Will Pottery Shards And Arrow Heads Kill Gold Mine?
Ibapah’s Goshute Indian tribe filed an appeal Tuesday with the BLM that if granted would derail or at least delay the Long Canyon Mine project 30 miles west of Wendover.
Three weeks after hiring began for the Long Canyon Mine and a month after the final government okay to begin the mine’s construction the confederated Goshute Tribe of Ibapah appealed the Bureau of Land Management’s green light of the mine and also move to stop all construction now underway at the mine site until the appeal was heard in federal court.
“We think we have made a compelling case not only for a successful appeal but also for an immediate halt of construction,” said Goshute attorney Paul Echo Hawk.
According to a press release from the Goshutes the appeal asks the courts to reject the BLM finding that there are no significant archaeological finds within the project.
The massive open-pit mine would permanently destroy or remove thousands of Tribal cultural resources.
“The Long Canyon Mine area is a vitally important part of our cultural history and its destruction will erase a critical part of who we are as a people,” said Zelda Johnny, a Tribal Cultural Monitor and Tribal Council Vice-Chair.
The 45-page Tribal appeal is supported by documents showing the BLM refused to share known information about Tribal cultural items in the area and that the BLM insisted the Tribe waive legal claims in order to have access to the BLM’s Tribal information.
“How can our Tribe evaluate the impact of this proposed mine when the BLM would not give us access to the information about our historical ties to the site?” said Tribal Chairwoman Madeline Greymountain.
The administrative appeal is a required first step in the appeal process. “The Tribe is committed to forcing the BLM to follow the law and allow the Tribe a full and fair opportunity to participate in the federal review process before this special place and tribal artifacts are permanently destroyed forever. The BLM has failed its trust responsibility in this case,” said Echo Hawk.
The appeal will win the Goshutes few friends either from whites or fellow native Americans the Western Shoshone.
“The Wells Band of the Western Shoshone believes we can have preservation and economic development at the same time,” said Gracie Begay tribal chairwoman. “We have been meeting with the BLM, Newmont and the Ibapah Goshutes for months now. In fact there is a meeting set for tomorrow (Thursday) in Wendover. We had no idea that they would do this now.”
No side in the coming fight is disputing whether there have been artifacts discovered in the construction process.
The disagreement is whether those finds have been ‘significant’.
While that description can be subjective in terms of archeology there can be no argument that the impact the new mine would have on the local economy would be significant.
Newmont Mining is reportedly receiving a massive response to its hiring notice for the Long Canyon Mine.
In full page ads published this month Newmont mining announced about 200 positions for the new mine located 29 miles west of Wendover and 30 miles east of Wells.
Expected to take two years to build the initial project mine construction is expected to employ between 300 and 500 workers.
Long Canyon Mine project cleared its final hurdle to begin construction with Bureau of Land Management issuing its Record of Decision this April. The decision allows the mining operator to construct and operate a new heap leach gold mine that would consist of one open pit, one heap leach pad, a waste rock storage facility, a tailings storage facility, a natural gas pipeline from the existing Ruby Pipeline, on-site power generation plant and other ancillary facilities. The associated disturbance would be approximately 1, 707 acres of public land, including 480 acres of split estate lands of federal surface and private subsurface.
According to a Newmont press release the first phase of development consists of an open pit mine and heap leach operation with expected gold production of between 100,000 and 150,000 ounces per year over an eight year mine life at an estimated all-in sustaining cost of between $500 and $600 per ounce. At current gold prices, the project is expected to generate around $100 million annually, beginning in 2017.
And while Newmont gears up to begin construction other local businesses are bracing for a worker shortage.
It is a question of math for many particularly unskilled workers. The absolute lowest hourly wages in the mining industry are estimated to be over $20 an hour or about three times the minimum wage offered by casinos or other service industry businesses.