Dangerous gold-mine venture -- banned in Montana -- gives Idaho work to Butte firm

Foreign speculators at Canada's Otis Gold Corp. -- whose risky cyanide-based extraction process is banned in Montana -- have employed a Montana firm in their scheme to extract royalty-free gold from public lands in Idaho.

Drilling rig in Kilgore Project area.

In its push to launch its dangerous 12,000-acre cyanide-based open-pit operation at the headwaters of Idaho's lifeblood -- the Snake River Plain aquifer -- Otis is employing Alford Drilling, LLC, of Butte, Montana, to spearhead its Idaho exploratory drilling.

Alford's rigs began drilling Oct. 9 in a southerly branch of the wildlife-rich Centennial Mountains, at the northeastern headwaters of the aquifer that waters 3 million acres of Idaho farmland. 

Harvesting alfalfa at Mud Lake WMA.

The project site is about 1.5 hours northeast of Idaho Falls, the state's second-largest city and headquarters for a U.S. Department of Energy's nuclear research and waste-storage center.

The current 45-day drilling period, which commenced Oct. 9, 2019, is the start of Otis Gold's five-year exploratory phase. Otis' U.S. Forest Service exploratory permit is being challenged in U.S. District Court in Boise.

Otis is just one of the foreign mining companies that are rushing to cash in on Congress' giveaway of America's mineral wealth, and Idaho's embrace of mining operations that are banned elsewhere.

Under a federal law passed in the early 1870s -- and supported by Idaho's current Republican congressional delegation -- even foreign mining companies are exempted from paying the American people for the riches extracted from federally managed public lands.

In its investor solicitations, Otis outlines its scheme to destroy a branch of Idaho's Centennial Mountains. It is being compared in scale to the Round Mountain gold mine in Nevada,

The project site lies in the heart of a wildlife-migration corridor, along the Camas Creek watershed about 50 miles west of Yellowstone National Park. The site is about 14 miles south of Montana's Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.

The operation -- which Otis Gold calls its "flagship project" -- lies in mountains a few miles northwest of the village of Kilgore, in Clark County.

Streams flow from Otis' project area into West Camas Creek.

Streams from Otis' Kilgore Project site, a popular RV camping and OHV riding area, flow into tributaries of Camas Creek. Camas Creek flows about 40 miles southwest through agricultural lands, through Camas National Wildlife Refuge and the Mud Lake Wildlife Management Area (WMA). It also helps to recharge the eastern Snake River Plain aquifer, a vital resource for eastern Idaho's vast irrigated farmlands.

Camas Creek flows into Mud Lake WMA.

Snake River Plain aquifer (U.S.G.S. graphic)

Otis' scheme is to dodge 
Montana's quarter-century ban on new cyanide heap-leach operations by developing the mine in Idaho, just a few miles south of the Continental Divide and its internationally renowned 
backpacking trail.

The Idaho Conservation League (ICL) and the Greater Yellowstone Coalition (GYC), represented by Advocates for the West, are challenging the permit under which Caribou-Targhee National Forest's Dubois Ranger District granted Otis Gold's five-year exploration permit. A hearing in federal court was held in October, and a decision was expected in a few months.

The groups contend that the Forest Service did not properly analyze impacts from Otis Gold's extensive road-building and drilling within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. They want the Forest Service to do a more thorough environmental analysis, and to incorporate additional protections for the area's water and wildlife.

Camas National Wildlife Refuge in November

“This mining project threatens not only our public lands and wildlife, but could also contaminate the water Idahoans drink and use for farming and ranching,” says John Robison, ICL’s public lands director. “ICL wants the Forest Service to take a step back and do a more thorough review of the impacts the project may have on habitat, wildlife and clean water.” 

ICL also is focused on unanticipated negative consequences that industrial exploration activities are bound to have on grizzly bears in the area, and on fresh-water streams that flow directly from the project area into West Camas Creek. The stream flows into Camas Creek, which in turn waters much of the agricultural valley below the project area.

The permit was awarded after an obscure legal notice in a local newspaper announced a scant 30-day public-comment period.