TSX-listed Midas Gold has said that it will continue to defend the lawsuit over the water quality in the Stibnite mining district, in the US, reiterating that it is not, nor has it ever been, operational on site and that it is not responsible for the existing contamination.
The miner, however, has proposed that the Stibnite gold project be a means in providing the much-needed clean-up of the historical waste currently polluting the area.
Midas Gold developed its plan of restoration and operations, which is currently under review of the US Forest Service, to improve water quality and fix the long-standing environmental issues facing the site as part of its proposed Stibnite gold project.
The proposed project would reconnect fish to their native spawning grounds, fix the largest source of sedimentation in the river and remove tailings and waste rock that degrade water quality, Midas said last week.
However, despite Midas’ proposed plan to improve water quality and address legacy issues, the Nez Perce Tribe have continued to move forward with its lawsuit against the miner.
Midas said in its statement that the lawsuit “ignores the fact that Midas Gold Idaho has been actively working with regulators to gain permission to begin addressing water quality concerns even before the project begins”.
Further, the company noted that its actions have been limited to studying current conditions, evaluating the optimal solutions for remediation and restoration and presenting those solutions to the regulators responsible for permitting the site.
Considering that Midas and the tribe have aligned concerns over the water quality in the district, Midas Gold Idaho CEO Laurel Sayer said the company had been working with the federal and state environmental regulators for “well over a year and a half” on solutions, and on permitting the permanent solution.
“While we agree the site needs immediate attention to clean up the damage of the past, make no mistake [that] the problems outlined in this lawsuit were not caused by Midas Gold,” she averred, suggesting that the tribe spending its “energy and resources” would be better applied to working on a solution “rather than filing lawsuits”.
Filing a lawsuit at this stage merely impedes the process of the site getting the attention it deserves, Sayer said.
Subsequently, the company confirmed that it would continue to move forward with its work to assess and improve water quality in the area, while restoring the site and returning it to the appropriate environmental standards.
The mining firm previously pointed out that the Stibnite district had more than three-million tons of tailings from the Second World War era laying unconstrained in the Meadow Creek valley, capped by an additional seven-million tons of spent heap leach ore, and numerous other openpits and waste rock dumps across the site.
“It is therefore not unexpected to see elevated levels of metals in ground and surface water and it is likely that elevated levels of arsenic and antimony have been a problem for decades.”