Cabinet Resource Group concerned with Revett's distortions
To the Editor:
Over the last year, officers of the Revett Mining company have been peddling and advertising the cleanliness and benefits associated with their mineral development enterprise at the Troy Mine and projecting the same for their proposed Rock Creek Project.
The Cabinet Resource Group has no quarrel with the fact Revett brings jobs to the community and employs many honest and hardworking individuals. CRG does have a problem with the manner in which they distort our environmental concerns.
While Revett may be given some benefit of the doubt for the time frame during which they have operated the Troy mine, the public would do well to remember the history of their predecessor the American Smelting & Refining Corporation/ASARCO. Asarco operated across the United States for over 100 years, leaving a legacy of toxic pollution costing billions. It was this legacy and the costly environmental liabilities of cleaning up their mess that resulted in Asarco's economic policy decision to liquidate the company's profitable assets to a junior corporate subsidiary, Grupo Mexico, while the parent company dissolved its liabilities under the protection of bankruptcy court.
CRG alleges that some of those liquidated liabilities are buried in the Troy tailings impoundment and has provided sufficient credible information of their existence. The federal judge dismissed the case without prejudice, which allows CRG to refile it at a later date. That CRG was unable to come up with the monetary resources to comply with a court requirement it bond and dig up the evidence, says more about the ability of corporations and regulatory agencies to wheel and deal and legally weasel out of their obligations, than the non-merits of the allegations.
It also raises the fair question of why it has become the responsibility of private citizens or their associations to monitor and regulate corporate environmental liability affecting the public commons, when there are state and federal agencies established to do so? In this case it's the very same agencies DEQ/EPA that have failed Lincoln County so miserably at the W.R. Grace vermiculite mine, but that's another story, as many residents of Libby well know.
CRG's allegations at Troy were primarily against Asarco, but our lawsuit had to involve Revett because of the split ownership between the property and Operating Permit at the time. CRG met part of the court's legal requirements when it provided the Montana Department of Environmental Quality with an excavation plan for the barrels that were indicated by ground penetrating radar and other technologies, and which Asarco eventually admitted to burying within the tailings impoundment. Montana DEQ has still to get back to CRG with an adequacy review of the excavation plan and a determination as to whether a bond of any size would be required.
However, none of this explanation absolves Revett of some responsibility as they were provided all the same discovery information that CRG was. That information (for a period of 10 years) indicates that tens of thousands of gallons of industrial solvents (some/most hazardous substances) were used at the Troy facility, while records indicate that none of it was ever returned to a hazardous waste facility as required by law. Some records even indicate residual and contaminated materials were deposited in the tailings impoundment.
Revett elected to ignore this information and could have easily hastened to end the controversy by excavating the barrels themselves. Instead, when the mine began to operate, the company chose to further bury the identified area in question under several more feet of tailings material.
It is easy for Revett to quote DEQ, saying that monitoring indicates there have been no impacts to area water quality, because over the life of the Troy mine the water quality monitoring program has been changed three times, and most of the data collected is not interchangeable. In addition, DEQ never required monitoring for mill process reagents or other petroleum based materials. If you don't specifically monitor for something, of course you won't find impacts! That's the same strategy employed at the W.R. Grace mine with worker health, and which resulted in their subsequent lung impairment and deaths.
Revett can say what it wants, but CRG won't allow it to put words in our mouths. Let it be clear, CRG is not against mining. The Cabinet Resource Group is for clean air, clean water, viable wildlife populations and healthy communities. Unfortunately, neither Asarco nor Revett have demonstrated their ability to meet or protect these criteria. Until that day CRG remains vigilant and willing to challenge their designs in the Cabinet Mountains.
Cesar Hernandez
Polson