CdA Mines in high court

A dispute over a local mining company’s plans to dump waste into a lake in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest has reached the nation’s highest court.

An attorney for Coeur d’Alene Mines Corp. told the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday that the company should be allowed to dump tailings from its Kensington gold mine into a small, subalpine lake. Environmental groups argued that the practice would violate the federal Clean Water Act, turning back the clock to the days of dirty mining practices.

“Modern mines have never been allowed to dump tailings into lakes,” said Tom Waldo, an attorney with the environmental Earthjustice organization, who argued the case on behalf of the Sierra Club and two Alaska conservation groups. Waldo called the proposal a test case that could “reverse decades of … law and return us to the day when mines could dump their tailings into clean lakes, rivers and streams.”

Tailings are the crushed rock left after mineral extraction. Coeur d’Alene Mines is proposing to pump 210,000 gallons of tailings slurry daily into Lower Slate Lake during the mine’s projected 10-year life.

The tailings would kill the lake’s fish population – a Dolly Varden char – by smothering them, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in 2007. The court also said the toxicity of the tailings could have a lasting effect on the lake.

But company officials argue that the tailings are similar to the rocks already in the 23-acre lake, and that Lower Slate Lake could be successfully restocked with fish after the Kensington Mine closes.

“There will be more fish in a bigger lake and more liveable living conditions for the fish,” attorney Theodore Olson, a former U.S. solicitor general who represented Coeur d’Alene Mines, told the Supreme Court.

Justice David Souter called that logic “Orwellian” and said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which granted the mine’s tailings disposal permit in 2005, was “defining away the problem” by calling the wastewater discharge fill.

Other justices appeared to disagree, noting that an alternative to dumping would be to destroy nearby wetlands by creating a stack of tailings taller than the Pentagon.

“In our view, that is not as bad as filling up a lake and killing all the fish,” countered Waldo, the attorney for Earthjustice.

Using a natural lake for tailings disposal sets bad precedent, he added.

“We’re protecting lakes and streams for their own value,” Waldo said. “If they can do this in Slate Lake, they could do it in the headwaters of Bristol Bay,” where a large gold-and-copper mine is proposed, “and fill in those very valuable salmon streams.”

A Supreme Court decision is expected by June, when the court recesses. If the justices rule in Coeur d’Alene Mines’ favor, the company could open the mine later this year, said Tony Ebersole, a company spokesman.

The Kensington Mine is about 45 miles north of Juneau. The mine contains approximately 1.4 million ounces of gold, worth more than $1.1 billion at current gold prices of $820 an ounce.

The Kensington Mine would employ about 200 workers, at wages averaging $80,000 a year, Ebersole said.