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.

Court calls lack of Kilgore Project water study 'capricious,' orders more analysis

BOISE, Idaho -- U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled Dec. 18 that the U.S. Forest Service acted "arbitrarily and capriciously" in not determining risks to water quality and Yellowstone cutthroat trout when it granted a Canadian company's permit to explore for free gold on public lands west of Yellowstone National Park.

Represented by the firm Advocates for the West, the Idaho Conservation League and Greater Yellowstone Coalition filed suit in November 2018 challenging Otis Gold's exploration permit, which was granted the previous August.

"Idaho's water is more important than gold. It's the lifeblood of our state and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem," said Kathy Rinaldi, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition's Idaho Conservation Coordinator. "Any mining or exploration needs to ensure that the resources we value in Idaho, water, wildlife and productive farmland, are protected. This ruling does that."

Corral Creek is Yellowstone cutthroat trout habitat.

Judge Winmill ordered Caribou-Targhee National Forest to determine the potential impact of Otis Gold's work on ground water in the Dog Bone Ridge area of Clark County, and on Yellowstone cutthroat trout habitat in Corral Creek, which flows from the project area. The ruling affirmed the permit as it applies to other areas targeted for drilling.

Cyanide-based gold-mining scheme targets Continental Divide, Yellowstone regions

The farming and wildlife-rich area in Idaho that a foreign gold-mining company is targeting.

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. 

What do 1872 and 1,866 have in common?

What they have in common is Otis Gold Corporation, the Canadian gold-mining company that plans to tear into the Idaho side of the Centennial Mountains, in Clark County.

A Kilgore Project access road in Clark County, Idaho.

As for those numbers ... 1872 is the date of the U.S. General Mining Act. This obsolete, Reconstruction-era law -- cherished by mining companies who are plundering Western public lands under the free-for-all declared by Donald Trump -- continues to govern the giveaway of American minerals, even to foreign mining companies like Otis Gold. And it does so without requiring royalty payments to the American treasury.

The second number -- 1,866 -- is the number of mining claims that Otis Gold has acquired in Clark County for its flagship project, the Kilgore Project. The project is named for a nearby village that is a gateway to the Centennial Mountains in Clark County, which the U.S. Department of Labor reports has virtually no unemployment.

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.

Canadian mining company hopes 'frontier' county in Idaho can deliver its golden future

The commonly accepted population density for a United States county to qualify as a "frontier" is six residents per square mile. Idaho's Clark County -- larger than the state of Rhode Island -- has 0.6 residents per square mile. It lies at the base of the Centennial Mountains.

So it is here -- in a frontier county with just 360 or so registered voters, and where unemployment is barely above 0 percent -- that a Canadian company hopes to sell investors on a dangerous open-pit gold-mining operation on wildlife-rich, American public lands.

Teton Range, viewed from Kilgore, Idaho

It would be developed just a few miles south of Montana, which decades ago banned the water-intensive, cyanide-based process that Canada's Otis Gold Corp. hopes to use in its flagship operation, the Kilgore Project.

Politically powerless, sparsely populated county is focus of risky gold-mining process

With just 900 residents, many of them immigrants and their families working in agriculture, Clark County is Idaho's least-populated county. Yet it is larger than the state of Rhode Island. It lies just west of Yellowstone National Park, in a watershed where fresh water feeds into the lifeblood of Idaho -- the Snake River Plain Aquifer. Clark also occupies the southern flank of the Continental Divide's Centennial Mountains, a prime migration corridor for wildlife in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

Kilgore, Idaho, the Kilgore Project's namesake.

But with a tiny, isolated and politically voiceless population, limited communications and no effective news media serving as a watchdog, Clark has become a prime target for Canada's Otis Gold Corp., and its ambitions for a massive open-pit gold mine on public land.

It's called the Kilgore Project.

Banned by Montana, cyanide mining bid focuses on Idaho side of wildlife corridor

"Although cyanide reacts readily in the environment and degrades or forms complexes and salts of varying stabilities, it is toxic to many living organisms at very low concentrations. ... Fish and aquatic invertebrates are particularly sensitive to cyanide exposure." International Cyanide Management Code For the Gold Mining Industry


Montana's Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge lies just below the north slope of the Centennial Mountains, a range of the northern Rockies along the Continental Divide and the Montana-Idaho state line.

Red Rock River and the Centennial Mountains, Montana

We don't think it's a good neighborhood for a massive cyanide-based gold mine. But a foreign gold-mining company does.

Canadians eye U.S. lands for trainloads of free gold from cyanide-based Kilgore Project

“When people or countries come in to raid the great wealth of our Nation, I want them to pay for the privilege of doing so.” 

President Donald Trump, December 4, 2018
 
“We must not allow corporations to pillage our public lands and leave taxpayers to clean up the mess.” 

Elizabeth Warren
U.S. Senator (D-Mass.) and presidential candidate,
April 15, 2019


We agree -- especially when the raider is a foreign gold-mining company.

Yet President Trump and the U.S. Congress are exempting Canada's Otis Gold Corporation from this pronouncement. So this mining company -- and others like it -- is indeed hoping to extract American wealth from America's wildlands without paying a penny in royalties to the American treasury.

And they hope to do so in a part of Idaho where few will notice ... until the train has left the station.

Canadian firm pitches risky cyanide mining process, snubs Greater Yellowstone wildlife

Grizzly bear warning near Kilgore Project site.

As generations of hunters, campers, ranchers, wildland travelers and Continental Divide hikers can attest, the Centennial Mountains between Idaho and Montana are still some of the wildest country along the border between the two Rocky Mountain states.

Yet it is here, on the Idaho side where this photo was taken, that a foreign gold-mining company hopes to cash in on America's policy of giving away its natural wealth without requiring royalty payments to the American people.

Otis Gold hoping for vast cyanide-based Kilgore Project near Nez Perce battle site

Interpretive site near Kilgore recalls the Camas Meadows fight.

In August 1877, a year after Americans celebrated a century of independence, Nez Perce Indian men, women and children were in a fighting -- but ultimately unsuccessful -- flight from military forces sent to corral them. The attack on their camp at Big Hole, Montana, ended in defeat for government forces; but victory came at a terrible cost in warrior casualties.

Yet days later they did it again. They defeated U.S. forces at Kamiskin Takin (Camas Meadows) in Idaho, near today's hamlet of Kilgore, just south of the Montana state line in Clark County. (Sculptures stand at an interpretive site.) The Army bugler killed in the fight is buried here -- just down the road from a foreign company's proposed cyanide-based open-pit gold mine.