I like the in-depth reporting South Dakota News Watch is offering, but in their latest report, Bart Pfankuch appears to overstate what Canadian gold miners Agnico Eagle Mines plans to do at the Gilt Edge Superfund site in the northern Black Hills:
A Canadian gold mining company has agreed to help clean up South Dakota’s most contaminated industrial site. The agreement is part of a trend of public-private partnerships that could expedite remediation of America’s polluted lands and waterways.
Agnico Eagle Mines of Toronto has entered into an agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources to perform $1.5 million of pollution testing at the contaminated Gilt Edge gold mine in the Northern Black Hills. The mine is by far the largest and most contaminated of the two EPA Superfund sites in South Dakota [Bart Pfankuch, “New Public-Private Plan Could Aid Polluted Black Hills Gold Mine,” South Dakota News Watch, 2018.06.27].
If I understand Agnico’s contract correctly, they’re not going to clean up anything. They’re going to look around for gold, and while they’re at it, they’ll keep an eye out for cadmium pollution. “We are not environmental specialists,” Agnico Eagle told Seth Tupper in March.
The situation is more like this: you throw a party, and Bruce and his cousin Agnes come over. Bob spills wine all over your carpet and bolts. Agnes hangs out by the hors d’oeuvres and says, “Hey, look, over there—that’s where Bob spilled his wine.” In my party-recovery experience, Agnes isn’t quite helping clean up. And the only way Agnes hints that she might help clean up is if we sell her our house so she can flip it and make some money.
That’s essentially what DENR scientist Mark Lawrensen says the state and the EPA are hoping for:
“The opportunity is that the private company could come in and take over the site and provide a financial resource to help with the clean-up and the future operations and maintenance at the site,” Lawrensen said. “If they were to continue and take over the mine site, they would probably clean up the site at a quicker pace than is being done” [Pfankuch, 2018.06.27].
Thanks, Agnes.
We are not environmental specialists, Drumpfspeak for industrial polluters?
I’m not clear on this. Is Agnico paying the government $1.5 million, or is the government paying Agnico $1.5 million?
I’m not an environmental specialist either, but if the government gives me $1.5 million i’ll subcontract someone to run a few tests. The thing about a $1.5 million payday is that after taxes you have about $1 million left. Which of Scott Pruitt’s friends owns this company?
In July 2017, the federal government released recommendations of the Superfund Task Force created by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt that included a major goal labeled “Encouraging Private Investment” and a recommendation that the government “optimize tools and realign incentives” to push for more third-party investment as a way to speed remediation and reduce government costs.
“EPA recognizes that it should support, where appropriate, innovative approaches to promote third-party investment in cleanup and reuse of contaminated properties consistent with statutory authorities and needs to consider mitigating its retained rights,” the report said.
EPA sounds like it wants to privatize as a way to drive up remediation costs.
This is a complete and total fiasco. Agnico is actually moving to become the first company to resume mining on a superfund site.
If you happen to know that, “mining is a bit dirty,” wait till Trump’s EPA Chairman and this mining company ruin Deadwood and Lead’s water supply in unprecedented ways and turn the population into a cancer cluster.
And wait till no scientists want to work at the Sanford Laboratory because smart people try to avoid getting cancer if at all possible – and wait also for the additional corrosive mining waste in the water to eat away at the water pumps which keep the lab dry and operational.
Oh, you just wait!
Oh yeah, and wait till Gilt Edge mine waste ends up getting more and more concentrated in the White River – transporting the waste further/deeper into South Dakota.
This is all a VERY REAL likelihood – the future appears awful.
The Trump administration believes that resuming the activity that dirtied the environment will help clean up the environment. Adam, if you are claiming that mining is a dirty activity rather than an activity that leaves the environment cleaner well … that’s just fake news. For everybody else out there, who are you going to believe? Trump and Pruitt, or some anonymous fake news purveyor?
I know what the Trump admin is thinking and claiming, and it is an unprecedentedly poor take on reality.
You have got to be a God damn idiot to think mining never pollutes. Which middle of nowhere town do you live in?
Adam, Rohr was being facetious. And quite entertaining at it. Remember Raygun claiming trees caused acid rain?
He gets into character very well – LOL – with a very tailored super-plausible position. I thought I remembered a real actual brain behind that name!
Lately, I’ve just been very pissy.
This Gult Edge mine thing is super-ultra terrible, and stupid. It’s so very effing stupid!
Adam, not to be to pedantic but don’t you mean the Cheyenne River carrying mine waste deeper into SD? The Black Hills are entirely within the watershed of the Cheyenne River. The White River is generally drains the Badlands and receives no Black Hills runoff since it is outflanked on the west by the Cheyenne River.
As I understand it, the water they currently pump out of the mining shaft, which the Sanford Lab is located in, comes in contact with water already polluted by (by having cane in contact with) Gilt Edge superfund site water, and once it has been diluted to some degree, it then gets deposited into the White River.
I’ll look into that again just to be 110% sure, but I’m pretty darn sure.
It appears I intended to name Whitewood Creek but I cannot quickly find documentation to confirm my first hand recollection of a particular presentation up at Sanford.
No one can keep their story straight because what this really is, underneath all the words, is a bribe. Agnico-Eagle Mines is to deposit $30 million into the cleanup fund. That is all Agnico Eagle Mines is doing, according to the settlement agreement.
Agnico isn’t doing squat on the supposed studies. They admit they don’t have the expertise to do any of the studies. That part is going to be handled by actual real scientists in a completely different company. Thus, in my comments to the EPA, I stated that the only purpose Agnico serves is for the up-front bribe.
Mining companies, generally, have absolutely zero scientific expertise on staff. They depend on consultants. That was true of every mining company in the Black Hills except Homestake. Homestake did have a couple good scientists who were actually very innovative in their approach to cleanup of tainted water. That is the exception. At Gilt Edge there is to be a separate contracted consulting firm that is doing all the studies, and proposing any action to get at the lingering problem of cadmium at Strawberry Creek. Unfortunately, under the Settlement Agreement, that contractor is no longer beholden to finding the best solution to the cadmium issue for the citizens of South Dakota. It is now going to be beholden to Agnico Eagle Mines, who can force the subcontractor to do other things for it, such as explore for gold.
In most such studies the subcontractor would suggest various alternatives for cleanup. One such alternative would be no action. In the Whitewood Creek situation, the effort to cleanup many miles of buried tailings would have disturbed lots of stream bank, and resulted in releasing the buried tailings into the stream and distributing it farther downstream and into the water. Thus, no action was recommended, except for a prohibition against mining in the area of Whitewood Creek.
With Gilt Edge, there might be a similar finding, except that now the subcontractor, EPA and the State of South Dakota has accepted an inducement of the $30 million bribe more or less forcing EPA and the State of South Dakota into a mining project that Agnico wants, and which Agnico has paid for up-front. Can we be sure, with that much pressure on the subcontractor that anything coming out of their study can be believed? The answer is no. Hasn’t EPA and State of South Dakota regulators, and the Office of the AG already been so compromised that they now are not regulators and enforcers of the law, but active participants and financial puppets of Agnico Eagle Mines? The answer is yes.
There is now nothing standing between Agnico Eagle Mines and continuing dangerous mining at Gilt Edge than an honest DENR, an honest EPA and an honest Attorney General, none of which are currently in place. They have accepted a bribe, and are now corrupted. Maybe this deal can be undone. It would take the replacement of the current EPA, state regulators and AG with uncorrupt people more interested in cleaning up the problems than engaging in corrupt activity that benefits a Canadian mining company.
And, yeah, the Pfankuch article really was a puff piece, entirely worthless as investigative journalism. You have to wonder who paid for that. It doesn’t bode well for South Dakota News Watch.
For $25, one can camp this week at down at Bunkerville, where tours of the prepper-bunkers can be had. They only cost $25K and then you have a place to be safe from everything, when it happens. I am looked at options to outfit mine with a lazy boy and a big TV.
Corey’s post, right here, and Donald’s comments embody why I simply refuse to consume local news – because the local news teaches us nothing about anything. They omit so much fact that… OMG… I’m gonna say it… they may as well be ‘Fake’ News.
They don’t dig into what’s going on, they just create 5-10 sentences per story which they think will play well out in Radical-Middle-of-Nowhere-ville. Isolationsits (their customer base) don’t give a rat’s ass about the environment and you can’t teach them to care either.
Working and living in a radical rural careless state is no excuse for our lazy-assed journalists.
On hydrogeography—check the DENR watershed map for verification of Nick’s statement. Without some human intervention (trucks? pipeline?), any water trickling out of the Black Hills eventually ends up in the Cheyenne River… and then flows past Pierre. Whitewood Creek flows into the Belle Fourche, which joins the Cheyenne ten miles northeast of Elm Springs.
On mining—instead of this fake favor Agnico is doing us, how about this: no one gets to mine Gilt Edge until all past pollution is cleaned out?
Howdy Doody Dusty Johnson voted against the omnibus spending bill but wants the Forest Service to give a Superfund site to the State of South Dakota so a Canadian company can mine it?
https://www.blackhillsfox.com/2022/12/23/federal-act-helps-south-dakota-clean-up-gilt-edge-mine/