Targeting Idaho public lands, Canadians see lucrative future in America's gold giveaway

"There's multiple other targets out at Kilgore that have never been drilled before ... So not only do we have the existing deposit, there is a significant amount of blue sky out at the project." Craig T. Lindsay, president and CEO of Canada's Otis Gold Corp.

Blue sky over Kilgore and the Centennials

Blue sky, indeed.

Vancouver, Canada's Otis Gold Corp. says it sees a long-term opportunity to enrich its investors at Americans' expense by mining royalty-free gold from public lands in Idaho.

Otis Gold's so-called Kilgore Project is the "flagship" project of its Idaho ventures. It is named for a nearby hamlet in sparsely populated Clark County, on the southern flank of the Centennial Mountains. (Another is the Oakley Project, in Cassia County, on the Utah/Nevada border.) A five-year exploratory project is scheduled to begin near tiny Kilgore in July 2019.
 
Encouraged that the company's risky cyanide-based extraction process could produce more than 800,000 ounces of gold in Caribou-Targhee National Forest -- without having to pay royalties to the U.S. Treasury -- the Canadians say that 2019 is just the beginning.

Something far larger is coming to Kilgore, it says.

Centennial Mountains at Kilgore, Idaho

"On a parallel course, we are going to be taking steps to start a permitting process for a mine at Kilgore, which we also think will help de-risk the project," Lindsay said in a 2016 investor-targeted radio interview. "When you take a step back, you know, this is a district-style play."

Key to Kilgore's appeal: "There's no royalties on it," Lindsay said in an interview with the investor-focused radio program, theSTOCKradio.com.

He means that, under America's archaic 19th-century General Mining Act, the Canadians don't have to pay royalties to America for the wealth they haul from America's public lands.

Mining royalties could help defray the costs of mitigating Idaho's toxic mining heritage.

Otis Gold is proposing to use a dangerous cyanide-based process for extracting gold that Montana banned 20 years ago. Idaho -- which Otis calls a "mining-friendly state" -- continues to allow it. So Idaho, across the Centennial Mountains from Montana, is where Otis wants to dig.

Idaho has six contaminated Superfund sites on the National Priorities List (as of April 2019). Many are mines that companies walked away from.

Superfund sites and cyanide processes aside, Otis says it is writing another chapter in the rich history of Idaho mining.

"The history of mining in Idaho is as colorful as the metal that first drew thousands of fortune seekers to the Gem State," the company states. "It’s a history of golden dreams and silver linings."

Golden for Otis. Toxic for Idaho. Costly for America.