only becomes more interesting the more you think about it and what it signifies. After 42 years the Texas Railroad Commission (RRC) has “closed out” the mining permit for Alcoa’s Sandow lignite mine.
The RRC framed the story as a bit of history, and indeed it is.
That permit was the first-ever surface mining permit issued by the commission in 1976. It was a long time ago. Gerald Ford was president.
There was mining at the site well before 1976, of course. Alcoa’s smelter went online in 1952, using power generated from lignite coal. So the acreage—up to 18,000 at its height, still 4,800 at the end—has seen a lot of draglines and “Euc” trucks. And now a different kind of mining is coming to the area. Virtually everyone between the Brazos and the Blackland Prairie now knows about Bit-main and its plans to revamp the former smelter into a math-mauling center to extract valuable cryptocurrencies from blockchains.
And the former mine, which is not part of the land leased by Bitmain, may have its role to play. The remainder of the former Alcoa’s Rockdale Operations is being marketed as the Sandow Lakes Ranch. Several weeks ago the broker, Bernard Uechtritz, had glowing things to say about both the land and the prospects for a spectacular economic future in the Rockdale area.
The RRC pointed out its regulations called for the former mine to be returned to a condition “as good as, or better than” before mining.
Uechtritz credited Alcoa’s stewardship of the land noting that its ranch, water and wildlife features make it more attractive to potential buyers. And he predicted Bitmain won’t be the biggest news to come out of the site and will not even be “our most high-profile tenant.”
Putting the dots together, you wonder if the RRC’s ending the permitting period clears the way for some of that to take place.
Whatever the timing, it’s obvious that the excellent job done by a lot of dedicated workers to restore the land plays right into the concept of repurposing the entire former Rockdale Operations as a giant business center looking to future technologies instead of backwards to past ones. There are some notable dates in the history of the Alcoa-Sandow property.
Most of them recently, like Oct. 13, 2017, the date Luminant announced it was closing up shop, have been negative.
But chances are Aug. 21, 2018, could be remembered for a different reason. And this one is something very positive.
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