Last updated on 2018-07-01
Unless Donald Trump goes all Canadian Bacon and seizes all Canadian assets in our country, Canadian gold mining company Agnico Eagle Mines is going to be digging around the dangerously polluted Gilt Edge Mine site that its fellow Canadians Brohm Mining abandoned in bankruptcy in 1999. They’re going to be looking around for gold. But they’re not mining, they assured the Lawrence County Commission this week. They’re absolutely not mining:
Greg Loptien, U.S. exploration manager with Agnico Eagle Mines, said right now, the company has an agreement, signed May 9, with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to gather information to gain a better understanding of environmental site conditions. No mining activity is authorized under the agreement.
Agnico Eagle will perform approximately $1.5 million in remedial investigative work. All work plans have been developed in cooperation with and approved by the EPA and DENR, according to the agreement. The work will take around two years to complete. Agnico Eagle will also analyze for gold and other metal content in the same remedial boreholes and geochemical core samples to analyze gold content [Jaci Conrad Pearson, “No New Mining Activities at Gilt Edge Mine for Time Being,” Black Hills Pioneer, 2018.06.14].
Agnico can avoid charges of word games. Mining means extracting the gold. If while Agnico pokes around measuring cadmium pollution for the EPA they just happen to notice there’s some gold worth recovering on the Superfund site, well, that’s just ancillary prospecting.
Stock in Agnico Eagle Mines lost about 27% of its value from its recent peak in late January to the end of February, the period during which the EPA posted the draft agreement for Agnico’s work at the Gilt Edge Mine. The EPA took public comment through March, from which time Agnico stock has steadily recovered about two-thirds of that loss.
In response to that public comment, the EPA assures us that no mining can take place without a whole separate mining permit application process. The EPA also assures us that it remains committed to the 2012 Gilt Edge Community Involvement Plan, that it will oversee Agnico’s work to ensure compliance, and that “Neither the State of South Dakota nor the EPA have secret agreements with Agnico.”
to gain a better understanding of environmental site conditions.
Like they give a #### about the environment. This info is fed back to CFO and he/she figures out ways to eliminate environmental protections to increase profits. And the dupes at the state level are happy to oblige- for economic activity, doncha know.
Agnico paid a $30 million to “clean up” the Gilt Edge Superfund Site? Right. That $30 million is a bribe to both EPA and the SDDENR. That bribe paid today buys favorable treatment for all permits. It’s a done deal. No need for permits or hearings, because money talks to our elected officials, and whatever citizens have to say can’t out shout that $30 million. This is corruption far in excess of anything every done in SD.
Pirner, Jackley and Pruitt should all be locked up.
It sure is a bribe, Mr Pay. No question. This state and its corruption is disgusting.
And although this doesn’t have anything to do with Gilt Edge — this decision (below) further emboldens the likes of Agnico (et al) because they know that South Dakota is a soft target when it comes to oversight. In South Dakota, it is all about private gain/ public loss. This decision from the SD supreme court reference Keystone XL
http://listen.sdpb.org/post/sd-supreme-court-no-jurisdiction-over-keystone-xl-certification
If there was going to be a bribe paid and this project was going to happen, you kind of wonder why the Trump administration didn’t insist on “making America great again” by offering this deal to an American gold mining company.
I’ll be interested in “following the money.” I’m sure if Jackley had won the nomination, some money would have ended up there. We’ll see which politicians have the balls or ovaries to simply nix the deal in a creative way. A state law that would preclude a company from mining or obtaining a permit to mine if that company is participating in a Superfund cleanup would be a way around this corruption. If I were in South Dakota, I would be drafting the initiative now.
If the courts have no standing under state law, how do they become the final arbiter of legality and constitutionality in the state?
Do any other rulings they made have any standing?
Today, the State of South Dakota is trying to force a sale from the Forest Service so Republicans can lease or sell it to Canada-based Agnico Eagle and its CEO, Ammar Al-Joundi to further despoil the site in the sacred Black Hills. The US House has passed the Gilt Edge Mine Conveyance Act.
Thanks, Mr. Kurtz, I can’t keep up with all the corruption in South Dakota and DC anymore. The Gilt Edge Mine Conveyance Act is just more giveaways of our public lands to foreign miners. It’s the 1990s all over again. This won’t end well. The Superfund site will itself become a Superfund site. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and getting the same result. This country is insane to do this.
Indeed, Mr. Pay. Republicans simply won’t be happy until the entire Black Hills is one big pile of waste rock.