Western Shoshone Defense Project - Archives

Nevada congressman, gubernatorial candidate and amateur toxicologist Jim Gibbons deserves mention this week for eliminating a grave threat to our health and safety.

http://news.rgi.com/
Jan. 31, 2006
Reno Gazette-Journal
at: http://news.rgi.com/

Until Gibbons spoke up, researchers all over the world believed mercury was a potent poison. Virtually all agreed the heavy metal causes birth defects, mental retardation and heart and kidney failure. It was considered, in the words of Glenn Miller of Reno's Desert Research Institute, "one of the most insidiously toxic metals" in the environment.

Want more? Google "mercury toxic effects." You'll get 1.6 million hits. Whether the world's scientists were duped or are part of a liberal conspiracy is unclear, but Gibbons has rendered the point moot by declaring mercury benign.

In February 2005, he and California Congressman Richard Pombo wrote (or caused to be written; actual authorship is vague) an article titled "Mercury in Perspective."

The two men have things in common, including a "Zero" rating from the non-partisan League of Conservation Voters. Both are prone to public utterances that would embarrass most people, and neither is trained in the science they were discussing.

Mercury, they said in part, isn't harmful because it's "naturally occurring." Moreover, "science has not proved a relationship" between mercury emitted by power plants and mercury in fish.

Sure, it comes out of smokestacks, falls into the water and turns up later in fish and humans. Could be coincidence.

Their piece is shot full of what we'll call oversights. For instance, it says less than 1 percent of global mercury emissions comes from U.S. power plants, but doesn't mention that about a third of mercury contamination in the United States is from that source. It cites the health benefits of eating fish as a reason not to be concerned that the fish is contaminated with mercury and leans heavily on gibberish like "naturally occurring." Arsenic, cyanide and plutonium are naturally occurring, too. A fat lot of good it does you if you ingest them.

Gibbons, This Space noted a year ago, seems to have swung from being reliably but reasonably hyper-conservative into out-and-out ranting. Last year, he said anyone who objected to massive corporate contributions to politicians "must be a communist." Six weeks later, he called those who opposed the war in Iraq "tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing, hippie, tie-dyed liberals" and said it was "too damn bad" they couldn't be "human shields."

The man wants to be governor of Nevada. It's time to start taking him seriously.

Cory Farley's column appears on Sunday, Tuesday and Friday. He can be reached at (775) 788-6340 or cfarley@rgj.com.

Mine Safety in Nevada

Jan 7, 2006, 09:12 PM
http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=4333185

While there is no coal mining in Nevada, there are other types of mines scattered around the state. Whether it is an active mine or an abandoned mine, officials say safety precautions need to be taken.

Today a group of boy scouts pitched in to help secure five abandoned mines in southern Nevada. Between 1910 and 1940 these mines were believed to have contained gold, silver, copper, and lead, but now officials say they are simply a danger to anyone passing by.

A group of boyscouts got to work today. Their job was to make sure these mines were fenced off...

"These mines run anywhere from a few feet deep to thousands of feet deep," said Bill Durbin of the Nevada Division of Minerals.

"I think they are very dangerous," said Weston Milne. He has chosen this as his eagle scout project. He says he chose a project he hopes will make a difference, "That was unfortunate what happened in West Virginia. I think it is important to keep all mines safe."

"I see them all over the place," said biker Pete Claunch. When asked if that scared him, Pete replied, " Well, I know where they are."

Now those who enjoy this land will now be able to see what they could have missed before.

"It will still help me because i haven't seen them all. You always find new ones," said Claunch.

There are still more than 40,000 hazardous mines, but so far more than 8,000 have been secured. In the past 35-years, there have been 8-reported cases in Clark county where people or animals were hurt after falling into an abandoned mine shaft. Statewide there have been 31
cases.

EARTHWORKS
Protecting communities and the environment
from the impacts of destructive mining, digging and drilling
Alan Septoff
IT/Research Director
1612 K St., NW, Suite 808
Washington, D.C., USA 20006
P: 202-887-1872x205
F: 202-887-1875
E: aseptoff@earthworksaction.org
W: www.earthworksaction.org

Jan. 06, 2006
Copyright C Las Vegas Review-Journal

Energy officials halt some work at Yucca Mountain

http://www.reviewjournal.com/about/print/rjstaff.html
By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON -- The Department of Energy has suspended work on key segments of Yucca Mountain after whistle-blowers reported more problems with nuclear waste repository design and engineering, officials confirmed.

Critics of the project say the work stoppage is the latest illustration of persistent weaknesses in how blueprints and complex analyses are compiled and documented, potentially affecting licensing and safety at the Nevada nuclear waste site.

But DOE officials said the work stoppage suggests new lengths that the department is undertaking in trying to correct shortcomings.

DOE issued an order on Dec. 19 telling management contractor Bechtel SAIC, or BSC, not to move forward on engineering and pre-closure safetyaspects of repository designs until a newly formed review team couldassess whether the work meets current requirements.

Department spokesman Allen Benson said Thursday the order covers several key facets, including technical work on new designs for an above-ground industrial complex where nuclear waste-bearing canisters would be handled at the site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Benson said the work suspension could take weeks or longer. The Yucca project has missed self-set deadlines in recent years, and DOE officials have not said when a repository might be opened. Outside experts have said a repository may not be completed until 2015 to 2020.

In a Dec. 14 e-mail to employees, Yucca Mountain deputy director John Arthur said DOE was "suspending BSC's authority to approve design and engineering-related technical products subject to our QARD (Quality Assurance Requirements and Description) document."

Critics noted DOE has been criticized repeatedly for shortcomings in work documentation and quality controls that are important elements of nuclear projects. They maintained the latest development is more of the same.

"This is a stop work order, plain and simple," said Steve Frishman, a full-time technical consultant for the state of Nevada. "It's back to a problem they have had for years and years, which is design control. This is a chronic screwup in this program."

DOE officials defended their action, saying the work suspension was a tougher response than in the past. They said it reflected a drive by new managers installed by Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to fix problems once and for all on the project.

"This is a tough response, when you tell a contractor they no longer have the authority to submit work they are contractually required to submit because they are not following procedure," Benson said.

Bechtel SAIC spokesman Jason Bohne said there was shared responsibility between the government and the contractor.

"The feds direct us through the contract as to what the requirements are," Bohne said. "This is more of a, 'Let's hold on and collect where we are, complete our review and move forward on the right path.' "

According to federal documents and government and nuclear industry officials, the problem was that Yucca management guidelines and databases were allowed to become outdated. The guidelines, a staple in nuclear projects, are the rules that lay out in detail how scientists,
engineers and analysts need to document their activities so they can be traced back for safety, effectiveness and consistency with federal regulations and industry practices.

Several repository workers who have not been identified filed complaints with the Yucca Mountain employee concerns program starting in August 2004. Complaints also were filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. A followup DOE investigation substantiated the claims, according to Arthur.

The investigation "revealed that our project has not maintained and properly implemented its requirements management system, resulting in inadequacies in the design control process," Arthur told workers by e-mail.

DOE officials issued 14 corrective actions in November on the topic, Benson said. Arthur reported on the matter at a Dec. 7 meeting in Las Vegas attended by DOE managers and staffers from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

NRC officials expressed concern.

"It appears to be a significant issue," said Elmo Collins, an NRC licensing and inspection official.

The NRC is poised to evaluate a repository application whenever the Energy Department finalizes one.

"We believe strong actions are required to address the current situation," Arthur said. "It just didn't get the proper management attention."

On another front, the Energy Department and Bechtel SAIC are talking about extending the company's Yucca Mountain contract, which expires in March. Representatives of both parties would not discuss the negotiations.

The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/
December 30, 2005
By KIRK JOHNSON
The Cost of Gold | Water Worries

A Drier and Tainted Nevada May Be Legacy of a Gold Rush

ELKO, Nev. - Just outside the chasm of North America's biggest open-pit gold mine there is an immense oasis in the middle of the Nevada desert. It is an idyllic and isolated spot where migratory birds often alight for a stopover. But hardly anything is natural about it.

This is water pumped from the ground by Barrick Gold of Toronto to keep its vast Goldstrike mine from flooding, as the gold company, the world's third largest, carves a canyon 1,600 feet below the level of northern Nevada's aquifer.

Nearly 10 million gallons a day draining away in the driest state in the nation - and the fastest growing one, propelled by the demographic rocket of Las Vegas - is just one of the many strange byproducts of Nevada's tangled love affair with gold.

An extensive review of government documents and court records, and scores of interviews with scientists and present and former mine industry workers and regulators, show that an absence of federal guidelines, of the sort that are commonplace for coal or oil, allowed gold wide latitude to operate here in the rural fastness of the desert, perhaps more than any other American industry..

The costs - to Nevada, its neighbors and even to the rest of the country - are only now coming into focus as diminishing ores foreshadow gold mining's eventual demise and a more urbanized West begins to express concerns over water shortages and mining's other legacies.

Barrick says the effects of its pumping will last at most a few decades. But government scientists estimate it could take 200 years or more to replenish the groundwater that it and neighboring mine companies have removed, with little public attention or debate, as they meet soaring consumer demand for jewelry and gold's price tops $500 an ounce.

Goldstrike, meantime, may have only 10 years left, Barrick says, and most of the state's 20 or so other major mines are not expected to last much longer.. When they are gone, the vast pits they leave behind will create a deficit in the aquifer equivalent to 20 to 25 years of the total flow of Nevada's longest river, the Humboldt, according to state figures tallied by independent scientists. That is three times as much water as New York City stores in its entire upstate reservoir system. "When they stop pumping, what you're going to hear is a huge sucking sound," said Robert Glennon, a law professor at the University of Arizona who has written on water issues in the West. "The impact on the Humboldt River will be catastrophic."

That is not all. Nevada's gold mines will bequeath more toxic mercury waste in their mountainous rock piles than any other industry, about 86 percent of the nation's total in 2003, according to the most recent figures from the Environmental Protection Agency. They already generate more than 3 percent of the airborne mercury pollution, the agency says, equivalent to 25 or more average coal-fired power plants.

At the same time, as of May, according to state figures, about $200 million in cleanup costs were simple promises to pay from the corporate miners of a notoriously boom-and-bust industry. Along with the modern superscale mining methods that were largely devised here beginning in the 1980's, such trade-offs have helped make Nevada the third-largest gold producer in the world, behind South Africa and Australia.

But mining experts, legal scholars and historians say that prosperity was also built on the basis of a law drafted in the age of the horse and buggy - the General Mining Law of 1872 - which declares mining the best use of public land, gives miners access to that land for bargain-basement prices, and makes no mention of a cleanup.

Mining industry officials vigorously defend the statute and say that the absence of federal guidelines - far from making things less strict - gave rise to an even tighter regulatory framework because other laws filled the breach, from endangered species protection to air and water rules.

"We just can't see a way to write a mining law that would appropriately regulate all of these different things and work any better," said Carol Raulston, a spokeswoman for the National Mining Association, the industry's trade group.

But here in Nevada, where four-fifths of the nation's gold is produced, the vacuum of antiquated law has been gold's defining feature and the handmaiden to its rise, current and former regulators say, allowing for special treatment of a favorite-son industry on a landscape of bleak extremes that few big environmental groups have risen to defend.

"If you look at the gold industry today, most of it is Nevada, and Nevada is mostly not prized by environmentalists," said John D. Leshy, who was the top lawyer for the Department of the Interior in the Clinton administration. "Nevada is being written off as a sacrifice area for gold."

In an ever-more urban West, the day of reckoning is fast approaching, people like Mr. Leshy say. The new West, embodied by postindustrial Las Vegas, will inherit the landscape that gold leaves behind.

The glittering, energy-guzzling city is already probing north to satisfy its water needs, with a $2 billion pipeline that will be the biggest groundwater project in American history if approved and built over the next 15 years.

Water experts say the scientific studies for the plan are only now likely to reveal just how Nevada's aquifer system really works, and how it was affected by the mines.

But, they warn, the 383 billion gallons of water pumped so far from the Goldstrike mine alone - enough to fill one of the midsize Finger Lakes of upstate New York - may have already imposed its stamp on the region's future.

Mercury's Taint Tied to Mines

Michael DuBois, an analyst with the Idaho State Department of Environmental Quality, was assigned this year to figure out why the Salmon Falls Creek Reservoir, on the Nevada border, had mercury levels 10 times higher than any body of water ever tested in the state.

The more Mr. DuBois and other scientists looked, the more they became convinced that airborne mercury, which has been linked to impaired neurological development in fetuses, infants and children, was coming north from Nevada's gold mines. "There are things crossing state lines here that don't know anything about political boundaries," he said this summer on a visit to the reservoir, where prominent warning signs had been posted about consumption of fish.

In November, under pressure from Idaho, Nevada said it would begin regulating mercury from the mines, which had been operating under a voluntary system since 2001. "We were moving in this direction anyway, but we ramped it up," said Colleen Cripps, a deputy administrator at the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection.

But how the huge mercury output from the mines was missed or barely regulated for so long is just as big an issue for neighboring states that may have to live with the consequences for many years to come.

Mercury persists in the environment, as it accumulates in the tissues of fish and birds that pick it up from water sources. Nobody knows just how much has come from the mines over time because the Environmental Protection Agency did not even require it to be reported until 1998.

Before then, simple reassurances were regulation enough. In a 1997 agency report on mercury, gold was left off the list as a source because, the report's authors said, an "industry representative" had told them mercury was not a problem.

State officials insist that the voluntary efforts worked, and that the four companies taking part in the plan, including Barrick, cut emissions by 82 percent. But gaps in Nevada's patchwork regulation persisted.

In 2001, Barrick built a $330 million "roaster," which heats ore for gold extraction and in the process also frees other metals, like mercury. But because it built the machine on private land, no state or federal law required an analysis of the environmental impact.

The roaster was subsequently identified by the E.P.A. as a main mercury source. The mine, the agency says, now accounts for about 1 percent of the nation's total airborne mercury output.

Barrick's vice president for the environment, Richie D. Haddock, said that the location of the roaster was driven by proximity to the pit, and by the fact that the land beneath contained no valuable ore. The roaster, he added, was also built with the most modern technology. There was no effort to avoid scrutiny, he said.

But no scrutiny was the effect, and such regulatory gaps have become part of doing business, numerous legal scholars and present and former regulators say.

"The fact that the 1872 mining law had no environmental provisions was significant, because it means that those rules had to emerge from other places," said James McElfish, a senior lawyer at the Environmental Law Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington that advocates sustainable development and environmental protection. "The upshot of this is that it's a process of experimentation and diffuse authority and no one is really leading the way."

Industry officials, while acknowledging that gold mines have emitted significant levels of mercury, say that where the mercury actually came to earth is a much harder question. What has been found in places like Salmon Falls Creek, they say, could just as easily have come from a coal-burning plant in China, or a natural source.

But local regulators like Mr. DuBois and Michael L. Abbott, an advisory scientist at the Idaho National Laboratory, part of the Department of Energy, are not convinced. After studying the wind patterns and deposition rates this summer and fall near Salmon Falls Creek, Mr. Abbott said he believed that mercury from Nevada's gold mines was still coming north.

"Where do they think it's going to go," Mr. Abbott said, "outer space?"

Uncertain Prospects for Water

Large-scale open-pit mining takes a lot of water, millions of gallons, mostly to dilute the cyanide that miners use to soak their ore and separate its microscopic bits of gold. Even so, mines like Goldstrike pump out so much water that company officials say they can use only a relatively small amount - less than 10 percent of what is displaced.

About half the rest goes into settling ponds where it is expected to sink back into the aquifer, company records show. About one quarter is used for irrigation. About 6 percent is sent to "sand dune drainage/evaporation."

The rest has engorged the Humboldt River since the 1980's. Though Barrick has not discharged any of its water to the river since 1999, other mines remain in full pump and drain mode.

That pumping could change both the quantity and quality of the groundwater, and even the shape of the aquifer, said Glenn Miller, a professor of environmental science at the University of Nevada, Reno. "I think it may never be quite the same hydrologic system," he said. "There is simply no data to suggest that these changes aren't going to be permanent."

Officials at Barrick strongly disagree. Mr. Haddock, the environmental vice president, said in a written response that geological faults would confine the effects of de-watering near the mine.

Barrick, he said, has tried to make Goldstrike a model for its mines around the world. "A great deal of Barrick's culture developed at Goldstrike," he wrote, "and we try to export that culture throughout the company," which is set to take over Placer Dome and become the No. 1 gold miner.

Permanent impacts are not supposed to happen under a strict interpretation of the state water law, said Professor Glennon at the University of Arizona.

An exception was made for gold. In the 1980's as mine pumping surged, the state decided that modern mining, however different in its scale and scope, was still just a "temporary" use of water, as it had been in the days of the prospector and his mule.

"The policy, if there was a policy, is that Nevada has always been a mining state, and as long as we could keep the impact within reason, it should be allowed," said Peter G. Morros, who made many of those decisions as the state engineer - Nevada's top water resource officer - from 1981 to 1990.

But the real story of gold's impact on Nevada's waters will emerge only in coming decades when the pumps are turned off, scientists say. That is when the 40-odd pits - from monsters like Goldstrike's Betze-Post to smaller mines like Newmont's Lone Tree - will start to fill with water that the mine companies no longer displace.

The lakes will store an estimated 500 billion gallons or more, according to estimates by Dr. Miller at the University of Nevada and other scientists. The Betze-Post, the center of Barrick's operations, is expected to become the largest artificial lake located wholly in the state, holding about 114 billion gallons - or more than 100 times the size of the Central Park reservoir in New York.

The result will be, if not the biggest water storage project in the West, then certainly the strangest. Some of the lakes are expected to be poisonous, laced with arsenic and selenium. Others may have metal and acid concentrations toxic to fish but safe for humans. Some will be relatively benign.

Mining companies say the water quality in the aquifer will dictate the outcome, not mining.

One thing is certain: in the hot desert sun, the water will constantly evaporate. And for every gallon of evaporation, the lakes will draw another gallon from the aquifer beneath them. Most will take decades, if not centuries, to fill. They will be like huge desert sponges, sucking from the aquifer eternally.

The Betze-Post pit, which Barrick expects to lose 74,000 gallons of water every hour to evaporation, will have good water quality, said Mr. Haddock, the environmental vice president, because of the aquifer's purity and the high volume of limestone that will act as a buffering agent.

Other scientists say it is not that simple.

The mine pits will fill with water that filters through surrounding rock, much of it disturbed by mining and thus potentially prone to acid generation. Rock with sulfide in it, once it contacts air and water, produces sulfuric acid.

"After the pits fill, after complete recovery, there is a possibility that water could be affected by acid drainage," said Russell W. Plume, a hydrologist at the United States Geological Survey, a federal government research agency.

In the meantime, Nevada law is already trying to come to grips with the postmine landscape. One pit mine, called Sleeper, which was operated until 1996 by a company called Amax Gold and is now closed, is already filling with water and losing about 257 million gallons a year to evaporation.

That lost water has to be accounted for somewhere in the state's water ledgers, said Hugh Ricci, the state engineer. The same will hold true for every other pit lake.

In Sleeper's case, because Nevada rules require water allocations for beneficial uses only, Mr. Ricci's predecessor came up with a novel legal interpretation. He declared that the pit lake would be used for recreation, and that its evaporation would therefore be a "recreational use."

Millions of People, Inches of Rain

By 2020, Las Vegas, the go-go city of the sands, is expected to have three million people living in an area that gets perhaps four inches of rain a year. v Some ecologists and water experts have argued for years that big desert cities, whether Phoenix or Las Vegas, will one day face their comeuppance as water becomes too costly or scarce, and that all the region's cities will one day need to tap the West's rural water. But the stakes for Nevada, planners and legal scholars say, could be even higher because of what happened under gold's regime. Then the consequences of the water no one wanted may come back.

"There will a redivision of water from rural to urban use," said Hal Rothman, a professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "The question is not whether that's going to happen - it's the terms under which it's going to happen."

By then, the mines around Elko are likely to be played out. The Las Vegas pipeline, assuming it is built, will be drawing the first of up to 58 billion gallons a year - enough for 20 percent of the city's projected population.

Those two pincer trends - urbanization from one side, mine closure from the other - raise the greatest uncertainties for tiny Elko, a town of just 16,000, that may be the nation's last gold boomtown.

"If the basin is drained, then this becomes like the Owens Valley in California," said Warren Russell, an Elko County Commissioner. The Owens Valley, near Death Valley National Park, was drained in the 1930's - the incident made famous by the movie "Chinatown" - as Los Angeles locked in water resources.

For now, Las Vegas water officials say they have no designs on any water farther north than their pipeline, which will end 100 miles or so south of Elko. But everyone cautions that a return of the drought that gripped the region in recent years - or a victory in court by the Western Shoshone Indians, who claim vast tracts of Nevada that they say were stolen in the 1800's - could change every calculation.

The general manager of the Las Vegas-based Southern Nevada Water Authority, Patricia Mulroy, said in an interview that her motto was never to say never - to rule out tapping the waters of northern Nevada would be folly.

The state and the region should be looking at mine country now, she said, and thinking about storage and prevention of evaporation. "We need a viable place to store that water," she said. "Having said that, we're not talking to any mining company."

Mr. Ricci, the state engineer, said water transfers from mine country would require a new application, like the one Las Vegas is going through now, but none have been filed.

Many mine companies, meanwhile, have followed Barrick's lead in buying ranch lands across the state - most of which have water rights that could one day be sold, though a spokesman for Barrick said the company had no intention of going into the water business from the 110,000 acres it currently owns.

But Dean A. Rhoads, a rancher and state senator who lives near the Goldstrike mine, has been watching closely. He counts at least 20 ranches - some of them tens of thousands of acres - that have gone into mining company hands.

Water pipelines, legal experts say, can be laid across private land in Nevada without the fuss of an environmental impact statement, just like Barrick's ore-roaster.

"Water, and what happens next in these rural areas, is the most crucial issue that I've faced in 25 years in the legislature," said Mr. Rhoads, a Republican. "A lot of my neighbors are shaking in their boots."

From: Hilary S., Care2 Animals & Environment Alerts
ecoalerts@care2.com December 06, 2005

What you should know about gold jewelry for the holidays

Hi ,

(note: 'go.care2.com/e/Htt/D_/lKAi' is doing some rearranging,there is an alternative dirty gold petition at the bottom of this email)

Help today!

Are gifts that contain gold on your shopping list this holiday season? Something you should know first: producing just one gold ring generally creates 20 tons of mine waste that can contaminate rivers and oceans. But, we have the power to change this dirty fact.

Toxic chemicals such as cyanide and mercury that are used in producing gold have polluted drinking water supplies, contaminated farmland, and harmed the health of workers and communities. Gold mining operations can also leave a trail of social destruction, displacing communities from their homelands against their will and destroying traditional livelihoods.

Safer mining practices are possible, and the holiday season is the perfect time to let the jewelry industry know that change is needed. Sign our No Dirty Gold Pledge and we'll show jewelry firms how many people want them to do the same. Your voice will let them know that the gold they buy and sell should be produced in ways that do not harm communities, workers, and the environment:

Already, Tiffany & Co. has responded to requests from concerned people like you. This is a critical first step: jewelers may not operate heavy equipment at mine sites, but more than 80 percent of gold mined each year is used to make jewelry. Jewelry firms are thus uniquely positioned to help make real change in gold mining practices.

There are some practices that are just too dirty to accept under any circumstances -- such as dumping mine waste directly into rivers or the ocean. Sign today to make global change happen.

Thanks for your help today,

Hilary S.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/625335970?ltl=1133998079

----------------------------

Thank you for signing up to receive Animals & Environment Alerts via ThePetitionSite or Care2.com!

FYI - Anchorage Daily News article on House Budget Package -- read on for reference to

" Great Mining Land Claim Giveaway of 2005" -

For those of you who haven't seen this Pombo-related editorial from the Anchorage Daily News

"... This blatant giveaway would open up a land rush in scenic spots on national forests and other federal lands..."

No ANWR, no go

Anchorage Daily News
Published: November 16, 2005
www.adn.com/opinion/view/story/7210460p-7123012c.html

Now that the U.S. House has dropped ANWR drilling from the omnibus budget bill, Alaskans have no reason to root for its passage. The House budget bill is irresponsible with the nation's finances. It is grossly unfair to the nation's less fortunate. And it is overloaded with controversial new laws that should be considered and decided with separate up-or-down votes.

The budget bill does nothing to close the multihundredbillion-dollar deficits that are beginning to sap the nation's economic strength. Its $50 billion or so in spending cutbacks would be given right back to wealthy Americans, as President Bush and Republican congressional leaders are seeking $70 billion worth of tax cuts in separate legislation.

Instead of asking Americans to pay today for the Iraq war and hurricane relief and reconstruction, the budget bill puts those worthy expenses on the national credit card. Passing the measure will shove the nation's children and grandchildren further into hock to Chinese and Japanese financiers. And while plunging the nation deeper into debt, the bill would push the nation's less fortunate deeper into poverty.

Some 300,000 people will have to go without food stamps. The House bill authorizes new fees on low-income children when they get sick and seek medical care or buy prescription drugs. It also slashes federal funding for child support enforcement -- making it more likely that more families will fall into poverty. It ratchets up welfare-to-work requirements while shrinking funds for the child care that clients need to get off and stay off public assistance.

All those cuts don't add up to the $21 billion of tax breaks now in the works for those collecting dividends and capital gains. More than half of those tax breaks will go to households making more than $1 million a year, according to the Tax Policy Center. Ninety percent of the benefits from the capital gains and dividends tax cut will go to those making at least $100,000 a year.

The final strike against the bill is all the nonfinancial legislative mischief buried within it. Drilling in Alaska's Arctic refuge wasn't the only case where a financial rationale was used to put controversial legislation into the budget bill.

It creates a new federal appeals court for the western states. That's clearly a judicial matter, not a budgetary question.

The most notorious new law buried in the bill is what might be called the Great Mining Land Claim Giveaway of 2005. Today, when mining companies find valuable minerals on federal land, they are only allowed to lease the property. The House bill allows companies to buy the public's land outright, at nominal prices that take no account of the mineral values. New claims could be staked and the full title purchased even if there aren't any mineral deposits. This blatant giveaway would open up a land rush in scenic spots on national forests and other federal lands.

Republican House leaders had to delay action on the budget bill because too many in their own ranks rebelled against the many excesses within it. Meanwhile, other Republicans have threatened to withhold their votes now that the ANWR drilling provision has been dropped.

With the ANWR provision included, the bill would have been a bitter pill for Alaskans. Without it, Alaskans can join responsible voices in the rest of the country and hope that the bill collapses under its own controversial weight.

BOTTOM LINE: There's a good reason U.S. House leaders don't have the votes to pass the budget bill: It's a turkey. Scott Brennan, Campaign Director Alaskans for Responsible Mining P.O. Box 100286 Anchorage, AK 99510 (P) 907-277-0005 (F) 907-929-1562 scott@reformakmines.org http://www.reformakmines.org

Alaskans for Responsible Mining (ARM) is a voluntary association of non-governmental organizations working together to raise public awareness of the impacts of the mining industry to Alaska's watersheds, wildlife, fisheries, communities and public health and to reform Alaska's inadequate mining laws.

EARTHWORKS-
Oxfam America-Westerners for Responsible Mining

Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Contact: Steve D'Esposito, EARTHWORKS,
(202) 887-1872, ext. 203, cell: (202) 255-2717;
Ian Gary, Oxfam America, (202) 375-2628
Mary Mitchell, Rock Creek Alliance, partner in
the Westerners for Responsible Mining campaign: (208) 610-4896

Jewelers of America Urges Congress To Strip Pombo's Land Grab from Budget Reconciliation Bill

EARTHWORKS, Oxfam America, and Westerners for Responsible Mining applaud commitment by nation's leading retail jewelers to protect America's treasured public lands, including the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness

Washington, DC-Jewelers of America, the nation's largest retail jewelry trade association, sent a letter to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert on Monday night urging him to strip controversial 'mining' provisions from the House budget reconciliation bill. The letter, signed by Jewelers of America President and CEO Matthew A. Runci, expressed grave concern that the mining provisions authored by House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo (R-California) "would result in a massive giveaway of public land giveaway to corporations and private interests."

The House Republican leadership pulled the budget reconciliation bill from the floor last Thursday when it became clear that they did not have the votes to pass it. The House is expected to resume discussions on the bill today with a vote possible this week.

EARTHWORKS, a Washington, DC-based environmental organization, Oxfam America, a humanitarian relief and development organization, and Westerners for Responsible Mining, a coalition committed to protecting public lands and communities in the western U.S. welcomed the unexpected action by Jewelers of America.

"We applaud Jewelers of America for their strong stand against this sneak attack on our western public land heritage," said Steve D'Esposito, president of EARTHWORKS. "All of us who have a direct stake in this issue, including local communities, jewelry companies, mining professionals and mining companies, should stand together. By allowing the reckless privatization of our public lands, Pombo's provisions would promote land speculation and real estate development, which could threaten the interests of responsible mining companies." D'Esposito added.

An excerpt from the Jewelers of America letter states: "Any reforms to the mining laws must be done in the 'light of day' with full consideration by the committees of jurisdiction and with ample opportunity for the public to examine and comment on the legislation. Disguising major changes in our environmental laws as 'miscellaneous' and merely a 'revenue raiser' simply does not serve the public interest. These lands have been held in trust for the public and should be treated as such." (A copy of the letter is posted at: http://www.bettermines.org/pubs/JoA%20letter.pdf)

"Jewelers of America has demonstrated that companies that sell products containing gold and other metals are becoming increasingly concerned about how their products are produced. They want to see respect for the environment and community rights, including the rights of Native Americans, whose sacred lands could be destroyed by this legislation," said Ian Gary, policy advisor for Oxfam America.

Jewelers of America has a stake in the outcome of this legislative battle because its retail members depend on the consumer appeal of gold and other minerals and metals. If the "land grab" Rep. Pombo is pushing in the budget bill becomes law, the nation could witness more on-the-ground battles erupting as mining corporations and other private interests buy treasured public lands, such as the portion of the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness where a highly controversial silver and copper mine, the Rock Creek Mine, has been proposed. Tiffany & Co., a member of Jewelers of America, ran an open letter in The Washington Post in 2004 calling for protection of the Cabinet Mountain Wilderness from a proposed mine.

"Thanks to Jewelers of America for standing up for special places like the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness Area," said Mary Mitchell, executive director of Rock Creek Alliance, based in Sandpoint, Idaho. "Congress should listen to Jewelers of America and other business and community leaders and take the mining provisions out of the budget bill.

Mitchell and others are concerned that Revett Minerals Inc. could simply buy public land adjacent to the wilderness and move ahead with the mine without any federal agency oversight of the potential impacts that pollution from the mine would have on the nearby Clark Fork River and Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho's largest freshwater lake.

Altogether, more than 270 million acres of federal public lands in the West would be thrown open for sale if the current version of House budget bill becomes law. Those places that are threatened include national parks, forests, and sacred sites, such as the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, Joshua Tree National Park and Tahoe National Forest in California, and Mt. Tenabo in Nevada. Former high-level government officials, including Mike Dombeck, former Chief of the U.S. Forest Service and Acting Director of the Bureau of Land Management, and John Leshy, former Solicitor of the U.S. Department of the Interior, also oppose the measure.

For more information and sources, please contact: Harlin Savage, Resource Media, (720) 564-0500, ext. 1, or email: harlin@resource-media.org

November 06, 2005

Nevada mines may be culprit in high mercury levels in Idaho

ASSOCIATED PRESS

BOISE, Idaho (AP) - A southern Idaho reservoir popular with walleye anglers has high concentrations of mercury, an element that can cause neurological damage. Some scientists suspect that gold mines across the border in Nevada are responsible.

Since 2002, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare has warned people to limit the number of fish they eat from the Salmon Falls Reservoir, located south of Twin Falls.

In tests done since August, state Department of Environmental Quality officials now say they've detected mercury levels in the reservoir that are 150 times the highest levels ever found in lakes in the northeastern United States, which have been doused with mercury from nearby coal-fired power plants.

Separately, scientists at the Idaho National Laboratory near Idaho Falls who are monitoring air quality in the region found that mercury levels increased as much as 70 percent when winds blew from the southwest. The area includes Nevada mines belonging to Newmont Mining, Barrick Goldstrike, Placer Dome and Queenstake Resources.

"The mines are the only sources big enough to cause those peaks," Michael Abbott, an INL atmospheric scientist, told the Idaho Statesman newspaper.

State environmental regulators say evidence isn't conclusive that mercury in the reservoir is from the mines. In addition, there's no specific information about any mercury-related health problems that may have resulted from high mercury levels in the Salmon Falls Reservoir.

Still, officials say people should take note.

"Nobody's ever seen a hot spot like this before," said Mike DuBois, an air quality analyst at the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, adding that other Idaho watersheds could be at risk if the mines are, in fact, the reason for the high mercury levels.

His agency wants to single out the origins of the mercury pollution so that it can begin measures to clean up the reservoir.

The mines have voluntarily reduced emissions of mercury, which is expelled into the atmosphere when ore is processed, by about three-fourths from the levels that were being emitted before 2002, according to Nevada state officials. They say the four mines have slashed output from more than 15,000 pounds annually in 2002 to some 4,000 pounds in 2004.

To cut emissions, the mining companies have installed scrubbers on smokestacks to capture mercury before it enters the air.

"Monitoring and record keeping, those are the right things to do and not a huge burden on us," said John Mudge, Newmont Mining's director of environmental affairs.

The INL's Abbot continues to collect air samples in hopes of helping pinpoint the source of the mercury.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2005/nov/06/110610722.html

Bill to speed mining of Utah's oil shale advances in House

By Robert Gehrke
The Salt Lake Tribune
Thursday, October 27, 2005
http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3155320

WASHINGTON - A House committee approved a package of reforms Wednesday aimed at increasing domestic energy production. Opponents say it could open millions of acres to development and erode environmental protections.

The bill, approved by the House Resources Committee, directs the Interior Department to accelerate the leasing of an estimated 2.5 million acres in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming for oil shale mining, rewriting policies in the Energy Policy Act signed by President Bush in August.

It also would further accelerate the approval process for oil and gas leases, open part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, and could exempt some oil and gas projects from key environmental laws. Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., said Democrats who tried unsuccessfully to strip several provisions from the bill are hindering the fight for energy independence.

"We are dependent on thug-run countries; we are dependent on unstable countries for our energy," he said. "We can't be against every kind of energy and end up having a country that can compete."

The oil shale section of the House bill seeks to take oil shale development further, faster than was envisioned in a compromise in the Energy Policy Act that Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch helped negotiate. It requires the interior secretary to lease 35 percent of potential oil shale deposits on federal lands in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming for commercial development regardless of the results of an environmental study mandated in the earlier Energy Act.

Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., estimated it could open 2.5 million acres in the three states to commercial oil shale production and warned that rushing oil shale development could result in another bust that crippled the region in the 1980s.

"There is enormous potential for oil shale and we're excited about it, but we believe we should move in a way that keeps the good faith with the states," said Udall.

The Energy Department estimates the equivalent of 1 trillion barrels of oil is trapped in the rock, and high oil prices have industry revisiting whether it can be developed economically.

Another portion of the bill could exempt long-standing oil and gas leases from landmark environmental laws, environmentalists say. It states that drilling should be approved based on regulations in place when the lease was issued. In some cases, leases issued decades ago predate landmark environmental laws.

For example, in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, a company is seeking to drill on a lease it has held since 1969, said Steve Bloch, an attorney with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. That lease predates the National Environmental Policy Act and Clean Water Act and could be exempt from those laws.

"It's going to create a lot of confusion and a lot of risk in some very special places in Utah," Bloch said.

A spokeswoman for the House Resources Committee said the provision was included to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling regarding off-shore drilling. The language, however, appears to apply to on-shore drilling, as well.

FYI. Analogous to the situation in Nevada - Western Shoshone territory, except that it's not just one company, it's the 2nd largest gold producing area in the world, and the U.S. government is attempting to pay the native people a whopping 15 cents an acre for the same land. the mine making the most recent direct assault on Western Shoshone culture and spirituality is Cortez Gold (jointly owned by Placer Dome (Canada) and Kennecott (Australia), both members of the British Commonwealth. Colonialism has never ended.

Western Shoshone Defense Project

National Public Radio
Day to Day
October 25, 2005

Interview: Lowell Bergman discusses
"The Curse of Inca Gold"
mining Peru's wealth

Edition: 4:00-5:00 PM

Index Terms:
4973736
Estimated printed pages: 5
Article Text:
NOAH ADAMS, host:

This is DAY TO DAY. I'm Noah Adams.

In Peru, the world's most productive gold mine sprawls over the Andean Mountains 13,000 feet high. The extraction of more than $7 billion worth of gold from the mine has its costs, both for the local people and for the foreign companies operating there. In a documentary airing tonight, Frontline/World and The New York Times are looking at these costs. DAY TO DAY's Madeleine Brand talked to reporter Lowell Bergman about the investigation.

Mr. LOWELL BERGMAN (Reporter): We get an inside look at what goes on, both on the sort of political and business side of a multinational company operating overseas, particularly in what's known as the extractive industries, and at the same time, we also see what the effect is of some of the things that we take for granted on the environment and on the local communities around the world. Is it worth doing this kind
of mining? Is there a r! eal purpose behind it? And if there is, how can you best control it? How can you best look at it in a rational way?

MADELEINE BRAND reporting:

And this is something that's a luxury product. It's not something like coal, which is more of a necessity.

Mr. BERGMAN: They call it an aspirational commodity, that is, it has no--80 percent of the gold that's mined in the world goes into primarily the Indian and Chinese jewelry market. The price of it is maintained basically artificially by the US government, the IMF and some other holders of large amounts of bullion. But people are drawn to gold culturally; people are drawn to it out of a sense of insecurity about regular currency. That seems to be its value. As you said, it's not like coal, it's not like copper, it's not like a lot of the other commodities around that actually have a utility.

BRAND: You traveled to the Andes mountains and went to the Yanacocha mine. Describe it. What does it look ! like there?

Mr. BERGMAN: What's amazing is that as far as they eye can see in some parts of the mine is that they've moved the tops of the mountains. It looks like a giant development, let's say a suburb of Los Angeles where they're putting in a subdivision, but you're 13,000 feet up in the Andes. This is an open-pit mine--it stretches over 60 square miles--where what they do is they move, they say, half a million tons a day, first with blasting and then with shovels and giant dump trucks, and they pile the ore that they are blasting on top of drip irrigation lines, and they pump a solution of cyanide through that. And that's the way they get what's called microscopic gold to precipitate out of the ore.

BRAND: And you mentioned cyanide. That sounds dangerous, and is it?

Mr. BERGMAN: It is potentially very, very dangerous. They say that the Yanacocha mine is the most advanced in terms of controlling the cyanide, controlling it from, if you will, leaching out into the community or into the streams and so forth. Just the! scale of it has interfered with the lifestyle of the local campesinos, and in 2000--one of the
byproducts of this process is not just the cyanide going together with the gold, but it also unleashes mercury and arsenic and other potentially dangerous toxic chemicals--and a truck with a bunch of this mercury on it dumped, by accident, 300 or so pounds of it in a village nearby. And they wound up creating sort of a public health disaster.

BRAND: And this mine is run by an American company, Newmont.

Mr. BERGMAN: Right, Newmont of Denver, in partnership with a Peruvian company.

BRAND: And how did that come to be? How did this American company gain control of this very lucrative mine in a foreign country?

Mr. BERGMAN: In the early '90s, the French government decided to privatize part of their holdings in this mine and other mines that they owned around the world. Newmont and its Peruvian partner used that move as a way to go into Peru's courts, who! in turn literally confiscated, if you will, the French interest in th e mine and allowed them to buy it at a bargain price. So Newmont wound up being the majority shareholder as well as the manager of the mine.

Because it went into the Peruvian judiciary, there was a lot of maneuvering that went on to influence the court, and at that time in Peru, the hidden power, if you will, broker in the country was a man< named Vladimiro Montesinos, and we actually have footage, in this case an audiotape, of Montesinos meeting with an executive of Newmont Mining and discussing the case. And then later we have him discussing it with the judge who will cast the deciding vote in the Peruvian Supreme Court. And of course, the Americans win; the French lose.

No one's ever been prosecuted for any activity related to this. Obviously there have been a lot of questions raised, both by the French and in Peru, but it's a window, if you will, into the way business has to be done, in some cases, people with the company would say, when you're involved in ! a developing country.

BRAND: The man that met with Montesinos, the executive at Newmont, you interview, and you say he's--this is the first time he has been interviewed.

Mr. BERGMAN: His name is Larry Kurlander. He was the number three executive of the company until early 2002, I believe, and he is the man who goes in to see Montesinos, as he says, because everyone told him he was the guy to see in order to, in a sense, get a fair hearing in the Supreme Court. It's--he feels uncomfortable even talking about it. He's a lawyer; he's a former prosecutor.

(Soundbite of interview)

Mr. LARRY KURLANDER (Former Newmont Mining Executive): It is what it is, and the fact that you're in a country and you're forced to deal with a guy like this, it's a terrible thing.

Mr. BERGMAN: Kurlander says that he started to realize that the company, which had been saying publicly that it operates under EPA standards and any strict international standard around ! the world--and this company is in every place from Indonesia to Peru t o Uzbekistan to Nevada--that he realized they weren't doing that.

(Soundbite of interview)

Mr. KURLANDER: There is a social license that in my opinion is far more important than the government license, because the social license is granted by the people of the community. And without building a trust with the people who live there and work there, and who've lived there for centuries, you're going to have trouble, and indeed they have.

BRAND: And there's a long history of gold mining in Peru. It's associated with colonialism, and did you make that link?

Mr. BERGMAN: Well, the irony of the Yanacocha mine is that it's an area called Cajamarca, high up in the Andes, one of the poorest regions of Peru. But it's also the place, in 1534, where Pizarro came and met the Inca Emperor Atahualpa, and it's that story, Atahualpa being taken hostage by Pizarro, Atahualpa saying `I'll fill this room'--that he was being held in--`with gold,' as high as he could re! ach along the wall. His followers then delivered the gold. He's supposed to be released. A Jesuit priest apparently said, `No, you can't do that unless he converts.' He wouldn't convert, so they kill him and they keep the gold.

And to people in the local community, there's a moral to that story today, foreigners coming, foreigners taking, in a sense, their gold, and leaving with it. And we all know the volatile history of Peru over the last particularly 20, 30 years, and it's still seething there in Cajamarca.

ADAMS: Reporter Lowell Bergman. The documentary "The Curse of Inca Gold" airs tonight on PBS stations around the country. That interview by DAY TO DAY's Madeleine Brand.

NPR's DAY TO DAY continues. I'm Noah Adams.

Copyright C2005 National Public RadioR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission. For further information, please contact NPR's Permissions Coordinator at (202) 513-2030.

Record Number: 200510251604