Regular readers of my column may recall that I visited Todos Santos, Baja Sur about a year and a half ago. Flew to the San Jose del Cabo airport. Todos Santos is about 50 miles north on the west coast. I drove back to the Bay Area with my friend who wanted to be with her daughter for the birth of her first grandchild in Humboldt.

The area is not a hard desert, a la Iraq. For most of the trip, ample desert flora was to be seen - lot of large cactus and other exotic plants. But it is fairly dry and water in general is not in long supply. Just about the entire water supply for the whole area comes from the mini rain forest, probably not the correct phrase, around the Sierra de la Laguna, a small mountain range in southern Baja:

Sierra de la Laguna - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I believe the highest point is about 6200 feet. My friend makes a good case that w/o that water, the tourist and native residency areas would all but not exist.

There is a move afoot to stop a proposed gold mine from going in up in those hills. She sent me this online petition recently:

http://tinyurl.com/lc5ozvr

The page is in Spanish. Google translate makes it readable if not especially elegant:

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

I read the company's webpage. They say all the right things. Using desalinated sea water to be later reclaimed, not fresh water, sealed concrete bases for all chemical reactions, very nice sounding. Sadly in Mexico there is no oversight. You can say whatever you want and do the exact opposite and nobody will do anything about it as long as the right palms are greased. I signed the petition.

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You're a daisy if you do.
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84 Euro 240D 4spd. 220.5k sold
04 Honda Element AWD
1985 F150 XLT 4x4, 351W with 270k miles, hay hauler
1997 Suzuki Sidekick 4x4
1993 Toyota 4wd Pickup 226K and counting

Thanks. I can only imagine that what you suggest is the way things would go down. The mining industry in general issues soothing talk about how careful and responsible they will be. My friend has had more than her fair share of contact with the gold mining industry. She lived with her hubby and kids (before divorce) for about 30 years in N. Central WA, Okanogan county.

Lot of back to the land hippies up there. One large bit of land (600 acres) that many lived on is near the town of Chesaw, close to the Canadian border. The community struggled against the establishment of a cyanide leach pit mine being put in on Buckhorn mountain, 3 miles east of that spread for about 15 years, before finally losing the battle about 7 years ago. The community organization monitors the mine pretty closely and the operators regularly fall short of the high standards they promised they would observe.

But hey, it'll provide 150 jobs for about 15 years. Which is like, forever.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K