Tipping the Scales of Justice
by David Kliegman

Senator Slade Gorton's political maneuvering to attach a mining rider on the Emergency Funding bill for hurricane victims and to fund the war in Kosovo, has inspired a national uproar. The rider exempts the controversial gold mine that Battle Mountain Gold Co.(BMG) of Houston, Texas, wants to develop on Buckhorn Mountain in the Okanogan Highlands of North Central Washington from the current Federal Mining Law.

The Okanogan Highlands Alliance a local public interest organization has extensively studied the technical aspects of this mine and the laws and has concluded that the risk to public health, safety and the environment is neither worth the risk nor legal. If the mine could pass all the laws and permit regulations, it might be allowed to go forward, but BMG has continually used it's wealth and influence to create access to the political process and has gained exceptions to the laws. This political maneuver by Gorton for a special favors for BMG, another in a long series of exemptions, shows that the mine could not pass legal scrutiny.

The Forest Service's approval the mine was based on the premise that BMG had valid mining claims. Before the BLM and FS could approve a Plan of Operations (PoO) for the mine project, the Department of Interior had to examine the validity of the mining claims. The Plan BMG submitted clearly was over the legal limit of millsites. A company is allowed up to 5 acres of land for mill and waste facilities for each 20 acre mining claim. BMG's project uses 115 millsite for 15 mining claims, over the limit by about 500 acres. The Interior and Agriculture Departments had no choice but to deny the PoO.

For Battle Mountain to cry crocodile tears and ask favors of congress is indefensible. Feigned ignorance of the law is not a defense. BMG does not need emergency relief. They should obey the law, like everyone else. Too often corporations are treated with deference, and because of the power and influence they wield, they are able to mobilize institutions as commanding as Congress.

Slade Gorton went to Interior and he went to BLM, he asked for a special way around the 1872 mining law for BMG, which for over 125 years, paved the way for the development of mining in the West, the company didn't happen to like this clause could they kindly get around it? Apparently when the agencies didn't think BMG should have the privilege of breaking the law, legislation by fiat became the mode of the day.

Senator Gorton, who is reported to have received over $144 thousand in campaign contributions from mining and oil interests, enters the picture, with the intent to subvert implementation of the millsite limitation of the 1872 Mining Law for BMG through a special dispensation from Congress. With the mining industry, he crafted a political solution, behind closed doors so as not to raise a lot of attention.

Gorton's initial rider would have also changed the mining law to eliminate this millsite provision completely. The conference committee rejected this because it was too far reaching and because most members agreed that reform of the law should be done with open public debate. So Gorton, surrounded by mining industry lobbyists, scrambled to write a more limited exemption, just for BMG, that was approved in the late hours of the conference committee.

Attaching riders to special legislation such as the Kosovo/Hurricane Relief special appropriations bill is unconscionable. The thought that laws do not have to be made in an open forum, but are concocted in the back rooms and and through the influence of special interest groups is repugnant.

There has been a groundswell of outrage at Gorton's back room deal to exempt Battle Mountain Gold from one of the few limitations in the 1872 mining law. Many Representatives in Congress and Gary Locke Governor of Washington have spoken out against this pollution of the emergency funding bill.

Gorton's contempt for the laws that protect the environment and fair, open political process are exemplified in his back room political maneuvering for a single multinational gold corporation. How much longer will Congress, the President and the American people put up with this type of special interest corporate privilege, tipping the scales of justice?