Montana: Proposed Rock Creek Mine Draws Ire

One insidious feature of the 1872 mining law in the U.S. is that it allows mining underneath designated wilderness. With a loophole like that, it takes folks like Revett Minerals about two seconds to see opportunity in places like the Cabinet Mountains in northwestern Montana. Revett, predictably, has a long record of contaminating public land. “Their leaders launched the Zortman-Landusky mine, which leaked acids, cyanide, arsenic and lead, only to declare bankruptcy and leave Montanans with a tidy $204 million cleanup.” Now they want a new mine that will discharge mining waste into the Clark Fork. Jim Costello of the Rock Creek Alliance writes about it on New West.