BATTLE MOUNTAIN, Nev. — On a high-desert mountain where prospectors first struck it rich in the 1860s, the largest gold-mining company in the world plans a major expansion that critics say could change the way the U.S. government regulates toxic mining waste.
Newmont Mining Corp.'s proposed $200-million Phoenix project would cover nearly 10 square miles of northern Nevada, reclaiming parts of an existing 3,000-acre contaminated site and spreading gold-mining operations over an additional 4,300 acres beginning in 2006.
The open-pit project would be the first major U.S. mine to post money in a new environmental trust fund required under controversial regulations that President Clinton ordered on his last day in office.
The Denver-based company's plans are drawing criticism from conservationists and pitting two federal agencies against each other.
The Bureau of Land Management backs the project but the Environmental Protection Agency agrees with a watchdog group's claims that the company is dramatically underestimating the potential costs of environmental risks over tens of thousands of years.
"They are predicting acid will drain off the site for 20,000 years," said Tom Myers, a hydrologist and executive director of the environmental group Great Basin Mine Watch.
"It's the first place in the country the mining industry is proposing long-term treatment of predicted acid mine drainage," he said. "It's perpetual treatment, and we do not condone perpetual treatment."
The government's new trust fund is intended to protect U.S. taxpayers by setting aside money to address any ill effects that might be detected in the years after a mine plays out and the company restores the site.
In this case, the fund would be used if pollution resulted from water passing through waste rock, some of which Newmont intends to use to help refill the open pit. The leftover rock, although inert underground, contains acids that are released when exposed to the elements.
"I'm not really worried about Newmont going away, but if they sell it to 'Joe Bob Mining' when the site is essentially mined out, that worries me," Myers said.
Newmont officials acknowledge that sulfuric acid could leak far into the future but insist that state-of-the-art reclamation practices would minimize risks at a mine that promises to bring 270 jobs to a depressed rural mining area.
