San Bernardino County officials, who as recently as early this month appeared to be on a trajectory to give go-ahead to a massive mining operation in Music Valley, are now balking at that plan upon a wide public revelation that the principals behind the proposal to unify 1,026 mining claims on the property adjoining Riverside County in the central-east Mojave Desert are foreigners.
That action comes as one of the members of the county board of supervisors has fallen under the close scrutiny of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in part relating to his acceptance of money from foreign nationals and a company with ties to the mainland Chinese governments espionage and propaganda ministries.
Historically, mining in Music Valley, primarily for gold, was complicated in the main as a consequence of its remote location and relative inaccessability as well as its lack of plentiful water that would have allowed for the use of hydraulic mining. While the presence of gold in Music Valley resulted in the working of claims in the area during the 1880s and 1890s, by the early 20th century, most small-scale mining in the San Bernardino foothills, including Music Valley, had ended. The last significant gold production in the region ended in the 1930s when output had already peaked and was in decline, although sporadic prospecting in the area never fully ceased.
In the present context, gold is not the ore that is primarily being focused upon.
San Bernardino County’s Mojave Desert, specifically the area of Mountain Pass, located some 102 miles distant from Music Valley, is host to some of the world’s richest known deposits of rare earth minerals. From the early 1950s until 2002, the Mountain Pass Mine, located within the northeasternmost extension of San Bernardino County, some 14 miles from Nevada border, was the world’s most productive rare earth element mine.
Rare earth metals, also referred to as lanthanides, are a set of 17 minerals – specifically scandium, yttrium, lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, gadolinium, europium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, lutetium and ytterbium. Prior to the late 19th Century, rare earth elements did not have a crucial or indispensable role in important applications. Early applications of rare earth metals included the use of cerium and thorium in the Welsbach gas mantle, which allowed for very bright gas-burning street lights, “mischmetal,” an alloy of rare earths, widely used as flints in pocket cigarette lighters and europium in television tubes, for the creation of a bright red illumination in color television screens which came into vogue in the 1950s.
Incidental to the extraction of europium from Mountain Pass was the derivation of multiple other rare earth elements, just as technical advancement in a number of fields throughout the 20th Century led to the identification of uses for them. Rare earths at present serve as niche ingredients in the components of high-tech devices, including mercury-vapor lamps, high-temperature superconductors, lasers, microwave filters, high refractive index glass, electrical vehicles, flint products, battery-electrodes, camera lenses, carbon arc lighting, didymium glass used in welding goggles, ceramic capacitors, nuclear batteries, specialized magnets, semi-conductors, red and blue phosphors, modern x-ray machines, infrared lasers and computer chips.
The Mountain Pass Mine was closed down in 2002 as a consequence of environmental pollution that accompanied the mine’s operations, most notably the leaking of radioactive wastewater from the mine that was being conveyed by a faulty pipeline to a storage pond facility miles away from the mine. As a consequence of the Mountain Pass Mine’s closure, the People’s Republic of China moved aggressively to intensify the mining, refining and production of rare earth minerals at a number of mines it operates, to the point that within the last decade it has established a near monopoly on the production of rare earth minerals – meaning it controls approaching or in excess of 85 percent of the rare earths available throughout the world, even as scientific and industrial advancements have made lanthanides critical components in hundreds of modern devices that have come into existence over the last two to three decades. The Donald Trump Administration has prioritized domestic rare earth mining efforts as indispensible to both the national economy and maintaining national security.
Despite the growing importance of rare earth minerals, American investors, in large measure because of the treacherous regulatory and environmental pitfalls associated with rare earth mining, production and refining, over the last several decades have proven reluctant to become involved in such operations. Simultaneously, some foreign investors, including ones occasionally but not exclusively affiliated with what are considered governments hostile to the United States, have intrepidly moved forward with efforts to capitalize on establishing or reestablishing lanthanide mining operations in San Bernardino County.
When Greenwood Village, Colorado-based Molycorp Minerals LLC., which had acquired the rights to the Mountain Pass Mine, sought to redress its contamination problems, reopen the facility in 2012 and modernize its accompanying refining and production capability, it ran into difficulties when Chinese companies, subsidized by the Communist Chinese government, increased the output of their mines and created a glut of rare earths on the world market, driving prices downward. By 2015, Molycorp was unable to sell its product at a price that matched or exceeded its production costs nor defray the interest let alone the principal on the debt it had taken on in the effort to modernize the mine and purchase accompanying processing equipment. Molycorp declared bankruptcy, and in July 2017, the mine and its equipment were acquired by a Chinese-led consortium.
The mine remained shuttered as the Chinese solidified their dominance of the worldwide rare earth production industry. Despite the consideration that the Mountain Pass Mine during this time was not producing a profit, in moves that were motivated, perhaps, as much or more by patriotic sentiment than mercenary intent, Chicago based JHL Capital Group and New York City-based QVT Financial and its chief executive officer, James Litinsky, in late 2017 became involved in the holding company controlling the mine property, which was redubbed MP Materials. By 2021, QVT, JHL and Litinsky emerged as the three primary shareholders in MP Materials, such that the primary Chinese shareholder in the mine, Shenghe Resources, had its interest in the enterprise reduced to 7.7 percent.
Gina Rinehart, the only child of Australian mining magnate Lang Hancock, the executive chairman of Hancock Prospecting and in 2026 Australia’s richest person, purchased an 8.4 percent interest in the Mountain Pass rare earths mine, making her the single largest non-governmental or non-institutional shareholder in that enterprise.
Another rare earth mining undertaking was initiated several years ago in San Bernardino County. Dubbed the Colosseum Gold and Rare Earths Project, it is located about six miles north of the Mountain Pass Mine, in the Clark Mountain/Walker Lane area and within the Mojave National Preserve near the Inyo County boundary. The owner of that operation is Dateline Resources Limited, an Australian company engaged in mining and exploration activities in the United States.
More recently, Dateline has acquired 57 existing claims encompassing 1,140 acres or 1.78125 square miles and has staked another 969 claims, covering 19,380 acres or 30.28125 square miles in Music Valley. Dateline’s stated intention is to make use of the “target area” to exploit its “strong potential for significant rare earth element mineralisation. The project sits within a recognized geological setting for heavy rare earth enrichment based on US Geological Service studies.” According to Dateline, Music Valley “lies near established infrastructure including major highways and power. The region has a mining history and accessible terrain.”
Opposition to Dateline’s designs on Music Valley was forming among Morongo Valley and other Mojave Desert residents based upon the the ecological havoc that would result from pit mining or the use of hydraulicking that Dateline was inching toward unleashing at the expansive mining site. Hydraulicking, also called hydraulic mining, involves excavating alluvial or other mineral deposits by directing high-pressure water jets at the material to break it down and transport it for further processing. Hydraulicking can disturb the natural landscape. It can also liberate potentially hazardous materials, such as radioactive deposits, and expose them to the open environment.
There appeared to be little prospect that those opposed to the project would be able to prevent the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors from allowing the project to proceed.
That changed on July 28, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other federal agencies conducted raids at the home offices of San Bernardino County Fourth District Supervisor Curt Hagman. Among the items and materials being sought by federal agents was documentation to further confirm that Hagman has received money from foreign individuals, companies, entities and agents, including those of the People’s Republic of China.
An elected governmental official at any level – including those holding municipal, county, state or federal office – are prohibited by 52 U.S.C. § 30121 from receiving campaign contributions from individuals who are not U.S. citizens. Knowing and willful violations of 52 U.S.C. § 30121 involving $25,000 or more in a calendar year are classified as felonies and carry penalties of up to five years in prison and civil fines of up to 200 percent of the amount involved.
Moreover, the Donald Trump Administration frowns on foreign companies seeking control over industries in the United States deemed critical to U.S. national security.
County officials at the staff level were preparing in late July and during the first two-and-a-half weeks of August to put together what the board of supervisors had previously hoped would be a relatively routine redrafting and reenactment of Chapter 88.03 of Division 8 of Title 8 of the San Bernardino County Code pertaining to the permitting of mining operations. Staff had been led to believe that the board of supervisors wanted to be relieved of the burden of having to closely examine mining operation proposals, such that the board could simply approve them as something that represented a boon to the county. The county’s chief director of planning, Paul Gonzalez and San Bernardino County Chief Engineering Geologist Dan Walsh, along with Amy DeNinno, a contract planner retained by the county, functioning on signals they were given over the past several months, had prepared an item that would, essentially, facilitate the county’s granting of permits to any entities that want to undertake mining operations around the county, be they at the 85 surface mines in various stages of development and reclamation throughout the county or any other sites that might emerge in the future. A primary consideration, at least previously, was that the county wanted to surrender to the federal government any authority or jurisdiction over mines or mining activity in the county by simply accepting the terms of the Surface Mining and Reclamation Act of 1975, known by its acronym, SMARA, and contained within the Public Resources Code § 2710. It had been the intent of the county board of supervisors to Defer to the federal government regulatory authority over mining operations to the federal government. The language that Gonzalez, Walsh and DeNinno had thrown together for the board of supervisors to approve on August 18 laid out that if a proposed surface mine is located in part or in whole on federal land, the county could simply internalize and whatever environmental study had been prepared by as many or as few federal agencies involved in examining the proposed mining operation and deem that study or studies as a substitution for the county’s environmental certification of the project.
“A permit shall not be required for those portions of surface mining operations that require and obtain a federally approved plan of operation, or other federal authorization, to conduct surface mining operation,” the ordinance prepared by Gonzalez, Walsh and DeNinno read.
The document prepared by Gonzalez, Walsh and DeNinno identified the board of supervisors’ goals as be being “consistent with the State Surface Mining and Reclamation Act of 1975 (SMARA)” to ensure the continuing availability of sand, gravel, and crushed stone to be used in future construction projects throughout the county and to “encourage the continued operation of existing mining facilities and streamline the permitting of new mining facilities” and result in “increased business investment in land and facilities and job growth in key unincorporated areas.” The listing of goals outlined by Gonzalez, Walsh and DeNinno to be embraced by the board of supervisors in the new ordinance included the statement, “We support the extraction of mineral resources in unincorporated areas and the establishment and operation of supporting businesses throughout the county.”
While the development code amendment relating to surface mining and reclamation that was to be codified through the rescinding of the county’s previous ordinance and its reformulation and adoption did not deal directly with Dateline’s proposed mining operation in Music Valley, it was recognized by all as clearing the way for the board of supervisors to simply stand aside and let the Australian company do as it pleases without county interference.
The board of supervisors, suddenly sensitized to the legal implication of doing the bidding of a foreign corporation, flipped on Gonzalez, Walsh and DeNinno.
When a few desert residents at the August 18 meeting pointed out that the proposed changes in the ordinance entailed language stating no county permit for a mining project was required, the board took that as a cue to hold off on jettisoning the old ordinance pertaining to development code amendment relating to surface mining and reclamation and putting a less exacting set of regulations on mining activity into place.
Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Dawn Rowe, one of Hagman’s closest allies and a recipient of money from dozens of donors who were vectored to her by Hagman since she has been on the board since 2018, led the board to reject rubberstamping the redrafting of mining activity regulation in the county on Tuesday. She called for the matter to be brought back to the board at its October 20, 2026 meeting.