With great ceremony last August, President Bill
Clinton announced he had saved Yellowstone by blocking a proposed
gold mine that bordered the park (HCN, 9/2/96). Once the applause
died down, critics who worried that the the deal was a ploy for
re-election warned that the deal was not done: Clinton still had to
secure $65 million in federal property or cash to pay off the Crown
Butte mining company (HCN, 9/30/96).
A few days
before the March 15 deadline, the Clinton administration was
scrambling to make a deal.
A few weeks earlier,
Montana Gov. Marc Racicot and private industry thought they had
come up with the perfect plan. Proposed by brothers-in-law at a
Billings coal firm and Plum Creek Timber Co., the “Montana
Initiative” would have allowed the companies to buy public land in
Montana from the federal government to raise money to pay off Crown
Butte.
Plum Creek pulled out when green groups
protested the deal.
Douglas Honnold, the Sierra
Club Legal Defense Fund attorney who helped mastermind the original
Crown Butte agreement, says the administration should stop looking
for timber- and coal-rich Montana lands and consider trading
developed urban areas and closed military bases instead. Honnold
also suggests drawing from the Land and Water Conservation Fund,
which raises $900 million annually from oil and gas drilling in
America’s coastal waters. The fund was created to purchase natural
resources. Since the 1980s, however,Congress has used it to reduce
the federal deficit.
Although Crown Butte can
reject any offer, Honnold says he’s confident that the mining
company will work with the administration to make a deal. The
agreement was forged partly under pressure from a lawsuit he
brought on behalf of environmental groups, a lawsuit that could
cost the mining company up to $150 million.
“If
this deal doesn’t go down,” Honnold says, “we’ll go to trial.”
*Dan Oko
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Still no deal for New World Mine.
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