Mining pits environment vs. economy

Monday, Oct. 1, 2001 | 9:59 a.m.

ELKO -- Northern Nevada is seemingly a world away from the deserts and flashy casinos of the southern part of the state. Wind-swept grassy valleys lie between mountain rises. Instead of a single urban giant, a few small towns are scattered throughout hundreds of miles of otherwise empty landscape.

But just as Southern Nevada is dependent on one dominant industry -- gaming -- Northern Nevada's economic lifeblood comes from the state's second primary industry: mining.

And mining is big business. Nevada's mines pumped out 8.6 million ounces of gold, 23.2 million ounces of silver and 11.6 million pounds of copper last year -- a harvest of precious metals totaling $2.5 billion.

Nevada is the third-largest gold producer in the world, ranking only below South Africa and Australia. According to state government statistics, the industry employs more than 11,000 people in Nevada.

But the industry argues that rules imposed in January could spell disaster for Nevada's gold mines. The Bush administration is reviewing and may reverse the new rules, although environmentalists are threatening legal action to keep them in place.

In Elko, the rules imposed on the mining industry are nearly universally despised -- as is former President Clinton, whose administration developed them over a period of years, finally adopting them on the last day of his administration.

The rules essentially give the federal Bureau of Land Management veto power over any new mines under a provision that allows the agency to forbid an operation that would cause "substantial irreparable harm" to the environment on federal land. Most mines are wholly or partly on the 90 percent of land in Nevada controlled by the federal government.

Russ Fields, Nevada Mining Association president, says a significant problem with the new regulation revolves around its ambiguity. Although the BLM and Interior Department say that the rule isn't designed to shut down mining, industry executives worry that federal agencies could take a much more aggressive approach, a move that could cripple the industry, they say.

They also worry that legal action by environmentalists could force federal agencies to take that approach. Fields and others in the industry admit that mining intrinsically has an effect on the environment.

The question, they argue, is what constitutes "harm." Modern mining, they say, presents much less risk to the environment than it did in past years. And the benefits of providing jobs and metals -- important in today's high-tech economy -- must be balanced against the environmental impact, they say.

The industry also fiercely opposes a 1997 legal opinion that restricts the amount of land a company can use for its mining operations, restricting the area for processing the ore to 20 acres per mine site. But a modern, high-tech mine will typically use hundreds of acres for processing ore, treating rock waste and digging the mineral-rich rock from the earth.

Although the romantic picture of a grizzled miner, burro and pickaxe still permeates tourist brochures for the region, the modern metal mine is a huge industrial operation.

A company will spend $1.5 million each for huge trucks, each holding 190 tons of rock. The trucks move rock in which gold or other minerals aren't even visible but, rather, are microscopic deposits.

The ore-bearing rock must be crushed and extensively processed. The 190 tons of rock may finally yield 5 ounces of gold, worth about $1,250.

At many mines, the work of pulling the rock from the earth and extracting the mineral from the rock is done seven days a week, 24 hours a day, by a small army of workers.

The "Mill Site Opinion" from an Interior Department attorney "caught us all off guard," says Placer Dome human resources manager James Chavis. Placer Dome operates the huge Cortez mines in Crescent Valley, about 90 minutes southwest of Elko.

Placer Dome already had started the permitting process for Cortez' large open pit mine when the legal opinion came down from Washington, giving it an exemption from the ruling. But if it had been in place the opinion would have kept the company's half-mile-wide open pit mine from opening, and might have meant no jobs for more than 300 workers, Chavis said.

New rules

The industry could soon claim a significant victory on both the mill-site and permanent-harm rules. The Bush administration is reviewing the rules and is universally expected to throw them out, perhaps as soon as this week.

"The Bush administration is going to publish a new rule that will eviscerate the Clinton rules," said Alan Septoff, research director for the Mineral Research Policy Center, an advocacy group in Washington that is sharply critical of the mining industry. "Whether or not that is legal and will stand up in court is another matter."

Septoff said that Bush administration revisions would be "arbitrary and capricious," since they did not go the through years of public scrutiny the Clinton rules did.

But the change can't come soon enough for locals. A visitor simply cannot find anyone who doesn't benefit, directly or indirectly, from the industry. Threats to that industry are taken very seriously.

For people in Elko, the Clinton rules could spell disaster for an industry already reeling from a years-long drop in gold prices and the layoff of thousands of miners statewide.

"It is, for Northeastern Nevada, our lifeblood," says Elko Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Elaine Barkdull.

Barkdull and other residents say people in Washington, Las Vegas and even Carson City don't understand either the importance of the mining industry or the environmental issues involved.

The mining companies "have been a caring part of our community," she says, pointing out the contribution companies have made to her own offices. "We hate to be reliant on one industry, but this one industry has been good to us."

Barkdull says not all environmental regulations are bad, and credits them with pushing the industry to higher standards of reclamation in the past decade. It wasn't always the case. She says two decades ago, mining companies did not reclaim the land after years of mining.

But now they are trying to be good neighbors, she argues.

"They're not out there gouging and raping the land. There's a misconception that they are just tearing down mountains."

Barkdull, like many of her neighbors, has both worked for the mining companies and had family members who worked in the mines.

"Around here, people are very impressed with how caring mining is to the environment," Barkdull says. "Clinton's environmental regulations -- that's a perfect example of people who don't know what is happening here. People from the East need to come here to see first-hand what is happening."

"There are so many regulations that can really hinder a community."

Barkdull shares her point of view with mining executives, all of whom swear they are working to protect the environment. They condemn the regulations as unnecessary duplication of state environmental rules.

For example, the rules for the first time give the federal government jurisdiction over ground water quality, an area that had been under the auspices of state and local control -- which is where the industry would like it to stay.

Fields says the impact of the new rules isn't so much on the three dozen or so mines now operating in Nevada. The real impact, he says, will be to make establishing the new mines much more difficult.

Most of the mines are expected to exhaust the hardrock reservoirs of ore within a decade, and that could put thousands out of work, he says.

Protections in place

Fields says the Clinton rules are unnecessary. During a recent tour of multinational Newmont Mining Corp.'s Carlin operations, he points out the reclamation features that he says show the company's dedication to the environment.

Despite being one of the most productive gold mines in the state, Newmont's Carlin site sits next to Maggie Creek, a critical environment for Lahontan trout, a native species listed as "threatened" under the federal Endangered Species Act.

Newmont's operations also show numerous efforts to actually repair the land through building natural-looking hillsides, seeded with local wild vegetation.

Fields and Louis Schack, a Newmont spokesman, also say the water is being protected. Acids, along with mining byproducts cyanide and mercury, are no longer going into surface and ground water in the amounts that once occurred.

Those techniques, which gave hardrock mining a bad name, "ended before the turn of the century," Fields says. "It wasn't done carefully."

"The standard in Nevada now is, 'Thou shalt not degrade the water,"' he says. "All discharge has to meet drinking water standards."

The state rules, which the mining industry argues provide sufficient environmental protection, hold the companies to that standard for 30 years.

Environmentalists, however, say three decades are not enough.

"The maximum impacts don't occur for a hundred years," says Tom Myers, director of the Great Basin Mine Watch, a Nevada-based environmental group.

Myers points to problems such as the mining contamination along the Carson River, the state's only active "Superfund" site requiring substantial federally funded cleanup.

The river is polluted with mercury, selenium and other mining byproducts, all of them potentially toxic. The mining occurred more than a century ago, during one of the state's silver booms.

Environmentalists say similar threats to ground and surface water could materialize decades down the road, a scenario the industry disputes.

Another water-related issue illustrates the divide between the miners and the environmentalists. Open-pit mining removes hundreds of thousands of tons of rock from mile-wide holes in the ground and is one of the most cost effective ways to excavate ore.

Eventually, these holes will fill with water, creating artificial deep-water lakes. The mining industry and its neighbors, including some ranchers, welcome the recreational opportunities that these new lakes would bring Northern Nevada.

Environmentalists, however, view the lakes as aberrant pockmarks on the landscape. Although the grassy valleys and tree-lined hills of Northern Nevada receive more water than the southern part of the state, the north is still considered dry.

"They're creating huge artificial lakes in the middle of arid areas," Myers says. "The long range impacts really depend on where the water is coming from to fill these pits. Some of them will have very poor water quality."

Mining industry executives say they aren't opposed to requirements that the companies post longterm bonds to pay for environmental cleanup, if those cleanups become necessary.

The companies operate clean mines because of the existing state and federal regulations and because "our employees hold our feet to the fire," says James Chavis, regional manager for Placer Dome America, which operates the huge Cortez mine in Crescent Valley about 45 minutes west of Elko.

"In this part of the country, people fish and hunt for game," Chavis says. "They won't let us mess it up."

During a tour of the Cortez operation, which sprawls over hundreds of acres in a mountain valley, some of that game -- a pair of pronghorn antelope -- appeared just a few hundred feet from land undergoing reclamation.

"We have a very clean, environmentally friendly operation here," Chavis says.

Jobs first

Those who work in the mines say they also want to see a clean operation. But jobs, clearly, come first.

"I can't imagine doing anything but mining," says Randy Dutton, a foreman at Newmont's Carlin East underground mine. Although the work can be dirty and unforgiving of a miner's mistake, Dutton says he's proud of the work he does.

And with an average salary of more than $55,000 a year, a miner such as Dutton can make a good living.

Dutton has been at the Carlin East site for two years, and the mine has about three more productive years ahead of it. After that, he will look for more hardrock work for Newmont or another company -- if new mine sites open.

Dutton and his bosses fear the impact that the rules, if left intact, would have on the longterm viability of the industry in the United States and Nevada.

Tony Jensen, general manager of the Cortez mines, says the profit margin for a big mining operation already is small -- about 4.5 percent. Contending with the new rules can tip the scales to where it would be more profitable to export operations to other countries, where there are fewer regulations and costs are lower.

Mining employees -- in the pit or in executive offices -- believe that the ultimate goal of environmentalists is to close all mines, everywhere.

Myers, who says he works on mining issues because he saw the results of coal mining in his native Pennsylvania, says that isn't so.

"We're not here to stop all new mines," he says. "We are here to change the culture of industry and government so we protect our air, land and water.

"I want to hold on to the rules because the environmental performance standards give the BLM authority to protect water resources," Myers says. "It gives them the additional stick to say, 'If you can't protect the water, you can't do this."'

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