Save the Blackfoot. Vote NO on I-147.
Pollute Water Harm Property Rights Cost Taxpayers Millions Introduce No New Safeguards
Open pit, cyanide-leach mining harms private property.

FACT: In 2001, six ranching families who live downstream from the Kendall mine were forced to sue Canyon Resources for polluting and interrupting water sources needed for watering livestock and crops.

FACT: The Fort Belknap Native American community was forced to sue the BLM for violating its trust responsibilities by allowing the Zortman-Landusky mines to harm tribal lands.

FACT: Landowners downstream of the Golden Sunlight Mine near Whitehall were forced to sell their property to the mine's owner Placer Dome Corp. after the open-pit operation contaminated local drinking water sources with cyanide solution.

FACT: After the Golden Maple mine near Lewistown spilled cyanide solution into local groundwater, the State of Montana ordered the company to provide a neighboring rancher with an alternate water supply for domestic and stock water.

"What Canyon Resources has done in the North Moccasin Mountains burns my ass."

  • Cliff Edwards, attorney for ranching families near Hilger, Montana, who are suing Canyon resources for damaging water sources on private property. Great Falls Tribune, Oct. 19, 2001

"They're taking advantage by threatening people's security in their home and property; and I just find that abominable."

  • Montana State Sen. Jim Elliot, commenting on Canyon notifying private landowners that the company owns mineral rights under their land and that the property owners have two weeks to pay the company or risk having the rights -- most which had little or no value -- sold to someone else.
IMAGE CREDITS: Sign along Colorado's Alamosa River where the cyanide leach from Summitville Mine wiped out fish and other aquatic life for at least 17 miles in 1992, by Earthworks; "Water shortage blamed on Kendall gold mine," Great Falls Tribune, May 4, 1998; "Tribes Sue Over Gold Mine Pollution," Helena Independent Record, October 29, 2003.:
Save the Blackfoot. Vote NO on I-147. - Paul Roos, treasurer - P.O. Box 68, Ovando, MT 59854 - info@nocyanide.org