Rocky Mountain Industrials (RMI) is one step closer to a new mining plan for the beleaguered limestone quarry just northwest of Glenwood Springs. The quarry sits on a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) parcel in full view of the Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park. The proposed plan is the third iteration of an application that was turned down twice in 2025. RMI submitted the third version on May 29, and, less than a month later, BLM deemed it complete.
“I know a lot of you thought maybe this was an issue put to bed, but it’s not,” said Glenwood Springs Mayor Pro-Tem Erin Zalinski to a small crowd at a recent visit from Senator John Hickenlooper. “Once again, we find ourselves here because the future of our thriving, self-sustaining community is being jeopardized for the profits of a single company.”
The mine has been in operation since 1982, initially owned by the Mid-Continent Coal and Coke company to make limestone dust used in the company’s coal mines. Rocky Mountain Industrials, a Beverly Hills-based mining investment company, purchased the quarry in 2016 and three years later proposed a 447-acre expansion, which was never withdrawn.
The Glenwood Springs Citizens Alliance (GSCA), a local, bipartisan watchdog group, has fought the mine since 2018 with some success, including raising public awareness and discovering permit violations.
“Beginning in 2022, BLM started to push RMI to resolve a series of non-compliance issues that include stormwater runoff, mining outside of their approved boundary and a failure to properly ‘bench’ the high wall of the quarry itself,” explained GSCA President Jeff Peterson during Hickenlooper’s visit. “In January 2023, a major slope failure occurred within the quarry.”
Peterson also mentioned issues surrounding the type of rock that RMI was mining — essentially the wrong, unpermitted kind.
“So with continued regulatory review and oversight, ultimately the mining operation shut down in 2024,” he said. “It was followed by a Department of Interior decision in January [2025] that affirmed they couldn’t continue operating under their existing agreements.”
Now, RMI wants to expand the mine from 16 acres to 56 acres, extending hundreds of feet upslope, and wants to sell limestone aggregate.
Steven Hall, director of communications at Colorado’s state BLM office, told The Sopris Sun in an email that the “modified plan of operations responds to issues identified by BLM in 2022, including unauthorized surface disturbance, and would bring operations at the mine into compliance with BLM requirements.”
But Peterson has concerns.
“While the BLM and RMI describe this as a solution to the non-compliance issues, many in our community are really concerned that this is nothing more than a first step towards reviving their ambition of a broader expansion,” he warned.
“RMI had submitted a proposal to expand operations in 2019,” Hall said in the email. “That proposed mine expansion is separate from this modified plan of operations.”
In June, GSCA board member and former Glenwood Springs Mayor Michael Gamba, Glenwood Springs City Manager Steve Boyd, City Attorney Karl Hanlon and Zalinski traveled to Washington, D.C., for meetings with BLM officials and members of Congress, including Rep. Jeff Hurd, Hickenlooper and Sen. Michael Bennet. They brought with them concerns about the impacts of the mine and what would happen if RMI sought a new operations plan.
”It was very clear that he not only didn’t know where Glenwood was but that Glenwood wasn’t his concern,” said Zalinski about BLM Director Stevan Pearce. “He let us know that this approval was to be viewed favorably on direction from the White House. He encouraged us to come back to him with bullet points of what we would be willing to accept.”
She added that the meeting was before BLM finished reviewing RMI’s new application for the modified plan of operations.
“We feel like we are David and Goliath today,” she said, calling for any and all support. “We need to bring in all of our resources, everybody that, you know, has any teeth, any favors they can pull, any levers they can push,” she said. “All hands on deck.”
Sen. Hickenlooper said he would do everything he can to help stop the mine and encouraged GSCA to talk with Hurd, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert and other officials, and contact larger environmental groups like Natural Resources Defense Council or The Nature Conservancy.
“I mean, there are some big [groups] that have a lot of lawyers that are bored,” he said.
Garfield County Commission Chair Tom Jankovsky echoed the group’s concerns. He reminded them about how RMI took the county to court in 2019 because the county said the mine was in violation of conditions of approval for a special-use permit.
At the time, RMI said the county had no authority to require a special-use permit on federal land. But the court ruled in the county’s favor.
Jankovsky told Hickenlooper that if RMI wants to mine again, they will still need the county permit.
“We’re a natural resource county because of the Piceance Basin, of course,” he said. “But we have economic development and this puts our tourism at jeopardy here.”
RMI’s application is undergoing a technical review. BLM’s Hall did not say whether an environmental analysis would come out of the current review.