Groups urge rejection of cyanide-leach mine, citing threat to public, endangered species

MCCALL, Idaho — A Canadian gold-mining company's planned open-pit cyanide-leach gold mine in Idaho's Salmon River Mountains would threaten public health and clean water, harm endangered species, violate indigenous treaty rights, and permanently scar thousands of acres of public land in the headwaters of the South Fork Salmon River, according to a coalition of local and national conservation groups.

In more than 300-pages of comments submitted Jan. 9, 2023 to the U.S. Forest Service, the groups urged the Forest Service to reject a Canadian corporation's proposed Stibnite Gold Project (SGP).

The proposal is to resume mining activities in the Stibnite Mining District on the Payette National Forest.

Groups challenging the proposed mine said officials should instead accelerate clean-up efforts at the site, which is an eligible Superfund site, polluted from decades of cyanide leach gold mining and milling.

"Cyanide-leach gold mines have an abysmal track record for water pollution, and Stibnite appears to be no different,” said Bonnie Gestring, Northwest program director at the Montana-based conservation group Earthworks.

“Despite the company’s promises for restoration, the environmental review predicts that the mine plan will leave a pit lake polluted by arsenic and mercury.”

The estimated life of the mine is 20-25 years.

Cyanide leach mining: What is it? Why so dangerous? And why you pay the bill.

BISHOP, California — To spread awareness of the threat that taxpayer-subsidized, cyanide-based gold mining poses to our use of public lands and waters, the Owens Valley-based Friends of the Inyo provides an instructive presentation on YouTube that explains cyanide leach mining.

The presenter of "The Dirty Truth About Modern Cyanide Gold Mining," Bonnie Gestring, is Northwest program director at Earthworks, a Montana conservation organization. The devastating consequences and costs born by Montana taxpayers compelled voters there to ban new cyanide leach mines in 1998.

We're sharing Gestring's talk because eastern California's rural Owens Valley and Inyo Range face the same threat as Idaho's Centennial Mountains, in rural Clark County.

As Gestring explains, industrial-scale cyanide leach gold mining operations, like those now devastating and closing off landscapes in Nevada, are an existential threat to the American public's access to and use of Western public lands.

Lawsuit targets Canadian gold miner's plan to destroy Idaho's Centennial Mountains

 

Advocates for the West has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Idaho Conservation League (ICL) and Greater Yellowstone Coalition (GYC) challenging the U.S. Forest Service’s approval of a five-year gold exploration project in the Centennial Mountains west of Yellowstone National Park, near the agricultural community of Kilgore in eastern Idaho.

The project, about 80 miles north of Idaho Falls on the Caribou-Targhee National Forest, was overwhelmingly opposed in thousands of comments submitted to the agency last year for its potential to threaten water quality, wildlife, and the way of life for thousands of Idahoans.

Cyanide threatens Idaho's Snake River Plain aquifer.

The Centennial Mountains on the Idaho-Montana border are a primary source of fresh water for the Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer (photo, right), which sustains the region's multi-billion-dollar farm economy.

U.S. Interior group to mull giveaway of public lands' mineral wealth under 19th-century law

WASHINGTON D.C, Feb. 22, 2022 — The U.S. Department of the Interior announced today that it will establish an interagency advisory group focused on reforming the nation's 150-year-old law governing taxpayer-subsidized hardrock mining on federally managed public lands.

The outdated General Mining Act -- which President Ulysses S. Grant signed into law in 1872 -- exempts foreign and domestic mining companies from having to pay the American people for the valuable minerals the miners extract and sell in the global marketplace.

The advisory group also is focused on regulations and permitting, but only of new mines.

Mine tailings, Old Round Mountain cemetery, Nevada. (Photo © Tony Huegel)

Foreign mining firms join forces for Nevada-scale open-pit mine in Idaho's Centennials

The Canadian mining firm Excellon Resources Inc. has acquired Otis Gold Corp., also of Canada, to bolster their high-risk scheme to launch a Nevada-scale cyanide-based gold mine in the Centennial Mountains. The operation's toxic leaching ponds would lie at the headwaters of Idaho's vital Snake River Plain aquifer.

The objective: To chemically leach traces of gold from poor-quality ore by destroying a southern extension of the Centennials in Clark County and risking contamination of water that is the lifeblood of eastern Idaho.

“Destroying” sounds alarmist, but it is accurate, for in the business of open-pit, cyanide heap-leach mining, there is no other way.

Round Mountain Mine, Nevada. Canadian miners want this to be the future of Idaho's Centennial Mountains, in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. (Photo © Tony Huegel)

Comments due on Canadian threat to RV, OHV access in Idaho's Centennials

East Idaho residents who enjoy RV camping, OHV riding and hunting in the mountains of Clark County face the loss of a popular destination: the Centennial Mountains region between I-15 and Kilgore.

Mine would end access to much of the Centennials. (© Tony Huegel)

The threat isn't from conservationists seeking to close popular roads, OHV trails and campsites in the area, which has provided multiple-use opportunities for generations.

 

Instead, the threat is from a foreign gold-mining firm -- Canada's Excellon Resources -- which has no interest in preserving any of that.

Kilgore Project area: See it for yourself

The area of Idaho's Caribou-Targhee National Forest and Clark County that Canada's Excellon Resources proposes to transform into a center of open-pit gold mining is worth a visit in summer or fall.

Tour of the Kilgore Project area (click to enlarge).

To do so, you will need:

-- a high-clearance, dirt-road-worthy vehicle;

-- the national forest's Dubois Ranger District visitor map (available weekdays at the Dubois Ranger District office in Dubois, when open; in Idaho Falls at the Eastern Idaho Visitor Information Center, 355 River Parkway, when open; or online);

-- a full tank of gas (available at Dubois and Spencer; not at Kilgore); and ...

-- food and drinks for the day.

Below is our favorite motor-vehicle loop (when conditions permit, perhaps by mid-July) beginning and ending at Spencer, just off I-15. An easy-to-follow, downloadable gpx track of the route is at the end of this post.