Vocal Critics Thwart Mine Permit Process

As the mining industry sees it, little truth about the New World mine project emerged from the tons of ink and media coverage heaped upon it.

The project officially died Aug. 12, when Crown Butte Resources Inc. accepted a $65 million deal to surrender its mineral rights in exchange for another piece of federal land to be determined later.

The environmental opponents succeeded in stopping the project by helping convince the public that the New World mine was a clear danger to Yellowstone National Park.

Crown Butte Resources had developed the mine since 1989, sinking $37 million into cleaning up the historic mining district and confirming a large gold, silver and copper deposit there.

Environmental groups roared at New World’s proximity to Yellowstone, despite the fact that two mines operate closer to the national treasure. Crown Butte quickly found itself on the losing end of a rhetorical battle.

The groups publicized that the mine would drain into Yellowstone and destroy critical habitat. In fact, the company had planned for the treated water to drain toward Billings, away from the park.

The spectre of cyanide spills at mines like Summitville in Colorado were raised to bring scorn onto New World, despite the fact that mine would not have used cyanide.

When Crown Butte President Joe Baylis spoke at the Northwest Mining Association Convention in Spokane last December, he welcomed the chance to put his mine up against Montana’s Department of Environmental Quality standards.

Much of the permitting for New World was moving through Montana’s DEQ without too much trouble, Baylis said to media and convention delegates.

Crown Butte didn’t get the chance to prove the merits of New World through the DEQ process, said Tim Olson of Spokane-based Northwest Mining Association.

“That was the most frustrating part,” Olson said. “They just gave up on the process. They threw the science out the window.”

Crown Butte Resources, with parent companies Battle Mountain Gold Co. and Noranda Inc., really had no choice but to take the deal that ended the mine, observers said.

Had it pushed New World forward, it faced opposition from environmental groups and a mining-unfriendly Clinton administration, and years of legal challenges.

The New World mine accord gives domestic mining companies another reason to look overseas to mining-friendlier climates.

For environmental groups, it provides encouragement to continue the fight against mining projects, said Susan Daggett, an attorney with the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund in Bozeman. “It gives people energy and hope that it (stopping a mine) can be done,” she said. “That’s a real shift.”

Despite conceding defeat to the growing anti-mining forces in Montana, the industry saw some encouraging aspects from the New World saga, said Paul Jones of the Minerals Exploration Coalition in Denver.

“The positive thing to come from this is that the government realized that New World was private property that had to be compensated for,” Jones said. “But I am really disgusted that the system has been circumvented by special interest groups that want to maintain a never-never land environmentally.”

, DataTimes