From the diaries by Erick
Couer, a Canadian mining firm – no American firm is much interested in trying to do business in Alaska – just prevailed today before the USSC in its appeal of the 9th Circuit’s order stopping work on the Kensington Mine, a gold prospect, near Juneau. This project is a graphic demonstration of the bad faith exhibited by various environmental groups in dealing with mine permitting. Couer worked with the Greenies and secured what was thought to be an agreement that its “dry-stack” tailings disposal scheme. Of course, as soon as Couer began permitting and development, the Greenies just used another guise to sue to stop the project. The umbrella group that is funded by a regular who’s who of greenie groups is called the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, SEACC. Vehicles with stickers in their window showing a little boy urinating on the letters SEACC are fairly common even in this lefty town.
What went to the USSC was the question of whether the rock taken out of the mine and from which ore is extracted is “fill” to be regulated by the Corps of Engineers or a pollutant to be regulated by the EPA. The court concluded that since is was the same stuff that came out of the ground that was being put back in and onto the ground, it was fill rather than pollution so, reversing the 9th Soviet, a 6-3 Court re-instated the Corps’ permit.
For those of you who don’t live in mining areas, this is how wierd it gets: the very stuff taken out of the ground when put back in is held to be a pollutant by the EPA. Interestingly, Couer played the politics of the Democrat/Greenie world pretty hardball; Alaska Natives are a pretty solidly Democrat constituency. Couer worked with the Native Corps to mount most of their recruitment in the Native villages, most of which suffer chronically high unemployment. Consequently, the Ds, usually opposed to anything like a mine in order to satisfy their greenie friends had to choose who they would alienate – good move. Now we can celebrate for a few days until the envirowhackos think up a new cause of action or get some Democrat in DC to outlaw the mine without regard to the USSC.
Moe Lane
Steve Maley
Dan McLaughlin
Neil Stevens
Daniel Horowitz
Same thing happens in oil & gas
Steve Maley (Diary) Monday, June 22nd at 7:46PM EST (link)Lots & lots of saltwater are sometimes produced. In many cases you can’t shut it off without shutting off the oil & gas too. It actually helps the recovery of oil.
But once it comes to the surface, some want to consider it a “pollutant”. Right now, in LA, it’s regulated by the State Office of Injection & Mining, but one of these days the EPA will have to expand its regulatory umbrella.
In the guise of protecting groundwater, Henry Waxman wants to regulate hydraulic fracturing fluids, which may not ever come within 5000 feet (vertically) of groundwater sources.
The EPA even regulates the rainwater runoff from drilling rigs & platforms.
John Q. Public picks up the tab for a level of environmental “pristineness” that is absolutely impossible to measure and matters not a whit to anybody except those who have made harassing corporations their lives’ work.
The blogger formerly known as ‘Vladimir’.
Interesting decisions by the court today
bk (Diary) Monday, June 22nd at 8:06PM EST (link)This one was 6-3, with Kennedy writing the opinion and Breyer joining he and the conservatives. The crazier 6-3 split was in the school case, where the three dissenters were Souter, Scalia, and Thomas!
There has to be...
DerKrieger (Diary) Monday, June 22nd at 8:26PM EST (link)a way to punish these damn eco-Marxists. They luxuriate in the benefits of a modern, industrial society and yet at every turn they try to kill it.
Can they be banished for a a few months in the wilderness with nothing but the clothes on their backs? It’s absolutely insane that a few well funded agitators can so disrupt our economy.
“In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” – Thomas Jefferson
“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” – James Madison
Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience.” — John Locke, 1690
Unfortunately, they already do
Return to Revolution (Diary) Monday, June 22nd at 8:45PM EST (link)and it still isn’t stopping them. And these guys don’t even have the clothes on their backs.
http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2009/06/forests_crawl_w.html#trackbacks
Out of hand Constitutional fetishist
Next Republican President....
JLenardDetroit (Diary) Monday, June 22nd at 8:38PM EST (link)Needs to go AROUND CONGRESS: Militarized Oil Drilling – using the Military to Drill (Natl. Defense Strategic issue) in AK…. PERIOD! SIMPLE! Then all “general” Oil production goes straight to the Consumer side of things while the Military pulls its own Oil and Reserves out of the ground. And if we have to pay Paluu another couple of hundred Million to build a refinery to send it to for processing, so be it! They can put the former GITMO detainees they will pile up on to work there.
And yes, no sarcasm tag – I’m serious.
Regards from NoMoTown (the MOTORlessCITY)
“Liberals, looking to do for? America what they’ve done for? Detroit! which is DESTROY IT!”
“I think, therefore I am Conservative”
“Conservative by choice, Republican by necessity”
“You can lead a Liberal to the Truth/Facts, but you cannot make them THINK!”
“Romney [No, not my first choice] does NOT have a MORMON problem. He has a, far too many Americans; these days; are MORONS problem!”
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I want “O” to FAIL (here, here, & whole Diary (Ofail) here, is why)
“The first Liberal was Satan” – a Rush caller (other Quotes)
3 million lakes in Alaska
Josh Painter (Diary) Monday, June 22nd at 10:08PM EST (link)and the watermelons (green on the outside, pink on the inside) won’t allow even one of them to be used for something that will provide 370 jobs and pump some money into local economies..
- JP
“An armed society is a polite society” – Robert A. Heinlein, “Beyond This Horizon” (1942)
May I ask....?
NeoKong (Diary) Monday, June 22nd at 11:58PM EST (link)I once saw something on T.V. about gold mining. They would take the rubble and spread it out over acres and acres and soak it in cyanide and other chemicals to extract the precious metals.
Is this what they want to return into the ground…?
Is this chemically processed mine waste?
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You need to distinguish ...
skorrent1 (Diary) Tuesday, June 23rd at 10:22AM EST (link)Between “dry tailings”, the non-ore-bearing overburden that must be removed to get to the ore, and the ore itself, which is treated in many ways to extract the goodies. EPA should be interested in the treatment and disposal of the ore waste, but the other tailings can go back in the hole as pristine as they came out.
Miner corrections?
GarWil Wednesday, June 24th at 4:53AM EST (link)Is this really a Canadian company? I was under the impression that it was Coeur, not Couer, short for an American mining company based at Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho.
(Coeur d’ Alene Mines)
I just so happen to be from Coeur d’ Alene, so it caught my eye. I could be wrong. I guess they could have a Canadian division, or something.
http://tinyurl.com/nam4cj
Mining ain't my thing,
Achance (Diary) Wednesday, June 24th at 5:13AM EST (link)so I’m just reporting what I digested from local news. It seems they have a whole bunch of subsidiaries depending on what part of the World they’re trying to work in. If you can correct anything, feel free. Bottom line, is the Greenies got beat, at least for a while.
In Vino Veritas