Mining corp donates to itself

Comstock Mining Inc., under fire for its activities in the tourist areas around Silver City and Gold Hill, has adopted a public relations technique used by numerous other mining corporations in the state—making charitable donations to the area affected by its mining. CMI, however, has found a novel way of doing it.

On July 10, a non-profit corporation called the Comstock Foundation for History and Culture was incorporated at the Nevada secretary of state's office.

Twenty days later, Comstock Mining Inc. announced it would donate a percentage of its proceeds from its Lucerne Mine: “Comstock Mining is providing resources that we consider an essential, foundational commitment, but we see many, many other constituents interested in supporting this regionally and culturally important treasure,” said the corporation's CEO and president, Corrado De Gasperis

The foundation's board chair is—Corrado De Gasperis. He is also the resident agent for the foundation.

Silver City resident Joe McCarthy responded, noting that the foundation has named Ron James as its director.

“Sadly, a former state preservation official, who doesn't even live in the Comstock, is being paid by CMI to recreate the same old tired ‘historic preservation' model to ‘revitalize' the lower Comstock,” McCarthy said. “More false promises. We end up with a self-congratulatory fix-up of an historic building here or there, maybe the propping up a head frame or, they raise enough money to put up a viewing platform with some hokey historical markers. All the while, this former preservation specialist and CMI want us to ignore the environmental destruction of a cultural landscape that was once an aesthetically beautiful, natural combination of precious landforms, habitats for wildlife and backdrops of real history, not the Disneyland-type images that emanate from their imaginations.”

On July 2 the Storey County Commission approved an expansion of CMI's ore processing.