Official: Old coal mine no problem
Construction will go on at Chuska Apts.

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

Contractors talk with the site manager Thursday while standing at the edge of partially filled in mine shaft that was discovered on the construction site of the Chuska Apartment complex on East Aztec Avenue in Gallup. [Photo by Jeff Jones/Independent]

GALLUP — The bad news is that the hole developers discovered Tuesday morning while laying the foundation for a low income housing project on Gallup's east end is almost certainly the entrance to a long-abandoned coal mine. The good news is that it probably won't get in their way.

Arviso Construction crews stumbled upon the hole beneath some 8 feet of clay and shale along the southern edge of the site, just east of the Desert Rose mobile home park at the corner of Aztec Avenue and William Street. A coal mine is the last thing they were expecting.

But that, according to Raymond Rodarte, a health and reclamation specialist with the state's Abandoned Mine Land Program, is what they found. Spreading a faded booklet filled with New Mexico mining claims across the hood of the pickup he drove in from Santa Fe Thursday morning, Rodarte turned to a map of Gallup peppered with dozens of little black dots pinpointing the sites of old mine shafts. And there, just feet from where he was now standing, was a dot for the Juliano coal mine.

"The good thing about it is this isn't a large mine," Rodarte said.

That's very good news for Sanjay Choudhrie and the rest of the staff and officers of Care 66, who spent years preparing for the day last January when Arviso Construction finally broke ground on the project. The Chuska Apartments will be the local nonprofit's "transitional housing," a model for moving the homeless into stable accommodations and getting them back on their feet. A small mine means Arviso Construction can keep working and meet its goal of an April 2008 completion date.

"They're going to proceed as usual until further notice," said Choudhrie, Care 66's executive director.

But also because it's not a large mine, no one knows much about it. Rodarte said the state had no map to tell them how extensive the tunnel, now filled with water, is. Judging by the claim, though, he figured it wasn't very long or deep.

According to Rodarte's records, Angel Juliano staked a claim to the site in 1920 and mined it with crews of four to 10 men — probably chasing a single mineral drift, a ribbon of coal running through the rock — until closing it down in 1939. The larger operators, the Southwest or American Coal Companies, did most of their mining north of the railroad tracks. The southeast of town was left mostly to the Julianos, the small, independent operators.

The Juliano operation was a little before Gallup Historical Society member Larry Caviggin's time. But he remembers an older relative of his who used to tell stories of exploring the mine after it had been abandoned. Eventually, he said, "a lot of them were back-filled because they were dangerous."

He figured the Juliano mine got its turn some time in the 1950s.

But whoever closed the mine didn't close it for good. Reopened a half-century later, the mouth of the mine sits a matter of feet from the southern edge of the Chuska Apartments construction site. And because the entrance faces south, Rodarte believes most of the tunnel lies underneath the property next door, mostly vacant land owned by the Radosevich family. That's more good news for Care 66.

But the project isn't out of the clear just yet. Rodarte is sending a team of state engineers to do a more thorough investigation of the mine later this week. Until then, construction crews will stay away from the entrance.

Rodarte said the state would cover any reclamation costs.

That's more good news still for Care 66, which is operating on a tight $7.5 million budget, paid for with state and — mostly — federal funds.

When finished, the site will hold 30 apartments, 10 for transitional tenants, 20 for low-income families whose rents will subsidize their stay.