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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Crown Butte Executive Defends Yellowstone Mine Controversy Aired Before Friendly Audience At Mine Conference

Eric Torbenson Staff writer

Forget everything you’ve heard about the controversial New World Mine near Yellowstone Park.

Just look at the facts, asked the president of the company trying to get the project off the ground.

Joseph Baylis wants to mine 2 million ounces of gold in a mountain just outside of the national park.

But a cadre of environmentalists and government bureaucrats are intent on stopping him.

The project has drawn national attention, and none of it good for Baylis’ company, Crown Butte. Celebrities petitioned the government to stop the mine. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt uses New World as a favorite example of mining’s wrongs.

The clincher may have come when President Clinton visited Yellowstone last summer. Convinced the mine could harm Yellowstone’s scenic beauty, he commanded an immediate 2-year moratorium on mining permits around the park, though Crown Butte got their permits before the moratorium.

Crown Butte faces one of the largest campaigns ever waged against a single mine. Baylis said he’ll lose if the environmentalists continue to obscure the facts.

Baylis made his case in friendly territory Thursday at the Northwest Mining Association Convention. At best, he said, he can only hope to match the media-bending efforts of his competition.

The latest salvo from the anti-mining side includes the listing of Yellowstone as a “World Heritage in Danger,” partly because of the prospect of the New World Mine. The World Heritage Committee, an offshoot of the United Nations, toured the mine this fall, at the behest of Babbitt, Baylis said. The government verbally promised to pay for the trip, but then backed off under pressure from mining companies, Baylis said.

The U.N.’s group’s conclusion: The mine posses a significant risk to Yellowstone.

“They didn’t even base their conclusions on science,” Baylis said. “The draft environmental impact statement isn’t even out yet.”

The development has some in the industry scratching their heads.

“Why is President Clinton having a United Nations group come in and evaluate a mine?” asked Tim Olson, executive director of the association. “That’s what we have the permitting process for. That’s the rules. Here’s a company that’s in the fourth quarter and all of sudden the rules are changing.”

Baylis said Missoula-based Crown Butte wants to play by the lengthy rules that govern the permitting of a mine. The environmental groups - including the Beartooth Alliance, Greater Yellowstone Coalition and National Parks And Conservation Association - are running an “end-around” by getting the World Heritage Committee involved, he thinks.

“Our project’s already been judged in the court of world opinion,” he said. “We just want the government to follow the process so that we know what the rules are.”

Much has been made that the mine would use cyanide to leach the gold from mined rock. It won’t. Critics also have said the waste rock or tailings would become acidic and spill into the park. Under Crown Butte’s plan, nothing from the mine would enter the park.

Babbitt has made headlines by comparing the small fees mining companies pay for public land they mine to a “bank heist.” The New World mine lies on 90 percent private land, with only 16 acres of the mine on public land, Baylis said.

The government agencies working on the permitting apparently want to portray the project differently than how the company has planned it, Baylis said.

In presenting the mine plan recently, the government showed slides of an alternative site where the mine could store its tailings.

Crown Butte wants to put the tailings pond near the Fisher Creek, which drains northeast, away from the park.

The EPA and other agencies are required to come up with an alternative site as part of the draft EIS. This alternative site, on the other side of the mountain where the mine would lie, would drain into the park if something leaked from the tailings impoundment. Yet, that’s not place the the company wants the tailings, Baylis said.

Crown Butte has poured $40 million into the project. At stake are about 2 million ounces of gold and 175 jobs that would pay about $40,000 each year for the 12 to 15 years the mine would be in production. All that seems to be lost in the debate, he said.

Leaders at the mining conference point to the New World mine as a example of why the industry has looked overseas for opportunities.

“(Baylis’) group is not the one going off half-cocked like they are on the other side,” said Wallace McGregor, president of the association. “The environmental side will make any charge they can as long as it sticks to the wall.”

, DataTimes