As the new home of WashPIRG's environmental work, Environment Washington can be contacted regarding this news release.
Seattle—Local environmentalists
decried a new opinion issued today by Interior Secretary Gale Norton that will
permit unlimited toxic waste dumping by mining companies, such as Kinross Gold
Corporation, which yesterday announced that it sought to acquire the right to
mine gold from the old Crown Jewel site on Buckhorn Mountain in the Okanogan
National Forest.
The Interior Department
said the agency’s solicitor general under Clinton had no legal basis for
his opinion that the 1872 Mining Law limits each 20-acre mining claim on federal
land to a single five- acres waste site. The new opinion by Deputy Solicitor
Roderick Walston, signed by Norton Wednesday and released Friday, eradicated
the requirement that mill sites, with their associated toxic waste dumps, be
limited to five acres of federal land.
"This most recent environmental
rollback by the Bush administration effectively deprives citizens of the only
tool we had to limit the presence of contaminated mine waste in our national
forests," said David Kliegman, executive director of the Okanogan Highlands
Alliance.
The 5-acre limit is written
into the 1872 Mining Law, and was reinforced in 1997 when the rule was applied
to the proposed Crown Jewel open-pit gold mine in the Okanogan Highlands.
The Crown Jewel proposal
was abandoned in the late 1990s in the face of staunch citizen opposition and
concern that the project would contaminate the watershed. Yesterday, Kinross
Gold Corporation, one of the largest gold producers in the world, announced
its intent to acquire Crown Resources and move forward to mine the claim.
"The convergence of
these two events fundamentally changes the landscape for mining operations in
Washington," said Mo McBroom, staff attorney for the Washington Public
Interest Research Group. "Kinross, one of the worlds largest mining companies,
is actively buying up mine proposals and operations in the state. And now, Kinross
has the green light to dump unlimited amounts of contaminated waste onto Washington's
pristine national forests."
WashPIRG is a statewide
nonprofit, nonpartisan public interest organization dedicated to environmental
protection, consumer rights, and good government.
