Nez Perce Tribe wins $5M in lawsuit

An Idaho mining company will pay $5 million to settle a Clean Water Act lawsuit brought by the Nez Perce Tribe.

Perpetua Resources, which is seeking permits to reopen and expand an open-pit gold and antimony mine in central Idaho, will pay $4 million into a fund the tribe will use on water quality improvement projects on the South Fork of the Salmon River. The company will also pay the tribe $1 million to cover costs associated with the 2019 lawsuit.

Under terms of the agreement announced Thursday, the tribe will continue to oppose the company’s plans to reopen the mine near Yellow Pine and adjacent to the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area. Perpetua Resources will continue to seek the necessary federal permits to begin full-scale mining.

The settlement was announced Thursday in a news release from the Tribe.

Perpetua Resources, formerly Midas Gold, intends to expand the abandoned and polluted mine site in the Stibnite mining district. The company is pitching the mine as an opportunity to extract more than 4 million ounces of gold, 1.7 million ounces of silver and 115 million pounds of antimony – a metal used in liquid metal batteries – while providing hundreds of jobs and ultimately cleaning up a toxic stew left by miners of the past.

But the tribe and environmental groups like the Idaho Conservation league say the company’s proposal will greatly expand the footprint of the mine and threaten habitat for chinook salmon, steelhead and bull trout, which are all listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The mine, along the East Fork of the South Fork of the Salmon River, sits within the tribe’s traditional homeland. Tribal members continue to exercise treaty-reserved fishing rights in the area, and the tribe’s Department of Fisheries Resources Management spends about $3 million annually on fish recovery efforts in the South Fork Salmon basin.

Mining at Stibnite dates back to at least the 1930s, and the site was active during World War II, before modern environmental standards were adopted. Other mining companies left behind a legacy of toxic pollution and damage that includes two open pits. The East Fork of the South Fork of the Salmon River flows into one of the pits that blocks fish from reaching upstream spawning areas.

Perpetua Resources, a spinoff of a Canadian mining company, acquired land and mining rights in the area more than a decade ago. It wants to extract gold and other minerals from tailings at the mining site and add a third open pit. The company’s plans include using some of the mining profits to restore water quality and fish habitat.

In 2019, the tribe filed a lawsuit charging the company, by virtue of its ownership of land and mining rights there, has been releasing a toxic stew of heavy metals and other pollution from the old mining site and doesn’t have the necessary permits from the Environmental Protection Agency to do so. The company, which has not yet started mining there, claimed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act relieves it of responsibility for pollution left by previous owners.

Barbara Cosens, a retired University of Idaho professor of law, mediated the agreement. She said it leaves unanswered the degree to which the company is or is not responsible for legacy pollution at the site.

The Payette National Forest released a draft environmental impact statement on the company’s mining proposal last year and is in the process of analyzing those comments and preparing a final environmental impact statement.