Deer avoid drill rigs

[BuzzH]

BHR,

Just prove to me that oil and gas developers are going to use the latest and best technology to drill and that as few wells as possible will be drilled to extract the oil and gas...and that wildlife/habitat will be given equal consideration.

Then bring your rigs and get with it...until then, they can bite my ass. I'm sick of huge profit margins taking the priority over correct management of my PUBLIC lands and my PUBLIC wildlife. The way this works is pretty simple Paul, and you should know it as well as anyone, being a good Republican...correct and less invasive ways of extracting gas will always take a back seat to doing it the same old way if bigger profit margins are possible. The only way company's comply is if they're forced to by legislation/regulation. I'll be on the band wagon to make things as tough as possible for these guys to rape my public lands at MY expense and at the expense of my PUBLIC wildlife.

I know for a fact that things could be done much better than they are currently being done. In fact, we just had an article in SI that proved it.

I'm not anti-extraction just into doing it right, sorry if you cant see the difference.

 

[MattK]

Sako- If I understand correctly, it's OK to pillage public land if you and your families can profit from it? Is it OK to allow asbestos mining next door to your beautiful house even if it causes cancer? If you say no, all you're being is an activist and someone who doesn't give a shit about those who work in asbestos mines. You uncompassionate ass! I dare any man to say any different.

This is what you are saying about me because I would like an area on public land to take my 3 month old son when he gets old enough to hunt pronghorn. You are saying I am wrong for wanting an area that is not processed by industry.

I want you and your brother and the rest of your family to have a good paying job. Hopefully, you can take your daughter to a great place to go hunting if she so chooses. I would also like world peace but I know everything has a cost. The cost to preserve public lands may be someone getting a job in a different state or a lower paying job in the state they are in. I know because I have taken the choice to stay in Montana where the wages are lower. I've made a monetary sacrifice for the area I live in. You're not wrong but you may wish to look at it from other perspectives.

 

[1_pointer]

Paul- I don't remember saying that tourism is the future of WY. What I wanted to point out is that tourism is a large industry for WY and that in some area could be an alternative with less impact than other industries. I know resource extraction is going to and has to happen. I just want it done in the most land friendly way possible when done on public lands. Industry won't doing unless the gov. make them, and so far the gov. agencies are showing much in the way of cajones in this area.

Sako- Can you pass the chocolate cake???

 

[Ten Bears]

MATTK, your lack of knowledge about CURRENT remediations is showing. The biggest reason we have superfund cleanups is that former extraction industries were not made to post a remediation bond.

 

[BuzzH]

Ten beers,

Your lack of knowledge about posting bonds is really showing...

Its pretty common knowledge, amoung most people with more than 2 firing brain cells, that a vast majority of the bonds posted for mining are not large enough to even begin to cover the expenses of remediation.

The reason for the bonds being short are because of the mining lobby, future costs VS current costs of remediation, unforseen remediation problems, etc. etc. etc.

Mining companies rarely ever even make an attempt to get their bond money back and all they do is roll it into an "expense" of doing business. They're theory is that they dont want to be bothered with doing the remediation work and all they'll lose is their bond money, after that the tax-payers can flip the bill. Enter super-fund $$$$$$$$$$$.

Please do some research.

 

[Ten Bears]

BUUUUZZZZZZZ, why don't you quit being the overprotective big brother and look around a bit. I have worked in the mining industry, on remediations, and as a driller.

 

[MattK]

TB- The problem with current remediations is the crystal ball theory. Can you guarantee that the amount set aside for all mines is the correct amount? Can you estimate the damages and cost of fixing any problems within $100,000? Will the enforcing agencies stand up to the mining industry and say "We need more money or your operation is shut down and we're going to freeze assets? Again, I have to look at past history because "those who don't learn from the past are bound to repeat it". Isn't that what you said? So the past is important. We agree on that. This brings me to the conclusion that there is a problem with the way remediations are done. If I am understanding you correctly, you work in this part of the industry. That makes you maybe a little bias. Therefore, it brings me back to what has happened in the past. Montana got smart with mining (I believe it was I-137). We also stopped the latest attempt to get rid of I-137. The reason this happened is there were no viable methods to ensure cleanup or stopping the pollution that occurs.

I will say that I don't know all types of mining, oil and gas drilling, etc. Where you are it may work great but it has been my experience that it is just a superfund waiting to happen. Again, Montana got wise to this... Hopefully this will lead to safer practices and better methods of mining.

 

[JoseCuervo]

Price of neglect

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dakota Mining Corp. abandoned its gold mine on the South Fork of the Salmon River and left the mess for the public to clean up. The company voluntarily gave up an $800,000 reclamation bond.

State officials said they are not sure how much it will cost to clean up the Stibnite mine, which includes pools containing a cyanide solution. The pools must be monitored all day, every day, to prevent leakage and damage.

If cleanup costs more than the bond, it will fall on taxpayers to pay for it.

The abandonment is an example of all that is still wrong with the mining industry and its friends, the Idaho Legislature and Congress.

Idaho has always been a state where dirty industries could escape from paying the true cost of operations. The Legislature has always been exceedingly reluctant to "meddle" in the affairs of industry.

It wasn’t until last year that the Idaho Legislature passed a law that allows the state to require unlimited bonding to cover the costs of future cleanup. That’s small consolation in a state that already has hundreds of abandoned mine sites in need of clean up.

The Stibnite mess is one more reason to reform federal mining laws. It’s one more reason to place the costs of cleaning up old abandoned mines where they belong—with the polluters. Companies should not be allowed to leave a mess behind in one state and engage in operations elsewhere.

With schools crumbling, prisons bursting at the seams and roads that could make a mule skinner cry, Idaho’s budget will be hard pressed to pick up the tab.

Idaho should not have to sacrifice its clean environment or its bank account so unprincipled industrial polluters can turn a profit. Those days should end.

To end them, Idaho needs leaders who are not bought and paid for with fat campaign donations from polluters. It needs leaders who will stand up to them and make sure hard-working Idahoans aren’t forced to pay the price of legislative neglect.

Hey Ten Beers,
How far do you think that $850k bond went toward the SUPER FUND site that is Stibnite???

 

[JoseCuervo]

Hey Ten Beers,

Explain to me again how these bonds "work"????

DEADWOOD, S.D. --

SOUTH DAKOTA: A $40 MILLION MESS
Mike Cepak stood looking down into a pit at 80 million gallons of acid.

"In the summertime, it's the color of a nice burgundy -- like a Cherry Coke," Cepak said of the then-frozen mess on a cold winter's day.

That's the color of the toxic metals in the lake of acid left here by a Canadian company that dug more than $69 million in gold from once-public land, then left U.S. taxpayers with an expensive nightmare. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says cleanup costs could top $40 million.

Cepak, a miner's son who grew up in the Black Hills, was one of the state regulators who gave the go-ahead for this gold mine -- and then watched it quickly descend into environmental disaster.

"We've learned you have to look at what your impacts are environmentally," Cepak says today. "If the mining company isn't doing it, then the state or federal government will be doing that."

The landscape is one of denuded hillsides, hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of waste rock and pits filled with acidic water -- leftovers from a "heap-leach" mine where cyanide was used to extract minute quantities of gold from mountains of rock.

This was public land before it was sold to miners for $5 per acre under terms of the General Mining Law of 1872. In 1988, a Canadian company, Dakota Mining Corp., started mining -- and polluting.

Less than a year after Dakota's subsidiary, the Brohm Mining Corp., started digging, the state ordered mining halted because thousands of gallons of a cyanide solution had leaked. Even when Brohm won permission to start mining again, a decade of environmental violations would follow, including more spills that killed fish in a nearby stream.



"The company always struggled financially," Cepak said. "Despite the state saying, 'You've got to do more, you've got to do more,' they just didn't have the money."

But the company's fiscal fitness was not an issue that state regulators considered in granting permits to mine. Regulators focused on the possibility of a cyanide spill, learning only too late that the much more serious problem would be the acidic drainage generated when rock was exposed to the elements.

The state allowed the mine to open even though it did not have a Clean Water Act permit, which environmentalists insisted was needed. The environmentalists won a court challenge, but not before thousands of gallons of cyanide solution had leaked.

And even after Brohm got the permit, the company repeatedly violated its terms, state citations show. In 1998 alone, seven violations were documented. Twice in 1997, Strawberry Creek ran orange with mine waste. But as many as 75 people kept working the mine, producing 189,000 ounces of gold from 1988 to 1999.

In summer 1998, facing low gold prices and opposition to a proposed expansion onto adjacent federal land, Dakota Mining President Alan Bell told the state the mine would be abandoned.

South Dakota Gov. Bill Janklow went to court, seeking to force Bell's firm to maintain the site. But the mine was played out. Dakota Mining filed for bankruptcy.

"By the time they figured out they had a problem, gold prices were heading into the tank," said Bob Mercer, a spokesman for Janklow. "If somebody had a crystal ball, they would not have allowed gold mining there in the first place."

Bell, who was paid $210,000 per year to run Dakota Mining, blames the situation on environmentalists. Had they not repeatedly challenged his plans and delayed his efforts to expand into the Black Hills National Forest, everything would have worked out, he said in a brief telephone conversation when reached at his Denver home.

Dakota "was put into bankruptcy by people in South Dakota who want to put mining out of business," Bell said. He refused to comment further, saying, "I don't want to talk to you about it. I won't get a fair hearing."

Dakota also abandoned the Stibnite gold mine in Idaho's Payette National Forest in 1998, forfeiting an $800,000 bond, far less than an estimated multimillion-dollar cleanup yet to be finished.

Bell last year was appointed to the board of Polymet Mining Corp., which is exploring an area in northeastern Minnesota where it hopes to mine copper, nickel, platinum, palladium, cobalt and gold. In announcing Bell's appointment, the company noted that Bell has raised more than $140 million for mining operations over the years, particularly through "junior" firms such as Dakota, and that he "possesses a unique understanding of U.S. and Canadian financial markets."

Back in South Dakota, state and federal officials are still dealing with 100 million gallons of water more acidic than vinegar and loaded with toxic heavy metals.

"They've got just about every metal you can imagine -- it's like the periodic table," Cepak said.

Like many companies, Brohm Mining did post a bond to cover cleanup. South Dakota has that money now -- $5.6 million, or roughly one-eighth of the expected cleanup cost. South Dakota cannot afford to pay the rest, so at Janklow's request the federal Superfund program will take over.

That means all American taxpayers will share the burden.

 

[Sako7STW]

Matt, Am I talking about Asbestos in mines???? YOU ASS!! no I am talking about drilling oil wells. Where did I ever talk about mines? The types of mines we have here for the most part are not strip mines. when it comes to these wells most of the damage we see is new roads. Then when they are done we see a capped off pipe sticking up and grass all around. Yep thats pretty dang bad I guess. I can sypathise with your issues with the mines, that sounds terrible and I am glad I do not have those issues near me.

1 pointer, Yep you can have a slice of the cake, it's a 8 layer, chocolate cake with mouse and a chocolate ganache icing. Hell you can have some of the Pralines-n-cream ice cream I have to go with it too LOL.

Here is some proof that the rigs are not that bad, this all took place not far from many rigs!
http://www.hunttalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18703

 

[MattK]

Sako- My analogy consisted of a person working in an asbestos mine next to your house. If you said you would not like it to happen, are you not saying "who cares about the person making a living off the asbestos mine?" This is an extreme example but really what is the limit?

You're giving a reason to have the oil wells as your family needs money. Well, the asbestos miner needs money too. You claim that everything will go back to normal and they do a really good clean up. My experiences tell me this isn't the case, not if deer and elk avoid the roads and oil rigs. The original topic is saying this is the case. Therefore, not everything is normal.

I am just not willing to be giving up public lands for gas and oil exploration. If you want to put a dozen earth pounders on your property and make a million, Go for it. Just stop using public lands and justifying it with your families income. Then turning around and saying I'm an ass for not wanting to see a bunch of roads and oil wells in the areas I like to recreate.

I figure there's plenty of private land that they can explore on (if that owner allows it). I wouldn't even mind them putting oil and gas lines in if they did it with the best technology and least intrusive ways.

 

[BuzzH]

Sako,

You have a lot to learn on this issue.

For starters, theres huge differences in security needs for mule deer VS. pronghorns VS elk VS etc. etc. etc. Read the article again.

Secondly, the oil and gas industry IS NOT using the least intrusive ways to extract oil and gas. Thats why many enviro. groups are currently suing over CBM development in Wyoming...check the Casper Star Tribune for the most recent news.

I dont think anyone is against developing resources, just not at the expense of lots of critical habitat for big-game, small game, endangered species, non-game species, etc. etc. etc. etc.

A very lop-sided proportion of Federal Lands are open to resource development, I dont see any good reason to mess with critical wildlife habitat, in particular those "useless" sagebrush types you described...absolutely some of the best mule deer winter range in Wyoming is in these "worthless" areas.

I dont think you're giving wildlife and their needs much thought, maybe you should. The amount of habitat we've already lost to development in the lower 48 is staggering, I'm convinced that we've "compromised" ourselves into a position where we cant afford to lose much more without some serious long-term (at best)and permanent (at worst) damage to wildlife. The amount of room we have to compromise is used up.

Congrats on the pronghorn, I'll give you some advice though, they're much easier to "stalk" on foot than they are in a vehicle...

 

[1_pointer]

Sako- Thanks for that. Having a mouth full of cake kept me from saying something that would make you not like me!

I'm not worried about the capped off pipe, but the roads. That's where the damage comes from. The animals can't get away from them and people won't stay on them.

 

[Sako7STW]

It's kind of funny, the people on here with maybe you could say the exception of Buzz doesnt even live here. I was born and raised right here! I grew up in the coutry were talking about, I know it like the back of my hand. Heck my brother is out in it everyday doing his job and earning his living and I still know it better than he does. The thing about the roads is, I understand what your saying, but most of them were there well before this ever started. There probably isnt one square mile of this country that I havent been on at one time or another that wasnt on roads that werent already there. Now a few more are improved that were maybe 2-trackers but they were still there.

Buzz you say I dont know what is in the territory for animals and how they are effected? Come on over for a weekend. What would you like to see? Trophy bull Elk, maybe a booner buck muley, or a flock of Sage chickens perhaps, maybe a dozen or so buck antelope that would make Jim Zumbo drool besides the ones that wouldnt??? I could do that all within a few miles of atleast one rig if not more. Now I am not saying nor did I ever say that the rigs, roads to the rigs ect dont damage habitat and wildlife. Do you guys forget who sat at a dinner table with the Governer of Wyoming argueing the very fact you guys are??? Do you forget who it was that actually fought to keep them at a pace of only 10% they wanted to and won??? I didnt just sit there and flap my jaws on a computer. Your welcome!

The areas were talking about here are huge, bigger than 15 of the states and bigger than a few of them put together. The impact has not been what you guys are making it out to be. I know this because I spent my whole life in it and just this year an entire month covering it and I saw just as much this year as I did in years past as far as animals go. Heck I got videos to prove it if you would like. I can already hear your responses, well enjoy it now while it last because they are going to ruin it all. Get real, they get done in one area and they move on. The area they were in starts its rejuvination with a little help and naturaly on its own. Thats how nature works. You all say how much development hurts the deer. LMAO hell the biggest deer population I know of are right in the cities around here. I think they adapt just fine. Look at the whitetails back east, there are so many they have to have in city limits archery hunts because they are becomeing pests in some instances, yep they didnt adapt either. I am just saying its not as bad as you guys are making it out to be, I know, I live here, remember???

Ohhh and Matt, its not just my family, its about all the families here.

Really were having our cake and eating it too. People have jobs, money is being made, and there is progress. Yet I still can go out and hunt and fish to my liking, leave the car running when I go into the store, ect. yep its pretty bad alright!

 

[Sako7STW]

Sako,

Congrats on the pronghorn, I'll give you some advice though, they're much easier to "stalk" on foot than they are in a vehicle...

LMFAO, Ya think?? You can go out and hike your ass off for miles and miles and not see a goat, good luck to ya. I will go out, find a good vantage point, let my spotting scope and my eyes do the walking for me. Then I will DRIVE my truck on a ROAD, please God forgive me, and when I get to the right spot I will get out of the truck, use my size 13 boots and hike, or maybe even crawl through the sage brush and try to get as close to my prey as I can. Yep I took some long shots but I also know my shooting ability, what I did not know was I changed the way I was doing my loads and it had a much greater effect than I ever thought possible. Once I realised this, made the proper adjustments and it took one shot, 402 yards, dead goat, meat in the freezer.

 

[Nemont]

This is a little old but shows the trouble with reclamation bonds and what happens in the future. I thought is was relevant to this thread. The mining company held $30 million in bonds and yet that is all spend and the State has to come up with at least $20 million more.

Montana wrestles with low grade gold mines

By JENNIFER McKEE



HELENA -- When the now-bankrupt Zortman and Landusky cyanide heap leach gold mines opened in the 1970s, the best minds in science and industry thought cleaning up after them would be a simple affair: Wash off the cyanide, deal with the pit and be done.

But they were wrong, said Warren McCullough, chief of the Department of Environmental Quality's Environmental Management Bureau.

What happened next depends on your point of view and is the central issue in the debate over Initiative 147, an effort to repeal the state's ban on cyanide leach mining. Either we spent years learning the realities of the cleanup and its costs and are now better able to properly run such mines today. Or we have learned that these mines are simply too dangerous, too expensive and too often left to government to clean up to allow any more to open.

But just what is open pit cyanide leach mining, the technology at the heart of the debate?

In a nutshell: gold ore is mined in open pits and cyanide is used to leach the gold from the ore in lined piles called heaps. The technology allows mines to go after low grade gold ore.

According to conversations with miners, engineers and state regulators, cyanide has been used to extract gold from ore more than 100 years. Gold dissolves in cyanide, like Alka-Seltzer in water, and the process to extract it with cyanide is relatively simple: Once mined, the ore is typically ground in massive machines to better expose the gold particles. Then, a cyanide solution is trickled over it. The solution is then captured and processed to extract precious metals.

Cyanide, although poisonous, will readily evaporate in rivers and lakes, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. It is present in small amounts in a host of unlikely places, like lima beans or almonds. But it is a potent killer -- Adolf Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun, both killed themselves by crushing cyanide capsules in their mouths. (Hitler hastened his death by also shooting himself in the head.)

In mining, cyanide spills can cause fish kills and other problems, most recently at a river in Ghana last week downstream from a gold mine.

While cyanide in mining is nothing new, using heap leaching to process gold didn't come along until the 1970s, McCullough said, when the first such mine was opened in Nevada. The process opened up the door to mining ore previously considered marginal at best because it allows miners to extract tiny pieces of gold widely diffused through much larger lower grade ore bodies.

Among the first major cyanide leach mines in the country was Montana's own Zortman and Landusky mines near Malta which opened in 1979. Owned by the now-bankrupt Pegasus Gold, the Zortman and Landusky mines grew from 529 acres in the late 1970s to 1,215 acres by the time they closed in the late 1990s, information from the federal Bureau of Land Management shows.

Mining in that corner of the Little Rocky Mountains was nothing new, according to the BLM. Prospectors first started digging around the area in the 1880s and in 1895, a mineral rich chunk of mountains was bought from the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre tribes of the Fort Belknap Reservation -- which surrounds the mining district on three sides.

In 1992, regulators found at the site one of most thorny problems caused by open pit mines: acid rock drainage, BLM information shows. Acid rock drainage occurs when certain rocks form sulfuric acid when exposed to oxygen and water. The acid leaches other minerals from surrounding rock.

Pegasus Gold filed for bankruptcy in 1998.

Most of the company's mines were closed and left to either the state or federal government to clean up. A few properties, including the Montana Tunnels gold mine in Jefferson City and the Diamond Hill mine near Townsend went to a new company called Apollo Gold.

Even back in the 1970s, companies had to post a reclamation bond before they could start mining, said Wayne Jepson, a DEQ hydrologist. A reclamation bond is something like a multi-million dollar damage deposit mining companies pay that is used to clean up defunct mines should the company fold or be unable to cleanup the mind themselves.

But in the case of Zortman and Landusky -- and a lot of other defunct gold mines -- the reclamation bonds weren't large enough to clean up everything, McCullough said.

The state -- which hired an engineering firm to do the work -- has spent most of the $30 million reclamation bond to make the site look more natural, a process which is mostly complete, said Jepson. The once stark, terraced pits and giant mounds of mine waste at Zortman and Landusky have been largely re-contoured and planted with a mix of native and other grasses. The mountains may never look as they did before the mines opened, he said, but green grasses are now coming in all over the newly-rounded hillsides.

The problem is the water.

Water running off the site is contaminated and will have to be treated forever, Jepson said. Right now, two water treatment facilities clean water running down the creeks draining off of both mines. The technology is relatively simple and inexpensive, but there isn't money left in the old Pegasus reclamation bond to pay for perpetual water treatment.

The state has enough money to treat the water for another thirteen years, Jepson said. But he estimated the state needs an extra $20 million invested today to pay for the perpetual water treatment necessary.

 

[mtmiller]

You mean this Landusky? At least part of it anyway. ;-)

 

[Nemont]

mtmiller,
Yeah but the part where the mountain was moved. It can be seen the best from bwy 191 headed north. The best view of the mine is on the Zortman side about at the DY juntion, looking north.

Nemont

Also I am going to plagarize that picture to send to all the idiots who think eastern Montana is the "flatlands".

 

[MattK]

I believe in the article it said one of the biggest problems was water quality. Nice picture of the ram though.

 

[mtmiller]

Yeah, this picture was taken about 15 miles SE of DY. I just thought it interesting that I took this picture on Saturday.

Alright, back to the debate. Sorry, my bad. haha....