Montana tribes oppose return to cyanide mining

Global warming may spawn more super-storms

The UK’s new rubbish dump: China

Montana tribes oppose return to cyanide mining

By Brenda Norrell

Fort Belknap, Montana, Sept. 14— While the Bush administration pressed for a record number of oil and gas leases in the West, American Indians in Montana opposed new legislation that would permit mining companies to return to cyanide leach gold mining.

Montana Rep. Jonathan Windy Boy, D-Box Elder, said American Indians have a sacred responsibility to protect nature and points out the water and soil has already been poisoned by cyanide leach mining in Montana.

“It is the fight that we have to do to protect nature, what was left here for us. We don’t own anything; it is not our place to tear up what does not belong to us.

“We don’t even own our lives; we are here only on borrowed time. It is up to us as humans to protect what was put here for us to protect,” Windy Boy told Indian Country Today.

Windy Boy, Rocky Boy Chippewa-Cree tribal councilman, opposes new legislation, Initiative 147, which would repeal Montana’s ban on cyanide leach gold and silver mining, if passed by voters in November.

Although the new legislation adds some environmental protections, tribal members say it is not enough.

Windy Boy pointed out that Zortman-Landusky Gold Mines declared bankruptcy, leaving behind poisoned streams for Montana tribes and an enormous clean-up bill for Montana taxpayers.

Zortman-Landusky Gold Mines were operated by Pegasus Gold Corporation in the Little Rocky Mountains, at the southeast end of the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre Fort Belknap Reservation.

Catherine Halver, 74-year-old Gros Ventre tribal member in Lodgepole, helped lead the fight to halt cyanide leach mining, which destroyed burial grounds and poisoned streams.

“Most of our water is contaminated and will be for years and years to come because of the way they were mining,” said Halver, vice-chairman of the local Native grassroots group Island Mountain Protectors.

Spirit Mountain was destroyed before the mining operations of Zortman-Landusky Gold Mines were halted.

“A lot of our ancestors in the past used this mountain for vision quests and prayers. That was a very sacred mountain to our people. Now you go up there and it is just a little pile of rubble.

“It really affects the old people; a lot of our burial sites were destroyed. There were people buried all over that mountain. They were just digging up the dead.”

Halver lives 15 miles from the mine sites and cyanide waters flow by, down Little Warm Creek, through her property. She had the water tested and cyanide was found years ago; now it is too expensive to have the test performed again. “The mine always said it would come out and test it and they never did.”

Urging voters to oppose I-147, she said, “Do not bring it in! We have got contaminated water running into our reservation every day. We have to live with all this destruction. Everything needs water.

“Who is stuck with all this contamination? It is the Native Americans. It has affected our Native roots we use for medicine.” Along with the medicine roots, she said tribal members wonder how much cyanide is in their sage and chokecherries. “We don’t know if it contaminated our berries and no one is helping us find out.

“It has affected our way of living, our soil, the water, everything. The list goes on and on of the destruction. It will never in our lifetimes be cleaned up. The mining companies will say they are going to reclaim it, they claim there are new processes with new technology that they will use, but they are not going to use those, because they are too expensive.”

The cyanide spills and groundwater contamination from acid mine drainage from the Zortman-Landusky were documented. In 1982, 780 gallons of cyanide-tainted solution leaked from a containment pond when a section of piping used in the mine’s cyanide sprinkling system ruptured and released 52,000 gallons of cyanide solution onto lands and into creeks. There were at least eight other cyanide spills.

Julie King, Assiniboine of Fort Belknap, remembered playing in those same mountains as a child in north central Montana. She said the waters no longer flow the way they did where the family fished when she was a child. Now, they have been diverted.

Opposing passage of I-147, she said her concern is the contamination of the groundwater. King said American Indians and other residents are always promised reclamation after mining, but there is no way to reclaim lost living creatures.

Pegasus’ Zortman-Landusky Gold Mines were sued under the Clean Water Act and faced a $36 million clean-up settlement in 1996. The company declared bankruptcy in 1998.

Windy Boy said Zortman-Landusky made more than $250 billion before declaring bankruptcy. Now, the cost of cyanide leach mining cleanup is projected to be $60 million and required into perpetuity.

“The state has determined that water treatment will be required forever.” Further, he said very few tribal members in Montana ever benefited from the jobs, often claimed in publicity to support the push for new mining.

Tribal members in Montana say the devastation is not worth it. During cyanide leach mining, a cyanide solution is trickled over crushed rock. After the gold dissolves into the cyanide, it is recaptured and processed to extract the metal.

The new legislation, I-147 to overturn Montana’s ban on cyanide leach gold mining, is backed by the mining industry, which raised more than $1 million to press for passage. Of $1,057,805, 97 percent came from cash and in-kind contributions from Canyon Resources Corporation of Golden, Colo., which has joined forces with a Montana mining group.

“The people of Montana have made it abundantly clear that they want the opportunity to vote on I-147,” said Tammy Johnson, campaign manager for Miners, Merchants and Montanans for Jobs and Economic Opportunity.

Windy Boy, however, urges American Indians to get out and vote against I-147 in Montana, pointing out that their vote can make a difference. “The Native vote has made a big difference in a number of key races.”

Now, with drilling and mining leases at a record high, the last pristine wildernesses of the West are at risk.

Windy Boy points out waterways in the West are already contaminated with high levels of PCBs and mercury.

Fish in many areas have been found unsafe for human consumption and PH levels in water near cyanide leach mines are the equivalent of battery acid.

“Montana is the last of the Western frontier,” Windy Boy said, pointing out the purity of the water in the region’s aquifer.

“This water is the purest in the world. If the aquifer becomes polluted, we might as well kiss our human existence goodbye.”

Source: Indian Country Today

Global warming may spawn more super-storms

By Stephen Leahy

Brooklin, Canada, Sept. 20 (IPS)— Hurricane Ivan, the incredibly powerful storm that killed at least 120 people in the Caribbean and southern United States, may be a harbinger of the Earth’s hotter future, say experts.

“As the world warms, we expect more and more intense tropical hurricanes and cyclones,” said James McCarthy, a professor of biological oceanography at Harvard University.

Large parts of the world’s oceans are approaching 81 degrees Fahrenheit or warmer during the summer, greatly increasing the odds of major storms, McCarthy told IPS.

When water reaches such temperatures, more of it evaporates, priming hurricane or cyclone formation. Once born, a hurricane needs only warm water to build and maintain its strength and intensity.

Over the last 100 years, the Earth has warmed by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the 2001 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international scientific body that studies the relationship between human activity and global warming.

The IPCC report was based on research by more than 2,500 scientists from about 100 countries who determined that emissions of gases such as carbon dioxide act as a blanket that prevents much of the sun’s energy from dissipating into space.

Much of the extra energy from this “greenhouse effect” is being absorbed by the oceans.

The “proof” that the oceans are warming is the fact that global sea levels have rizen 1 inch in the past 10 years, said Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

Water expands when heated, and sea levels are expected to continue rising by as much as 18 inches by 2100.

While the warming of the oceans is not uniform — the North Pacific and North Atlantic are a bit cooler — the hurricane-producing mid-Atlantic and Caribbean oceans have warmed significantly.

“Global warming is creating conditions that are more favorable for hurricanes to develop and be more severe,” said Trenberth.

Will that result in more Category 4 or 5 storms like Ivan?

“That’s the logical conclusion, although it may be somewhat controversial,” he said.

Before it struck Cuba a glancing blow, Ivan was a Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale, which rates hurricanes from 1 to 5 according to wind speeds and destructive potential. Category 5 hurricanes have winds that blow continuously above 160 miles per hour an hour. Ivan’s gusts topped 200 miles per hour an hour at times, making it the sixth most powerful hurricane on record for the Atlantic Basin.

Hurricane Ivan’s 12-day rampage killed 70 people in the Caribbean and 50 in the United States. It will be some time before the full extent of the damage is known, but some estimates put it at 10 billion dollars for the United States alone.

As emissions of greenhouse gases continue to trap more and more of the sun’s energy, that energy has to be dissipated, resulting in stronger storms, more intense precipitation and higher winds, says McMcarthy.

However, the statistical record of hurricanes hitting the US shows a decrease in the past 50 years.

Most hurricanes do not strike land, McCarthy points out, and up until the past 25 years, with the advent of satellite tracking, there was scant data on the storms.

But there is abundant evidence of an unprecedented number of severe weather events in the past decade, McCarthy says. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch killed nearly 20,000 people in Central America, and more than 4,000 people died during disastrous flooding in China. Bangladesh suffered some of its worst floods ever the following year, as did Venezuela. Europe was hit with record floods in 2002, and then a record heat wave in 2003.

More recently, Brazil was struck by the first-ever recorded hurricane in the South Atlantic last March.

“Weather records are being set all the time now. We’re in an era of unprecedented extreme weather events,” McCarthy said.

Historical weather patterns are becoming less useful for predicting the future conditions because global warming is changing ocean and atmospheric conditions.

“In 30 to 50 years’ time, the Earth’s weather generating system will be entirely different,” he predicted.

What hasn’t changed in the United States is the lack of concern about climate change, said Ross Gelbspan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of two books on global warming, most recently one titled: Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil And Coal, Journalists and Activists Are Fueling the Climate Crisis — And What We Can Do to Avert Disaster.

Sharp reductions of emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide on the order of 70 percent are urgently needed to minimize the impacts, Gelbspan said.

But despite the recent destructive series of hurricanes and tornadoes, global warming is off the radar screen of the US presidential election campaign, he said.

Gelbspan is not surprized at this, given the power and influence of the fossil fuel lobby in Washington, which he outlines in great detail in his book.

“America’s oil and coal industries receive more than $20 billion a year in subsidies,” he said. “Imagine what could be done if that money was invested in green energy.”