Modern mining practices

Gloria Flora’s Guest Opinion, “Mining loophole a giveaway to industry” (June 10, 2018), is correct in its claim that the hardrock mining industry is a top polluter, but she is not up to date in its 21st-century remedy. At least three major mines in northwest USA – Lucky Friday and Golden Chest in Shoshone County, Idaho, and Stillwater near Nye, Montana – are using “paste backfill” (not sandfill) to not only dispose of mine tailings, but to furnish a solid floor, under which deeper levels can be mined.

Most toxic byproducts of metal mining are held within the hardened paste which can also be stored above ground. Examples can be seen from Interstate 90 at the Jersey gold mill, which operates with safety about 100 yards from the Coeur d’Alene River’s South Fork between Kellogg and Big Creek, and at the Lucky Friday silver mine below Lookout Pass east of Mullan, Idaho.

Paste backfill is explained in layman’s terms in the mining novel “South Sea Gold”, which has taken many of USA’s past mining problems and transposed them into a fictitious mine in Papua New Guinea whose mines are only recently developing.

Keith Dahlberg

Kellogg