Buckhorn Bulletin
February 2004 Vol. 2 No. 2

Scoping for Son of Crown Jewel
There was public outcry when only about 300 people received notice of the comment period for Denver-based Crown Resources' proposed cyanide-leach gold mine on Buckhorn Mountain. So the Washington State Department of Ecology and the US Forest Service extended the period and sent out additional notices. Initially the agencies said they could not access the list of thousands of people who commented on Battle Mountain Gold’s (BMG) defunct Crown Jewel Project. OHA insisted notice be sent to people who had previously commented, and to local residents. After two 30 day extensions the agencies received over two thousand public comments, the vast majority opposing Crown’s plan to build a cyanide leach mill and tailings facility in Beaver Canyon.
The Department of Ecology has hired contracting firm Shaw Environmental to help, in cooperation with the Forest Service, develop both a draft and final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS).

Kinross Buys Crown Resources
Kinross Gold Corporation announced that it will be purchasing Crown Resources in its entirety, including the Buckhorn Mountain mining claims. Kinross already owns Echo Bay Minerals near Republic, WA. Crown recently entered into a toll mining agreement with Echo Bay whereby ore from a mine can be milled at another facility. This could significantly change the Buckhorn Mine proposal and will most likely result in another round of scoping.
Kinross’ Scott Marikis will replace Walt Hunt of Crown as general manager for the Buckhorn Mountain Project. Marikis says Kinross will submit a new plan of operations to the agencies. Marikis told OHA the new plan would have a similar underground mine, but the ore would most likely be transported down Marias Creek Road to the Key Mill near Republic instead of down Pontiac Ridge Road to a new mill on Beaver Canyon Road.

Who is Echo Bay?
Echo Bay Minerals Company operates a gold and silver mining and milling operation (Kettle River Project) in Ferry County near the town of Republic, Washington. The Project started in 1989. It originally included the Key Mill and tailings disposal facility, and the Overlook and Kettle underground mine sites. Since that time three additional mines have gone into production: the Key Project (two adjacent open pits), and the Lamefoot and K2 mines (both underground). Currently the Overlook, Kettle, Key Project, and Lamefoot mine sites are in the process of, or have completed, reclamation. In the fall of 2002 production at the K2 mine was suspended. In January 2004 mining was begun from the Emanuel Creek deposit (adjacent to K2) about 20 miles from the Key Mill.
During operation ore is trucked from the mine sites to the Key Mill for processing. In the milling process the ore is first crushed, then mixed with water and pulverized to form a slurry. This ore slurry is then mixed with a cyanide solution and pumped through a series of tanks where the gold is leached from the ore. The tailings (slurry remaining from the cyanide leaching process) is pumped to a 66 surface acre lined tailings pond. In the past about 500,000 to 550,000 tons of ore were processed per year.
Kinross Gold Corporation purchased Echo Bay in it’s entirety in May 2002.

Echo Bay’s Water Quality Problem
Ground water quality standards are meant to protect background water quality to the extent practical, rather than allowing ground water quality to slip below certain criteria. Since wells K2-2, TP-1, TP-2, KW-1A, and LF-12 at the K2 Mine, Key Project and Key Mill do not meet groundwater standards and have negative trends, Washington State Department of Ecology will give Echo Bay “Interim” standards for the next 4 years. Within a year Echo Bay will have to submit a hydrogeologic/engineering report updating and evaluating “All Known Available and Reasonable methods of prevention, control and Treatment” (AKART) to Ecology for sources contributing pollutants that degrade ground water quality. They will have two years to implement the AKART measures and remediation alternatives, and then another year to evaluate the results.

Key Mill Tailings Pond - Increases Over Time
The tailings pond was originally constructed in 1989 with a single VLDPE (very low density polyethylene) liner. This first phase created a 60 acre impoundment with a dike height of 150 feet (tailings storage capacity of 2.49 million tons). An underdrain system was placed beneath the pond to intercept groundwater and to detect any leaks in the liner system. Water collected by the underdrain is returned to the impoundment.
In 1992 the pond was expanded by adding a second 30 acre impoundment adjacent to the original. The second phase was lined with a VLDPE liner on top of a geosynthetic clay liner. An underdrain was also placed beneath this expansion. This addition created a storage capacity of 3.62 million tons of tailings.
Then in 1995 the embankment was raised 25 feet around the two ponds creating a single impoundment, resulting in a 175-foot-high embankment and a storage capacity of 6.76 million tons.
Twelve feet were added to the interior portions of the tailings dam (an upstream lift) in the fall of 2001. This expansion increased the tailings storage by 1.7 million tons (to a total of 8.5 million tons). The impoundment footprint increased by about 3 acres (to 94 total acres).
Cyanide levels in the tailings pond pose a risk to migratory waterfowl.

Key Mill and Tailings Impoundment
Two local aquifers were identified at the Key Mill site prior to construction of the tailings pond. Both aquifers, as well as nearby seeps along the banks of the North Fork of the Sanpoil River, went dry due to mill construction. This was likely due to a loss of recharge to the area, and the lack of groundwater collecting beneath the tailings pond.
Monitoring wells TP-1 and TP-2 were installed in October 1991. Water quality from all wells (TP-1, TP-2, and TP-3) show an increasing trend for nitrates, total dissolved solids (TDS), magnesium, calcium, alkalinity, and sulfate concentrations. Well TP-1 (located closest to mill facilities) has regularly exceeded ground water quality criteria for TDS and periodically for nitrates. Water quality from well TP-2 has exceeded criteria for TDS. Ground water quality results from well TP-3 have met applicable criteria.

Echo Bay’s Satellite Mines
Key Project
The site consists of two open pit mines that straddle a divide between two watersheds. The sites drain an unnamed ephemeral tributary of the North Fork of the Sanpoil River and the Lambert Creek drainage. Lambert Creek flows east/northeast and joins Curlew Creek near the outlet of Curlew Lake. The Key east pit was filled with wasterock taken from the Key west pit during mining. The Key west pit remained open and is presently accumulating water.
The pit lake is filling faster than originally predicted. It is estimated that the pit will overflow soon. An outlet channel was constructed to divert this potential outfall to a gradual 1/2 acre depression. This area is expected to contain water from large storm events and spring runoff from the pit area (i.e. accumulated water will infiltrate into the ground).
Baseline groundwater quality information is collected at KW-1A, located downhill of the waste rock disposal area. Water quality in well KW-1A shows increasing trends for TDS, sulfates, and nitrates. These parameters exceed applicable ground water quality criteria.
There is a surface water monitoring site (SW-12) in the ephemeral tributary draining the area downhill from groundwater well KW-1A. There is also a surface water site (SW-2) located on the North Fork of the Sanpoil River, downhill from SW-12 and uphill of the Overlook and Key Mill sites. Water quality from SW-12 mirror results seen for ground water well KW-1A: increasing trends are noted for nitrates, TDS, and sulfate

Lamefoot Mine
The Lamefoot mine site is located along State Route 21 adjacent to Curlew Lake. The workings of the mine include thousands of feet of large, open voids which connect many faults and fractures that were discontinuous prior to mining. After refilling, groundwater will flow within the mine workings. According to groundwater modeling conducted by the BLM (BLM, 1998) seepage to the surface/near-surface may result where mine workings intersect with faults near the Wolf Camp fault and into the valley. Ground water quality criteria for nitrates have consistently been exceeded for well LF-12 located near the previous wasterock and temporary ore stockpile of the mine site.

K2 Mine
The K2 underground mine site lies adjacent to the Kettle River near the town of Curlew. The location consists of a mine portal, administrative and shop buildings, top soil stockpiles, and a waste rock disposal area. There are two groundwater monitoring wells installed for this site. The wells have been monitored since 1993. Water from well K2-1 has consistently met ground water quality criteria. However, total dissolved solids from K2-2 (closest to the waste rock disposal area) has exceeded applicable criteria of 500 mg/L. Increasing constituent trends from well K2-2 are also noted for nitrates, sulfates, and alkalinity.

Overlook Mine
The mine site is located in a seasonal drainage that feeds the North Fork of the Sanpoil River upstream of the Key Mill site. Surface water is monitored at the Overlook site at SW-2, at the confluence of the Overlook drainage, and the North Fork of the Sanpoil. Site SW-3 is immediately uphill on the North Fork of the Sanpoil. Water quality from SW-2 generally shows increased levels of TDS, alkalinity, calcium, magnesium, sulfate, and nitrates when compared SW-3. Metals levels from the sites appear to be below applicable surface water quality criteria.

Legislature Considers Eliminating Permit Requirements
for Small Scale Prospecting and Mining
Mining supporters in the Washington State legislature seek to change regulations governing recreational mining. Proposed legislation (SB-6149, HB-2619, HB-2349) would increase exemptions, eliminate environmental protections, and limit agency oversight of small scale prospecting and mining.
Small scale placer mining involves digging up sediment and gravel from stream beds and sluicing it to separate out any gold. Silts and sediments are stirred, potentially destroying fish habitat and spawning grounds.
Under existing law, small scale miners are generally not required to obtain a traditional permit, but must have with them a copy of the State's "Gold and Fish Pamphlet," which sets forth requirements regarding the time of year the mining can occur and the methods the miner must use.  NOAA Fisheries, in comments to Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife during mineral prospecting rule adoption in 1998, noted the proposed rules (embodied in the Gold and Fish Pamphlet) were the minimum required to protect threatened or endangered fish. When the Gold and Fish Pamphlet was written it was based on the best available science. Rather than suggesting deregulation, literature published since the pamphlet suggests the opposite. Newly hatched fish and fish eggs are highly susceptible to being killed by disturbance from even the smallest-scale prospecting operations or smothered from the sediments that various small scale mining practices can stir up. This problem is compounded in rivers with ESA listed fish and known gold deposits.
Current law is far from onerous, and strikes a fair balance between the needs of the small scale miner and other interests, such as the public, tribal governments, fisherman, tourism, habitat conservation, and other entities. Nonetheless, HB 2349, as currently proposed, appears to eliminate all such requirements, essentially allowing small scale miners to dredge in Washington rivers and streams at any time, without restriction, regardless of the impacts.  The bills foster practices that degrade freshwater and marine fish habitat, including salmon habitat.
This proposed change, in and of itself, is cause for concern. However, in addition to exempting small scale mining from state permitting requirements, that bill expands the definition of small scale mining from simple gold panning (less destructive) to include "mini-sluices powered by a battery bilge pump" If passed, the bill would deregulate environmental controls not just for the most benign form of mining, but for larger, more destructive efforts as well.
These bills stem from miners seeking special treatment. This past summer a group of small scale miners and prospectors hosted a "Dredge Earth First" rally on the Similkameen River near Oroville, WA. They were frustrated that the permit process for their national rally, that would have suction dredged in salmon habitat right before spawning, was too onerous.
OHA, several public interest groups, and the Colville Tribes expressed concern about the proposed action and associated environmental review. We believe the current laws are already the minimum needed to protect the public interest.

Teck Cominco’s Pend Oreille Mine
Washington State Department of Ecology is about to issue a new National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Waste Discharge Permit (NPDES) for the Pend Oreille Mine. The current permit was issued in 1977 for dewatering the mine shafts. It allowed a maximum mixing zone to dilute discharges in order to achieve water quality standards. The waste discharge permit would have expired in 1981 but has been administratively extended since then. The draft discharge permit that Ecology is considering for the reopening of Teck Cominco’s Pend Oreille Mine would allow even greater discharges of lead than the original 1977 permit.
In order to allow a mixing zone, Washington State Antidegradation Law requires that “All wastes and other materials and substances discharged into said waters shall be provided with all known, available, and reasonable methods of prevention, control, and treatment (AKART) before discharge.”
This means that if reasonable technologies exist to prevent, or at least reduce, the use of a mixing zone to meet water quality standards it should be employed. The last AKART was conducted in 1993. It failed to fully analyze treatment alternatives or look at new technologies. Mining technologies have grown by leaps and bounds since then; consequently a new AKART must be conducted. Ecology should, but has not, required that a new AKART be completed.
Ecology is proposing to allow chronic and acute discharge from the mine be diluted by the Pend Oreille River. Ecology failed to complete all necessary requirements to give the company a mixing zone. Under WA State Law “A discharger shall be required to fully apply AKART prior to being authorized a mixing zone.”
The State of Washington officially listed the Pend Oreille River in April of 2000 as water quality impaired. This means that both until and after a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) has been implemented, the Pend Oreille River will have specific restrictions on what may be discharged into it. Without a TMDL, human actions are not allowed to further lower the water quality.
The NPDES permit fact sheet states that in summer months there could be an increase in temperature and pH. The bull trout, a species residing in the Pend Oreille River, has been listed as an endangered species pursuant to the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) is in the process of designating critical habitat for the bull trout, and the Pend Oreille River will undoubtedly be a critical component of this habitat. Allowing a mixing zone in the river will cause harm to bull trout.

Colville Tribes Seek Superfund Status for Lake Roosevelt
Concern about pollution prompted the Colville Confederated Tribes to push for a cleanup of Lake Roosevelt, the 130-mile section of the Columbia River behind Grand Coulee Dam. The 9,000-member tribe petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1999 to determine whether the river should be declared a Superfund site.
The tribe also sought Canadian pollution records for Teck Cominco Ltd.'s Trail, B.C., smelter, considered the biggest source of past pollution in the upper Columbia. The records show that Cominco has dumped as much as 9.8 million tons of black slag, tons of mercury, sulfuric acid, and other chemicals into the river for more than 60 years.
The Tribes’ stance is at odds with that of county commissioners from the seven rural counties near Lake Roosevelt, who are trying to prevent a Superfund designation. In July Teck Cominco gave the commissioners' group $150,000 in startup funds to form a "responsible stewardship" group to push for pollution studies.
The Colville Reservation, established in 1872 for 12 regional tribes, once stretched from the Columbia River on the south and east to the Canadian border. When gold was discovered in the early 1900s, Congress ceded the northern half to whites, cutting the reservation in half to 1.4 million acres. The Tribes retained fishing, hunting and gathering rights on the ceded northern half.
Now, they are trying to find out how much of their resources have been damaged by the region's smelters, pulp mills and mines. At the Barnaby Creek campground near Inchelium, slag washed across the Canadian border from Cominco's smelter has rimmed the shore with a black smudge. High mercury levels also have been found in the area.
A 1994 U.S. Geological Survey study that revealed the presence of heavy metals, dioxins and furans all over the lake -- the legacy of 100 years of pollution from the Trail smelter, pulp mills and mines.
A recent Washington Department of Health advisory warns people to limit consumption of walleye and other fish from Lake Roosevelt because of mercury and dioxin pollution.

Canada Rebuffs EPA Cleanup Order, Stage Set for Legal Showdown
The Canadian government has rejected efforts by EPA to hold a mining company liable under federal Superfund law for contamination that originated in Canada but migrated into the United States, citing concerns the case may lead to a slew of similar suits on both sides of the border.
Instead, the Canadian government is urging the EPA to rescind a unilateral administrative order (UAO) it issued in December to Canadian mining giant Teck Cominco, and reconsider its earlier rejection of the company’s voluntary proposal to assess contamination in Washington state’s Lake Roosevelt.
The incident arose from the EPA’s attempt to enforce the U.S. Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) on Teck Cominco Metals, a Canadian company operating in Canadian territory. Canada does not believe that CERCLA applies to Teck Cominco Metals and is concerned that the Unilateral Administrative Order may set a precedent.
Teck Cominco, maintains that CERCLA does not apply to its Trail, British Columbia, facility. EPA says the facility released mining waste into the Columbia River, gradually contaminating Lake Roosevelt across the U.S-Canadian border. The company has offered to pay $13 million to assess the extent of the contamination, but refuses to sign a consent agreement with EPA under CERCLA.
EPA has dug in their heels and declined to accept the company’s offer, saying the proposal is insufficient to properly assess the extent of the contamination. An agency official says EPA will not reconsider its rejection of the study. The UAO carries the threat of $27,500 a day in fines plus damages.

EPA on Right Track at Lake Roosevelt 
Seattle Times (12/22/03) | Editorial
Three cheers for an exasperated Environmental Protection Agency, which has lost patience with a Canadian mining and smelting company that polluted Lake Roosevelt for generations. After a year of failed negotiations, and plenty of corporate stalling before that, the EPA has ordered Teck Cominco Metals Ltd. to study a century of contamination on the upper Columbia River.
see: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorialsopinion/2001820488_lakeed22.html

Federal Court Rejects Bush Administration's Interpretation
of the 1872 Mining Law
The deadline for appealing the federal court decision upholding the challenge to the Bush Administration's interpretation of the 1872 Mining Law, and the Federal Lands Policy and Management Act of 1976, has passsed. Although we didn't get everything we wanted out of the decision it was the first court case that confirmed our view of the law--that the federal government has the "obligation" to protect public lands from unduly damaging mines. So, we can now start using the court's interpretation around the West!
In October 2001 the Bush administration reversed some Clinton-era mining regulations. Eliminated were the government's authority to tell miners they cannot dig on public land where they have staked claims, but a requirement that mining operators post bonds to assure they clean up after themselves was retained.
Judge Kennedy, ruling in a lawsuit brought by environmental groups, ordered the department to reevaluate its rules in keeping with Congress' wishes that the government receive fair market value when public lands and resources are used.
"It is also clear that the 2001 regulations, in many cases, prioritize the interests of miners, who seek to conduct these mining operations, over the interests of persons such as plaintiffs, who seek to conserve and protect the public lands," Kennedy wrote.
The judge found Interior Solicitor William Myers III "misconstrued" federal law, ignoring the department's obligation to prevent environmental harm, when he advised the department it lacked authority to ban a company from doing anything "necessary" to mining.
Myers resigned his position after being nominated by President Bush on May 15 as a federal appeals court judge.
Kennedy said the interior secretary has "the authority and indeed the obligation to disapprove of an otherwise permissible mining operation because the operation, though necessary for mining, would unduly harm or degrade the public land."
But the judge upheld other parts of the rules in response to a November 2001 challenge filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the Washington-based Mineral Policy Center and two other environmental groups, Great Basin Mine Watch in Reno, Nev., and Guardians of the Rural Environment in Yarnell, Ariz.