by Andy Roubik, President of the Bitterroot River Protection Association
A recent letter to the editor under the title Facts over fear: setting the record straight on Sheep Creek stated “Concerns about water, wildlife, and environmental protection are legitimate. No one who lives in the Bitterroot Valley takes those issues lightly. But raising concerns is different from asserting outcomes as inevitable without evidence.”
We are not aware of the concerns being asserted as inevitable without evidence that he refers to, but we are aware of a very long list of “potential impacts” that need to be addressed. The Ravalli County Commissioners have listed a few in their letter to the Governor including potential negative impacts to water quality and quantity, to wildlife and wildlife habitat, to local government services, to the Bitterroot Valley economy, etc. The company has submitted a Plan of Operation that does not address any of those concerns, it only heightens our concerns.
The letter goes on to state “Exploration is not mining….Exploration involves limited surface disturbance, small and targeted drilling… Modern mineral exploration uses carefully controlled, small-diameter drill holes designed to gather geological data, not industrial-scale blasting.”
Apparently the author failed to read the company’s Plan of Operation. It states explicitly that they plan on using dynamite to blast a mile long tunnel and haul out up to 10,000 tons of ore. They are not just drilling tiny little holes. Being concerned about these plans is not putting fear over facts. It is being genuinely concerned about the company’s actual plans.
Another recent letter also emphasized that it is just an exploratory project “designed specifically to gather scientific data needed to determine feasibility.” Maybe this person too believes that they are just drilling little holes to gather scientific data and failed to read the actual plan of operation that was submitted.
This letter stated, “Mining, like any major industrial activity, requires careful planning, modern safeguards, and strong oversight… If exploration confirms that Sheep Creek can be developed responsibly, it should be evaluated on the basis of current science and modern practice, not assumptions rooted in the distant past.”
We couldn’t be more in agreement. But we would add – even a plan of exploration, especially one that involves blasting over a mile of new tunnel and extracting thousands of tons of ore and creating even more waste rock, should also require “careful planning, modern safeguards, and strong oversight” and should also “be evaluated on the basis of current science and modern practice”, not on pie in the sky future promises rooted in unbelievable claims like “zero use of water” at the same time that they mention in their plans potentially needing water out of Sheep Creek and the West Fork of the Bitterroot River.
We would urge anyone who wants to give the company proposing the Sheep Creek Mine the benefit of the doubt to read the plan that was submitted!
Some people want to push the hot button about the emergency need for more REE mining in America for national security reasons and stress the need for more mining. Not true. The United States has plentiful reserves, both in the ground and hiding in plain sight in mine waste, industrial scrap and discarded electronics. They are found in Butte’s toxic waste reservoir, in the ashes at Colstrip, at the abandoned Aluminum superfund site in Columbia Falls and in the waste rock piles at abandoned mines across the state, not to mention existing mines that simply haven’t bothered to target them.
Rather than rushing to open new mines or making policy based on the assumption that China holds all the cards, America could go a long way toward meeting its growing demand for such minerals by harvesting these readily available sources. There is no need at all to turn the Bitterroot Valley into a “sacrifice zone” for national security reasons.
The real priority should not be new mines but a new way to process the already available sources that is economically viable and environmentally safe. That’s something that even China doesn’t have. That’s something we can all get behind. It is also something we are already working on in laboratories across the country.
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