Stibnite Mine public land impacts
According to the SDEIS, the Stibnite Mine project would incur a direct loss of habitat for many species of extreme biological and conservation importance. PC: Jacob Crist
Understanding a mine plan as large and complex as the Stibnite Gold Project is a daunting undertaking. Throughout the project, thousands of pages of technical documents have been released, hundreds of opinions from a variety of perspectives have been published, and an almost constant evolution of the proposed plan exacerbates this reality.
With that in mind, our goal is to simplify things and focus on the potential impacts that this project will have on our public lands now that the Forest Service (FS) has released an updated analysis in the form of the Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement (SDEIS) that was published in late October.
First, there are few industries whose impacts are more destructive and long-lasting than mining on public lands, air, and water. Even with reclamation efforts, the mine site will bear the scars of extraction for generations to come. Contamination may persist in soil and aquifers for lifetimes, unnatural pit lakes will remain in perpetuity, and even after many years of growth and replanting, access roads and the footprints of support facilities will continue to be noticeable and out of place within the broader landscape.
In the case of the Stibnite Gold Project site, many of these impacts already exist. However, just because the landscape has already been altered by past mining, it is foolish to assume that only after additional damage and alteration can the site effectively be returned to a pre-mine environment.
Of the proposed 3,200 acres of disturbance this project calls for, 51% of that land will be previously undisturbed lands not influenced by past mining. Even more alarming, 87% of this new disturbance will fall on our public lands under the administration of the Payette and Boise National Forests. (SDEIS 2-12).
This disturbance of otherwise pristine lands can also be viewed as a direct loss of habitat for many species of extreme biological and conservation importance such as Canada lynx, wolverine, northern Idaho ground squirrel, and Monarch butterfly. (SDIES ES-21).
In addition to the major impacts that this project will have on the mine site itself, public land users will find themselves facing access issues and general exclusion surrounding the site. Although Perpetua has promised to provide public access through the mine site to the Thunder Mountain area, 14,221 acres in the Operations Area Boundary would be closed to unrestricted public access for approximately 20 years:
“Recreation opportunities within the Operations Area Boundary would be eliminated until after reclamation.” (SDEIS p. 2-160).
“In this area, public access would be prohibited, or restricted through such measures that are accepted as means to control public access (EPA 2019a) such as security checkpoints, and security surveillance patrols.” (SDEIS p. 3-30).
Despite the promise of maintaining access to the Thunder Mountain area through the mine site for traffic originating from Yellow Pine, when one takes a closer look, this access will be extremely limited. Perpetua would restrict access to this road anytime there was a threat to public health or safety such as times when “road construction and maintenance, blasting, highwall scaling, mining in the immediate area of the road, and similar operations” are underway. When one considers this, it seems safe to assume that the road could realistically be closed more than it is open during the construction and operation phases of the mine.
Moving our attention away from the physical lands impacted by this project and towards the waters and the environments downstream, the picture continues to be one of negatives and uncertainties at best.
While the analysis of the mineralization of the site reveals that the potential for pit walls and waste rock to be acid-generating is relatively low, these mine features would all have the potential to leach aluminum, antimony, arsenic, cadmium, copper, manganese, mercury, and zinc into surface and groundwater in concentrations that would exceed water quality standards.
While claiming to restore the site, the science is clear that by moving forward with this mine plan, many of the same pollutants that are targeted for removal and mitigation will be mobilized and more readily released into the watershed and surrounding environment.
The FS in their initial analysis anticipates that under the key mine site features such as Tailings Storage Facility and associated buttress, Hanger Flats pit, and Yellow Pine pit, groundwater contamination is expected to increase as a direct result of this project.
The FS also states in the SDEIS that water quality conditions found in Meadow Creek and East Fork SFSR may be improved by the removal of some legacy tailings, but the new plan would represent a new direct and permanent impact on water quality, as it would contribute new sources of mine material to the East Fork and SFSR drainage. (SDIES ES-18).
It becomes hard to truly accept this project as a mitigation plan when claims of restoration are being made on one hand while the other acknowledges that some legacy sources of pollution will be magnified as a result.
While ground and surface water pollution are major concerns, the plan also has problems with temperature and the general quality of streams within the project area. While this may seem like the lesser of two evils, bull trout and chinook salmon, both Endangered Species Act-listed fish, are extremely sensitive to temperature variations. The FS has predicted that surface water temperatures will increase due to the loss of shade and modification of stream channels and depths. These temperature increases are estimated to return to baseline numbers over a period of approximately 100 years. As a result, these effects may result in temporary or permanent displacements of chinook salmon from several mine site streams. (SDEIS ES-21).
The South Fork Salmon River contains the most important remaining habitat for summer chinook in the Columbia River Basin. In the face of ongoing recovery efforts, anything that has even the remote potential to degrade and negatively impact this resource is simply unacceptable.
Taking these few issues into account, it already becomes clear that the risks that this project represents are broad, long-lasting, and stand to negatively influence the natural world for generations to come. Considering the fact that at the end of the day, this is a gold mine designed to generate profits for investors, we hope everyone will join us in voicing their concerns to the Forest Service before the comment period closes on January 10th, 2023.
