MONTANA
Mining takes another
hit
In a small second-floor office in downtown
Helena, Mont., a dozen people held a sort of vigil on this chilly
election night. They’d brought a television and rigged it with
rabbit ears earlier in the day, and tuned the radio to the local
public radio station. There, in the Montana Environmental
Information Center office, the 25-year-old nerve center for battles
against the mining industry, environmentalists were hoping to hear
that they’d won the big one: Initiative 137. It would forever
change mining in Montana by banning new cyanide heap-leach gold
mines.
“We felt cautiously
optimistic, but we definitely were not feeling completely
confident,” admits MEIC staffer Bonnie Gestring.
Just 13 days earlier, a federal judge overturned a two-year-old
measure known as I-125, which had kept corporate interests such as
the Montana Mining Association from campaigning on statewide
initiatives. The court agreed with the mining industry plaintiffs
that the initiative unfairly restricted a corporation’s right to
free speech.
And although every poll taken in
Montana prior to Nov. 3 showed voters supported the anti-mining
initiative, environmentalists watched their support erode once the
federal court let the mining industry jump onto the campaign
trail.
Nevertheless, environmentalists won I-137
– spending $60,000 in the process – despite the mining industry’s
last-minute $80,000 media blitz.
The victory may
be short-lived, however; the mining association filed another
lawsuit in federal court Nov. 4, on grounds that it wasn’t allowed
to campaign for most of the race.
Even if I-137
is overturned, mining seems on the skids in Montana: “Oh, God, it’s
plummeted,” laments Robin McCulloch, a mining engineer at the
Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology. “And it’s looking worse.”
He points to the last decade’s drop in mineral
explorations in the state: In 1988, 56 companies spent $28.6
million searching the state for minerals such as gold and silver.
Ten years later, just eight companies spent less than $500,000. The
decline isn’t universal in the West: In Nevada, the mining industry
poured $125 million into mineral exploration last year. The
disappearance of mining companies in Montana is in part due to
miserably low gold prices, but McCulloch says environmental
opposition has made mining in Montana
risky.
“The overall effect,”
McCulloch concedes, “is the environmentalists are winning.”
” Dustin
Solberg
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Mining takes another hit.
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