Federal law gives mining interests an advantage in determining the best use of public lands in the Stibnite mining area
Dig it: The Yellow Pine mine pit in Idaho’s Stibnite Mining area in 2022. The area could once again be opened to mining. Photo: Nick Kunath
By Kendra Chamberlain. October 2, 2024. A proposal to build and rebuild open-pit mines in Idaho’s historic Stibnite mining district is moving forward, even as the U.S. Forest Service acknowledges it could have lasting, negative environmental impacts on the area.
The Stibnite mining district, located at the headwaters of the South Fork Salmon River, was critical to the United States’ war effort in the 1940s as a rich source of gold, silver, antimony and tungsten. Operations ended in the 1990s and the site was abandoned.
Perpetua Resources is hoping to reopen the mines, and build a few more, to resume extracting gold, antimony and silver. The Canada-based company, formally named Midas Gold, has been fine-tuning its proposal to the Forest Service for over a decade, as previously reported by Columbia Insight.
The proposal has faced significant opposition from the Nez Perce Tribe and groups like Idaho Rivers United, American Whitewater and Idaho Conservation League.
Last month, Forest Service released a final Environmental Impact Statement and a draft Record of Decision approving the mining proposal.
Activity in the historic mining district, located in the Payette National Forest and the Boise National Forest, decimated the local environment, notably blocking fish passage and polluting surface waters.
Opponents of the project say the area needs more environmental remediation, not more mining, to help restore protected fish species in the area.
Litigation expected
The Stibnite site is located next to the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness.
The area is also spawning habitat for bull trout and chinook salmon and includes treaty-reserved resources for the Nez Perce Tribe.
Map: USFS
“The Forest Service is stuck in a hard place here,” Idaho Rivers United Conservation Director Nick Kunath tells Columbia Insight. “They need to do this analysis and are mandated to manage these resources, but they’re also governed by some incredibly old laws that essentially determined that mining was the best use of our public lands more than 150 years ago, and still have to treat these projects as such.”
The reference to “old laws” means the General Mining Law of 1872, which establishes hard rock mining as one of the most important uses for public lands in the United States.
Perpetua Resources’ proposal would nearly double the footprint of the existing mining site. But the company says it will remediate some of that legacy pollution, including restoring 450 acres of wetlands, filling in a mine pit and rebuilding sections of the river.
Still, the project is expected to have significant, long-term impacts on the surrounding environment.
The USFS draft decision notes that despite the mitigation plans promised by Perpetua Resources, the no-action alternative would be the “environmentally preferable” action.
The agency also conceded that water temperatures downstream of the mining site may be impacted if the modeled temperature mitigation measures do not work as hoped.
“When we look at even in the best case scenario that they’re really putting forward in this analysis, it’s more than 100 years before they think stream temperatures might come back to baseline levels,” says Kunath.
Opponents of the project are reviewing the draft decision and submitting objections.
The Forest Service will need to respond to those objections before releasing its final decision. Given the strong opposition to the proposal, it could be years before Perpetua Resources would be able to begin work.
“I can’t confirm if [Idaho Rivers United] is going to litigate—or anybody else—but certainly Perpetua expects litigation, and so does the Forest Service, with a project as controversial as this,” says Kunath.
Stop it.