November 21, 2021
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Guest opinion: Governor Gianforte, enforce Montana's “bad actor” mining law - Billings Gazette

Beal Mountain
The Beal Mountain Mine, once owned by Pegasus Gold Corporation, is now the site of an ongoing cleanup that's cost almost $25 million. The $6.2 million reclamation bond Pegasus left after its 1998 bankruptcy is long gone. German Gulch Creek flows from its base into Silver Bow Creek and the Clark Fork River, and those streams are still at risk of pollution from the mine.

As a hunter and angler who’s lived in the Upper Clark Fork River valley between Deer Lodge and Anaconda for more than 30 years, I can attest to the damaging legacy of mining on our waterways. In 1908, a massive flood carried toxic mine tailings from Butte down the Clark Fork River, contaminating the river and the floodplain. To this day, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent to clean up these toxic mine tailings in Butte, Silver Bow Creek, and the river. For 30 years, I’ve worked with local citizen groups to fight for a proper cleanup of the contamination, and after all that time, the cleanup isn’t close to being done.

What I’ve learned over the years is that the best way to clean up mining contamination is to prevent it in the first place. Governor Gianforte and the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) have a chance to do this and save potential millions in cleanup costs if they enforce the Bad Actor law against a former Pegasus Gold Corporation executive, as is their job.

Pegasus Gold’s Beal Mountain Mine is about 20 miles southwest of where I live near Anaconda, as the crow flies. This open-pit cyanide heap leach mine stopped operating in 1997. A year later, Pegasus Gold declared bankruptcy.

Now, the Forest Service spends $350,000 of taxpayer money each year mitigating Pegasus’s poor cleanup job at the defunct Beal Mountain Mine. They must pump and treat water from the mine’s abandoned heap, which contains cyanide compounds and metals. The heap, which continually fills with water, must be pumped to remove the build-up of toxic water and ensure it doesn’t result in a catastrophic release of contaminants into German Gulch Creek.



source: https://billingsgazette.com/opinion/columnists/guest-opinion-governor-gianforte-enforce-montana-s-bad-actor-mining-law/article_1b155e8d-1853-5af1-b130-6bcea5817981.html

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