Q: What is I-147?

A: I-147 is a ballot initiative that overturns I-137, the initiative Montana voters approved in 1998 banning new and expanded open-pit cyanide-leach mining in Montana. Colorado's Canyon Resources, which is proposing the 7 Up Pete Joint Venture/McDonald Meadows Project, a very large open-pit cyanide-leach mine along the upper Blackfoot River, is the main sponsor and funder of the initiative campaign.

The measure will be on the November 2 general election ballot. If passed, I-147 will continue the legacy of open-pit cyanide-leach mining -- a legacy of failure that has polluted streams and drinking water, harmed private property and cost taxpayers millions in cleanup.

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Q: Who is behind I-147?

A: According to Montana's Commissioner of Political Practices, 97 percent ($737,000 of $764,000) of the money raised so far by the campaign to pass I-147 comes from Colorado's Canyon Resource Corp., which wants to build an open-pit cyanide leach mine along the upper Blackfoot River.

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Q: What is Canyon Resource's record?

A: Canyon operated the Kendall Mine, a medium-sized open-pit cyanide-leach operation northwest of Lewistown. Though the mine closed eight years ago, the company has deliberately skirted its obligation to completely reclaim the site. The mine has polluted water used by local ranchers. It also dried up water sources needed for watering livestock on nearby private land. Canyon's behavior at the Kendall Mine forced the State of Montana to sue the company for polluting Montana's waters and local landowners to sue the company for cleanup and damages.

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Q: What does I-147 say?

A: It repeals the ban on new and expanded open-pit cyanide leach mining. It also ostensibly allows this type of mining only for operations that comply with so-called "new" requirements, including:

1.) engineering cyanide leach facilities to withstand 100-year flood events;
2.) ensuring cyanide vat-leach facilities have spill containment;
3.) making sure groundwater and surface water is monitored; and
4.) posting of adequate reclamation bonds

In addition, I-147 requires mines to comply with existing applicable laws and regulations.

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Q: Are these requirements really new?

A: No. Every one of the "requirements" in I-147 has been included in past and existing permits for mines in Montana. The director of Montana's Department of Environmental Quality, which regulates mining in Montana, publicly stated the initiative includes nothing that hasn't already been required. Moreover, complying with existing laws is not "new." Or at least it shouldn't be!

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Q: Do I-147's "new" requirements adequately protect the environment?

A: No. The public record is clear. Each of I-147's so-called "new" requirements has already failed at mines in Montana. Some examples:

• Engineering to protect against 100-year rainstorms didn't prevent a near-disaster at Pegasus Gold's Zortman-Landusky Mine when its leach facilities breached and emergency efforts were deployed to vacate cyanide-laced water. That effort damaged local forests, and according to on-site agency staff exposed state workers to potentially dangerous levels of hydrogen-cyanide gas.
  
  
• Lining and containment systems haven't prevented a single leach facility from leaking cyanide solution and other pollutants into groundwater. The double-liner at the mine the industry touted as "state of the art," the Beal Mountain Mine near Anaconda, leaked cyanide solution and other toxics into nearby ground and surface water within the first year of operation. Among other problems, the Beal Mountain mine -- which is now in the federal Superfund program -- has also poisoned trout in nearby streams with high levels of toxins.
  
  
• Reclamation bonds at Zortman, Kendall and Beal were supposed to be "adequate," but in fact turned out to fall far short of what was needed. Taxpayers could eventually pay millions -- perhaps $40 million or more by some estimates -- to deal with post-mining measures to protect water quality at all three mines. All these mines employed the very measures that are in I-147 and which cyanide-leach proponents claim are “new.” All these measures failed to protect water, adjacent landowners and taxpayers.

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Q: What else does I-147 say?

A: Section 2 of I-147 has nothing to do with "new" environmental protections. This section instead restores so-called "contractual interests" or "rights in a mineral estate" the 1998 public vote supposedly took away or "diminished." Only one company in Montana claims it lost a contractual or mineral right in 1998: Canyon Resources. Canyon claims a lease it had to explore for gold on state land in the Blackfoot Valley before the 1998 vote guaranteed the company a mine and guaranteed the mine would generate millions of dollars. The lease guaranteed neither. In fact, the documentation and subsequent legal rulings are clear: The lease was terminated not because of I-137, but because the company refused to pay the state for legally required permitting costs. Section 2 of I-147 makes clear that the main goal of the measure is to give a special deal to an out-of-state mining company that doesn’t pay its bills or clean up after itself.

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Q: Proponents of I-147 say the current ban is stopping mining in Montana. Is that true?

A: No. In fact, the University of Montana’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research -- which uses industry-supplied data -- says there are more mining jobs in Montana now than before the 1998 vote took place. In fact, I-147 is actually an anti-mining measure because it reinstates a failed, environmentally damaging technology that gives all mining a bad name.

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Q: But I-147 advocates insist the ban on open-pit cyanide-leach mining is killing mining in Montana.
What’s the real deal?

A: Well, they aren’t telling the truth. The ban does not apply to mining technologies commonly used for extraction of platinum, palladium, copper, silver, lead, zinc, molybdenum, talc, phosphate, gravel, coal, and in some instances, even gold. The ban on open-pit cyanide leach mining only affects proposals to exploit ore-bodies containing microscopic amounts of gold.

Therefore, the 2,000 workers Stillwater Mining Company employs at its two platinum/palladium mines and its smelter in south-central Montana aren't affected by a ban on cyanide-leach mining. Nor does the ban on cyanide mining affect the jobs at MRI’s copper/molybdenum mine in Butte, talc mines near Dillon and Three Forks, an approved copper-silver mine south of Libby, or coal mines in southeast Montana. In fact, an existing large open-pit gold mine near Clancy isn’t covered by the ban on open-pit cyanide use, nor is the Golden Sunlight gold mine near Whitehall. The existing prohibition on new and expanded open-pit cyanide-leach mining in Montana affects only a small part of a much larger industry. And today, it mainly affects Canyon Resource’s proposal for the Blackfoot River.

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Q: How many problems with cyanide mines have officially been reported in Montana?

A: The following table outlines these reports: