Montana
Montana Tunnels: Another mining disaster – Daily Montanan
The severely misnamed Montana Department of Environmental Quality recently announced that it was “initiating the bond forfeiture process for the Montana Tunnels mine after the mine failed to make a $1.5 million reclamation bond payment in December that was a court-approved bankruptcy stipulation.”
This latest disaster — in a long string of abandoned, bankrupt and perpetually-polluting mines — brings to mind the old adage: “The once burnt child fears the fire.” But in Montana’s case, it’s more like we’ve been napalmed — and the state agencies, apparently incapable of learning from our costly and destructive mistakes, continue to permit mining.
The Montana Tunnels mine became “fully operational” in 1986. For those who may not remember, this was 10 years after ARCO bought out the Anaconda Co. in what Wall Street eventually called “the worst corporate acquisition of the decade.”
Forty years later, the “reclamation” debacle continues to drag on with Butte, Anaconda and the Upper Clark Fork carrying the stigma of being the largest Superfund site in the nation.
The year of 1986 was also well into the era when the mining industry promised “new” mining would never create environmental disasters. But considering the long list of environmental disasters the industry has since left behind, one might think our “regulatory” agencies would realize they shouldn’t consider the promises of mining corporations seriously.
The old “take the gold and declare bankruptcy” ploy has left Montanans on the taxpayer hook for more than $100 million at the former Pegasus Gold Zortman-Landusky mine alone — to say nothing of its abandoned Beal Mountain Mine. Then there was ASARCO’s Mike Horse Mine that poisoned the Blackfoot River when it’s poorly-engineered tailings dam failed — and that continues to leach and require treatment of acid mine drainage. Or how about W.R. Grace’s disaster in Libby that killed — and continues to kill — hundreds of Montanans thanks to asbestosis from their vermiculite mining operation?
And then, of course, there’s Golden Sunlight — hailed as the bright light of “new mining” — it now requires treatment in perpetuity to address cyanide-poisoned water at the very confluence of the Boulder and Jefferson rivers. This disaster launched the successful citizens’ initiative to ban cyanide heap leach mining in Montana in the late 1990s. Notably, it came from citizens, not Montana’s Legislature, governor or its “environmental quality” agency.
As noted in the recent article: “But the troubled mine hasn’t operated since 2008, and its permit was suspended in 2018 for failure to post an adequate bond. In December 2022, Montana Tunnels filed for Chapter 11 federal bankruptcy protection.”
The Department of Environmental Quality, meanwhile, holds about half of the $40 million reclamation cost.
Faced with another very large hole in the ground that’s filling with water as its side-walls collapse, the Gianforte administration, like the Republican and Democrat administrations before it, isn’t leaping into action to begin reclamation — it’s looking for someone to buy it and says it has five years before it terminates the permit.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me over and over and over again — shame on the Department of Environmental Quality and the Republican and Democrat governors who continue to ignore our constitution and sell out present and future generations by kowtowing to hit-and-run mining corporations.
George Ochenski is a longtime Helena resident, an environmental activist and Montana’s longest-running columnist.