E&E News - Canadian Spill Gives Enviros Ammo Against US Projects

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By Manuel Quinones

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Oregon

Environmental groups and many Oregon residents are pushing for additional mining limits in the southwestern part of the state amid a company's mineral exploration efforts.

Earthworks and the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center helped deliver more than 15,000 petition signatures to the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service yesterday.

Advocates are calling on the Obama administration to withdraw from mineral exploration lands surrounding the North Fork Smith River, Baldface Creek, Rough and Ready Creek, and Hunter Creek.

The groups and residents are particularly concerned about Red Flat Nickel Corp.'s exploration efforts within the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest.

They say Red Flat has staked mining claims on about 3,000 acres within the North Fork Smith River watershed, plus claims on another 2,000 acres in the headwaters of Hunter Creek and the Pistol River.

An attorney listed as working for the company, according to the Oregon Secretary of State's office, has yet to respond to a request for comment.

"There's tremendous support for protecting these valuable public lands from strip mining," Michael Dotson, KS Wild's development director, said in a statement. "The Smith and Illinois Rivers support some of the best salmon runs, highest concentration of rare plants and purest water in the nation."

Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden (D) and Jeff Merkley (D) and Rep. Peter DeFazio, top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, have also called for new drilling and mining limits in southwestern Oregon.

"It doesn't take a list to know that Baldface and Rough and Ready creeks are special places deserving of federal protection," said Wyden after the group American Rivers identified those waterways as endangered.

'Entirely disingenuous'

Earthwork's Gestring said, "Without a mineral withdrawal these vital watersheds are at the mercy of 19th century mining policy written before women even had the vote," referring to the 1872 mining law.

National Mining Association spokesman Luke Popovich called Gestring's argument "entirely disingenuous," citing the number of environmental laws that apply to mining that have been enacted since 1872, including the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

He also asked, "And what has been the change in domestic demand for mineral resources since [President] Grant's time in office?" NMA and other pro-mining groups have been pushing back against efforts to take lands off-limits, amid U.S. dependence on imports for a number of mined minerals.

Last year, the Obama administration extended a prohibition on new mining claims along 14 miles of Oregon's Illinois River, part of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.

It did the same on more than 5,600 acres along the Chetco River for five years pending possible congressional protections. Both waterways run through the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest.

In Arizona, the Center for Biological Diversity pressed federal regulators to scrutinize Augusta Resources Corp.'s Rosemont mine near Tucson amid ongoing consultations on Endangered Species Act issues.

And in South Carolina, the Army Corps of Engineers released a final environmental impact statement for Romarco Minerals Inc.'s proposed Haile gold mine, which it found would destroy wetlands and waterways but create several hundred jobs.

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