The Mining Industry Never Sleeps
July 14, 2015
The Mining Industry Never Sleeps
by John Holt
The mining industry, always rapacious in its desires. Is now setting its sights on 2,500 acres in the Emigrant Peak area of Montana’s Paradise Valley, a spectacular place with rugged mountains, thick forests and cold, crystalline streams that drift down on the Yellowstone River. As usual, gold is the main quarry in this effort. Lucky Minerals Inc. (at least they didn’t have the temerity to name themselves “Life Is Good Mineral Extraction Consortium”, a Surrey, British Columbia, mineral exploration company, has applied for two separate exploration permits in the area, one with the Custer Gallatin National Forest and one on private land with the Montana Department of Environmental Quality.
Emigrant Peak is the backdrop for the famous Chico Hot Springs Resort, just north of Yellowstone National Park, and its owner and general manager Colin Davis isn’t happy about the prospect. “It all leads to only one possibility,” Davis said, “which is a massive, horrific mine back there.”
Lucky Minerals, has applied for two separate exploration permits in the area, one with the Custer Gallatin National Forest and one on private land with the Montana Department of Environmental Quality. Twelve bore holes are planned for public land and 23 on private holdings to determine if further mining is financially and physically feasible. The project is in its infancy, but a coalition of environmental groups has started a campaign to try and halt the project in its tracks, seeing potential for it to lead to a massive gold mine in the Paradise Valley.
Emigrant Peak and the Yellowstone River, Paradise Valley, Montana.
One only has to search online for photos of the Zortman goldmine in the Little Rockies near the Missouri Breaks to see what this activity leads to. A pristine Montana island mountain range has been savaged. The scars are visible from miles away. Streams that once provided habitat for native trout now run a lifeless, putrid orange. The forest surrounding the devastation is eerily quiet – few birds or mammal, large and small, live here now. And there other mines around the state, whose motto is “oro-y-plata” – gold and silver. The Golden Sunlight mine in southwest Montana a few miles northwest of Whitehall comes to mind. Another blight that is also visible for many miles. Tainted groundwater, curious local cancer rates and the legal ability to use cyanide heap leach pit process to extract gold. The process was outlawed by Montana ballot initiative in 1998, but pre-existing operations like Golden Sunlight were grandfathered in through existing or amended permits.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/14/the-mining-industry-never-sleeps/
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Gold Mining at the Zortman-Landusky Mine