Photo by U.S. Forest Service Northern Region

For too long, mining companies that extracted Montana’s riches and left environmental disasters in their wake were free to return here to mine again.

Last week the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) put mining giant Hecla on notice for violating a state statute that prevents polluters from mining in Montana again until they clean up their past messes.

Hecla wants to operate two massive hard rock mines that will bore beneath the pristine Cabinet Mountains. But the CEO leading the charge, Phillips Baker, is the former VP and CFO of now-bankrupt Pegasus Gold, which walked away from three cyanide heap leach mines in Montana that have cost the public tens of millions to clean up. And we’re not done paying. In fact, contaminated water at the Zortman-Landusky Mine will require perpetual treatment, costing taxpayers millions of dollars.

A bipartisan group of legislators came to the same conclusion in 2001. Zortman-Landusky was a painful and expensive lesson. To prevent it from happening again, the Montana legislature amended Montana’s Metal Mine Reclamation Act to strengthen the “bad actor” provisions – a move supported by the mining industry.

In October our organizations asked DEQ to enforce that common-sense law, which they did last week, “bar[ring] Phillips Baker from involvement in mining or exploration activities in Montana unless the statute’s remedial steps are completed.” Those remedial steps include repaying the state for cleaning up Pegasus Gold’s abandoned mine sites; paying all penalties; paying interest incurred on both (at 6 percent/year); and, at long last, cleaning up the environmental disasters they left behind.

That’s a new, and very welcome response from the state. Hecla has demonstrated that it either does not understand Montana’s environmental protection laws, or that it feels free to ignore them. Either way, we have good reason to be vigilant.

Montana is replete with examples of the heavy price we’ve paid for giving mining companies the benefit of the doubt. Empty promises have left us with poisoned creeks, lifeless fisheries, and extensive, lingering contamination. Statewide, we’ve invested decades of work and hundreds of millions cleaning up the toxic vestiges of our mining legacy – and we’re far from done.

We applaud DEQ for taking the hard lessons seriously and doing right by the clean waters they are charged to protect. It’s an important first step toward finally holding polluters accountable.

Hecla has already filed suit challenging DEQ’s decision, and in April the U.S. Forest Service is expected to release its final decision on whether to issue Hecla a permit for an evaluation adit at one of its proposed Cabinet Mountains mines. We support DEQ in defending its bad actor decision fully and appropriately, and we encourage the Forest Service to suspend its permitting process in light of DEQ’s enforcement action.

Montana is a mineral-rich state that will forever tempt mining interests. But the days of mining at the expense of clean water are over. We can, and must, do it right. Our irreplaceable rivers and streams, and the human and wildlife communities they sustain, are too precious not to.

Karen Knudsen, Clark Fork Coalition
Bonnie Gestring, Earthworks
Clayton Elliott, Montana Conservation Voters
Jim Jensen, Montana Environmental Information Center
Mary Costello, Rock Creek Alliance & Save Our Cabinets