Group finds abandoned mines

Arizona State Mine Inspector Joe Hart, who says his office is underfunded and neglected, put in a budget request last week for $1.1 million from the state to close Arizona’s dangerous abandoned mines.

In the wake of the recent tragedy in Chloride that claimed the life of a 13-year-old girl, Hart says the $50,000 budgeted for 2007 isn’t going to cut it, according to Associated Press reports.

Even if that number seems slight in the face of the more than 100,000 abandoned mines scattered across Arizona, many in heavily mined Pima County, it’s an improvement upon the nil amount granted by the state in the previous two fiscal years. (The office has relied in the past on private donations from companies such as Phelps Dodge who gave $50,000 in 2007.)

The current budget allows for the employment of only two abandoned mine specialiists with authority to inspect and facilitate the closing of abandoned mines in Arizona’s 15 counties.

But a positive point in the midst of the controversy is the group of Good Samaritans who tackled the problem before the public was aware a problem existed.

A group of U.S. Forest Service volunteers known as the Hazardous Abandoned Mine Finders go out once a week to look for abandoned mines and check up on previously posted ones. Since their inception in 1991, 6,000 dangerous mines have been posted in Pima, Santa Cruz, Pinal, and Cochise counties.

“Filling the mines would be the best option, of course, but the next best thing is marking them,” said Peter Ribotto of Green Valley. “We identify them, we keep wise people from them, and we reduce some element of liability to the people who own the property.”

Ribotto is a former engineer at a steel mine and now heads the three member group, which also includes Carter Beach, of Tucson, and Ray Smith, of Green Valley. At one point, there were eight members with five four-wheel-drive vehicles used to tackle the rugged desert terrain. They now use Beach’s sturdy SUV to take on the unforgiving desert, traversing dirt roads and then off-roading to get to their destination.

“These mines have the habit of being in some pretty remote spots,” said Ribotto. “Let’s just say we don’t walk the beaten trails.”

Their adventursome spirit has landed the men in trouble in the past. Three members of the original eight-member group have had to be air-lifted out of the desert; two with broken ankles, one for a heart attack.

One time they came across what they thought were abandoned Army tanks in an isolated valley. “We discovered that they were decoys used at one time for target practice and that we were probably on some kind of test range. We got out of there, quick,” said Ribotto.

They never go into any mine openings, vertical or horizontal, said Ribotto, but they post signs provided by the Arizona State Mine Inspector’s office. The signs feature a menacing skull and crossbones and read: “Abandoned and inactive mines are death traps! Stay out! Stay Alive!”

Ribotto says they don’t communicate with the Arizona State Mine Inspector’s Office very often, though they were issued I.D. cards and had the support and encouragement of the office when the group first formed in the early 90s. He says they now work more closely with the Forest Service, to whom they report the logs of mines they’ve discovered and marked.

Despite being “a bit long in the tooth” (Smith is over 90, Ribotto will turn 90 this year, and Beach is the baby of the group at 81), Ribotto says the group has fun and they have no plans to slow down in the near future.

“We could out walk any young person who comes along with us.”

jrichardson@gvnews.com | 547-9726