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.