Published July 29, 2004 New group vows to fight mining initiative HELENA - Opponents of an initiative to overturn Montana's ban on using cyanide in gold and silver mining have formed a new group to try to defeat the measure on the November ballot. Save the Blackfoot Vote No on I-147 has a 14-member board consisting largely of southwestern Montana residents, some of them Blackfoot River users. The primary financial supporter of Initiative 147 is Colorado's Canyon Resources Corp., which wants to mine gold east of Lincoln in the Blackfoot Valley. Efforts to develop the gold project and eventually use cyanide to leach the metal from ore ceased when voters passed the cyanide ban, Initiative 137, in 1998. Save the Blackfoot is starting to raise money and will advertise against I-147, said Gary Buchanan of Billings, an investment adviser who is the lone eastern Montanan on the board and fishes in the Blackfoot River. "We intend to do as much as we can," Buchanan said Thursday. "The election can be influenced by massive amounts of ... advertising and we can't begin to match those expenditures, but we have to make the fight." Critics of the cyanide process in open-pit mining say it puts the environment at risk, but supporters say the technology is safe if precautions demanded by I-147 are taken. Supporters of the November initiative have coalesced as Miners, Merchants and Montanans for Jobs and Economic Opportunity, For I-147. Through July 5 it had collected $763,899 in in-kind contributions and cash, all but about $26,000 of it from Canyon Resources, according to the most recent report filed with the state political practices commissioner. Cash in the bank totaled $22,052. In addition to Canyon Resources, supporters in the reporting period June 7-July 5 included the Montana Mining Association; Golden Sunlight Mines in Whitehall; the Northwest Mining Association in Spokane, Wash.; the Western Environmental Trade Association in Helena; Placer Dome America in Denver; and Holcim Inc., operator of a cement plant near Three Forks. Save the Blackfoot announced its formation a week after the Montana Environmental Information Center submitted a petition to the Montana Supreme Court, seeking to remove I-147 from the Nov. 2 ballot. The court has not said whether it will accept the case. MEIC, which led the effort to pass the cyanide ban six years ago, said the repeal measure is too broad to be constitutional, but supporters dispute claims of a technical defect. Blackfoot Valley landowner Mark Gerlach joined MEIC in filing the petition, and is on the board of Save the Blackfoot. |