Possible Gold Rush Worries Scientists Threat Of Floods, Lack Of Pollution Controls In Mining Laws Could Pose Risk To Streams

The price of gold is hovering near $400 an ounce, putting a gleam in the eye of placer miners.

It’s also causing nervousness among scientists concerned about fish and flooding in the Coeur d’Alene River Basin.

They fear that the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene and its feeder streams, already hurt by a century of mining and logging, can’t handle an increase in erosion from gold mining.

“Catastrophic” is fish biologist Ed Lider’s response to the prospect of a gold rush.

Lider works for the U.S. Forest Service, which has been asked to approve the largest North Fork placer mining operation in several years.

Many placer mines take up less than half an acre. The Golden Mine, which would be located on the East Fork of Eagle Creek, would disturb about 10 acres of public land over the next three years.

The Golden Mine partners have two more adjoining 20-acre claims that they could dig into later. They’re not alone. There are claims up and down Eagle Creek.

Orville Boller says he and his three partners are waiting to see what federal and state regulators will want of them.

Asked in their permit application to explain how they’ll protect water quality, the miners promise to do “whatever it takes.”

The regulators will want the miners to be a bit more specific. But there are limits to just how demanding they can be under the federal 1872 Mining Law and Idaho’s 1972 Placer and Dredge Mining Protection Act.

The federal law gives the Forest Service little choice but to approve such applications on national forest property. The public can comment on the proposal, but there is no formal appeals process as there is with logging.

“You try to write the tightest specifications you can,” says agency hydrologist Rob Harper. “But it’s pretty hard to cut down all the trees, scrape off the soil and put it all back without having a significant impact.”

The Golden Mine plan calls for logging on the eastern shore, where the miners will use backhoes to dig through some 15 feet of soil and rock to get the gold.

They’ll have to ford the creek with their heavy equipment, or build a bridge to get across.

Three settling ponds will be on the already-mined western shore, part of which is wetland.

Miners must reclaim the land by putting soil back in place, sowing grass and planting trees. The Forest Service requires a bond equal to the cost of reclamation. Boller expects the Golden Mine bond to be between $40,000 and $70,000.

The highest bond the state can require is $1,800 for each affected acre.

“Realistically, $1,800 won’t make a dent in it,” says geologist Jim Brady of the Idaho Department of Lands.

Environmental officials have good reason to worry about the Golden Mine. Last fall, a similar project was washed out by a flash flood, sending huge amounts of sediment into the water.

Brady thought the state had required reasonably tight erosion controls when it approved the Butte Creek mine on private land.

The flood hit on Nov. 30. Basketball-sized rocks tumbled downstream.

“The ground was vibrating, shaking,” recalls Brady. He and a colleague shouted to be heard above the noise.

The torrent wiped out 500 feet of the 12-foot-high berm separating the mining operation from the water.

The creek moved out of its channel.

The mine’s settling ponds filled with rock. The miners will have to start over.

Brady is trying to figure out how to get the stream back in place. He worries that once-reasonable efforts to control erosion won’t withstand the increasing number of flash floods, which he blames on logging in the watershed.

“We’re still shellshocked,” he says. “If they had armored the berm with bigger rock, it might have prevented the problem.”

Bigger rock is hard to find nearby. Hauling it in would be costly. State rules won’t allow Brady to make environmental protection so expensive that miners can’t afford to mine.

Bringing in rock was the last thing on the minds of early-day miners.

They were looking to take out chunks of it. Gold chunks.

Andrew Prichard found them first, panning $42 worth from Prichard Creek in 1881.

At the time, there were no railroads to haul out the lead and silver that later made Shoshone County famous.

“The only thing you could take out of here is something that doesn’t weigh much - and that pretty much boils down to gold,” says mining consultant Fred Brackebusch.

Brackebusch owns one of the Silver Valley’s few underground gold mines. Most mines in these parts were of the placer variety, meaning the gold was exposed by tumbling rocks and not buried in veins.

The big piles of rock near Murray are a legacy of the days when miners tore right into the streambed. State law now requires them to stay 30 feet back from the water.

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game recommends a 70-foot buffer zone for the Golden Mine.

Hundred-foot buffers are required by new Forest Service guidelines to protect native fish. But those rules may not count in face of the 1872 Mining Law, says David Cross, head fisheries biologist for the Idaho Panhandle National Forests.

“In the past, that law has overridden everything - including good judgment,” Cross says with a pained chuckle.

Efforts to reform the law are tied up in Congress.

Erosion has so changed Andrew Prichard’s wilderness streams that trout have trouble finding pools to live in, shade to stay cool, and insects to eat.

Unlike the South Fork of the Coeur d’Alene, where lead and zinc were processed, the North Fork drainage isn’t heavily contaminated with metals. No chemicals such as arsenic are needed to separate placer gold from other rock.

Although interest in North Fork mining always rises with the price of gold, David Lockard of the U.S. Bureau of Mines isn’t convinced that there will be a gold rush there.

He thinks most of the good stuff has been taken.

Brady isn’t so sure. More efficient washers allow miners to recover finer particles of gold, he says.

Thinking ahead is the key to protecting water quality during placer mining, Brady says.

“In the past, they didn’t plan reclamation until the mining was done, so they ended up moving material two or three times,” he says. “I don’t think there will be that much additional cost if they plan.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Map of Butte Creek Mine and proposed Golden Mine areas

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: PUBLIC CAN COMMENT The Wallace-Fernan District Ranger will make a decision on the Golden Mine this spring. To comment or get further information, contact Doug Maryott at (208) 556-5114.