Published Tuesday,
July 6, 2004 The CR Kendall Mine Corp. announced plans last week to resume reclamation work at its defunct gold mine near Lewistown. The company intends to recontour the mine's process pads, where cyanide was used to leach gold and silver from ore. By this fall, the site would be covered with three feet of soil and seeded with native species, at a cost of $1.5 million. Sounds like a step in the right direction, huh? Maybe to people who haven't followed the Kendall mine saga. In truth, it's just the latest chapter in a long-running dispute about the fate of the mine site -- a move that could wind up delaying the outcome even longer. Kendall says it has spent $8 million thus far reclaiming the site of the mine, where it extracted gold and silver from 1988 through 1996. But eight years later, work remains. The state Department of Environmental Quality has been trying to work with Kendall toward a full reclamation of, among other things, its cyanide heap-leach operations. The problem is, the state is still midway through an Environmental Impact Study to determine the best cleanup options. The outcome of the study could well differ from what Kendall is starting to undertake. For example, the study might recommend capping the leach pads with a liner to prevent toxic metals from leaching out of the site, according to Warren McCullough, chief of the DEQ's Environmental Management Bureau. Should that happen, Kendall would need to remove the three feet of hard-to-come-by topsoil it is about to place on the pads. But dollars to doughnuts it wouldn't do so willingly. The result: an even more drawn-out cleanup. Here's another sticking point: The state wants Kendall to foot the cost of drilling for groundwater samples around old waste rock dumps at the mine site. Kendall argues that paying for the tests -- the cost of which could run as high as $58,000 -- is not its legal responsibility. Well, we don't claim to experts on state mining law, but if mining companies aren't responsible for the cost of groundwater samples and other tests involved in cleanups, they certainly should be. If the law is ambiguous in any way about this, the next session of the Legislature should rectify it forthwith. That's not the only point of contention over the Kendall mine. A pair of environmental groups sued the company last spring on grounds that it continues to pollute nearby creeks with such contaminants as selenium, thallium, arsenic and sulfate. Canyon Resources, the owner of the Kendall mine, denies that, saying the runoff is routed back onto the mine site. The state says the mine's pump system is capturing much of the runoff, but not all. Bottom line: It's more of the same old, same old at the Kendall mine. Bear this in mind as mining companies -- including
Canyon Resources, which is the company that wants to create a much-larger
such mine east of Lincoln -- seek to qualify an initiative to repeal the
state's 1998 ban on cyanide heap-leach operations. |