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)

Initiated by Otis Gold, the Kilgore Project, as it’s called, is in Caribou-Targhee National Forest a few miles northwest of the Clark County village of Kilgore. With fewer than 900 residents, Clark is Idaho’s least-populated county. Its official 2019 unemployment rate was 3.3 percent. While the county -- larger than Rhode Island -- has a distant history of mining, today ranching and farming dominate the economy.

The mountains targeted by the Kilgore Project rise east of I-15, south of West Camas Creek and north of Idmon Road. To get the gold, the mountains must go.

The area (right) is a destination for RV camping, ATV riding, hunting and hiking. It is bear country, where even grizzlies have been reported. Corral Creek is home to an isolated population of Yellowstone cutthroat trout, listed by state and federal agencies as a species of special concern. As creeks flow southward from the project area, they merge into Camas Creek, one of four small rivers that help recharge the eastern Snake River Plain aquifer.

No mine has been proposed yet to the U.S. Forest Service. But a 12,000-acre operation is being aggressively pitched to investors.

The lure: Initially, a projected 825,000 ounces of gold, mined using the same cyanide heap-leaching process that voters in Montana -- eight miles to the north -- banned at new mines in 1998.

There is gold here, although some geologists say that first Otis, and now Excellon, exaggerate the lode. Critics say it is low-grade ore, so massive quantities of it would need to be excavated, crushed and leached with a weak cyanide solution to chemically extract what gold there is. One fear is that contaminants from the process will migrate into the region’s water.

Otis Gold and Excellon say the Kilgore Project is just the beginning. “Kilgore -- Significant Room to Grow” Excellon proclaims in a presentation.

Importantly, Craig T. Lindsay, Otis Gold’s president and CEO, once told an interviewer, “There’s no royalties on it.”

Under America's 1872 General Mining Act -- a relic of the pick-and-shovel era that still governs mining on federal lands -- even foreign companies don't have to pay royalties to the American people for the riches they haul away. Yet we are responsible in the long term for the damage.

Excellon speaks of Kilgore as “the next Round Mountain.” This refers to a rich gold mine, owned by Canada’s Kinross Gold, some 50 miles north of Tonopah, in the Nevada desert. Its pit is 1,600 acres. A football field is about 1.32 acres.

Round Mountain Mine, however, receives little precipitation, while the Centennials’ snow, streams and groundwater sustain our farms, wildlife refuges and wildlife management areas. Camas Creek flows from lush Camas Meadows to Camas National Wildlife Refuge, into Mud Lake Wildlife Management Area and farmlands, and into the aquifer.

Use of cyanide threatens West Camas Creek.

In July, the Kilgore Project will enter the second season of its five-year exploratory permit from the U.S. Forest Service. Meanwhile, conservationists who oppose this project say they aren't opposed to mining gold, if done responsibly. But this, they say, is neither the responsible way nor the right place.

Currently, the Idaho Conservation League, Greater Yellowstone Coalition and Advocates for the West are challenging the permit in U.S. District Court in Boise. The next venue may be eastern Idaho’s court of public opinion.