Canadian company hopes to find copper in Methow Valley – by Craig Welch (Seattle Times – July 5, 2014)

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Less than 2 miles from the heart of one of the most popular outdoor recreation spots in Washington, a Canadian company plans to drill holes to hunt for copper. The Forest Service says it doesn’t have the authority to stop the project.

MAZAMA, Okanogan County — Behind the general store and the outdoor gear shop — above the inn and horse corral — granite walls and pine-covered hills rise thousands of feet to form a towering nob called Goat Peak.

This fixture overlooking the North Cascades’ upper Methow Valley — one of the most popular outdoor playgrounds in the state — is where residents and visitors, including many from Seattle, walk dogs, run trails, cross-country ski, snowmobile, hike, bike and even paraglide.

Now a Canadian mining company wants to explore the earth beneath this recreation hot spot to see if metals marbled into the rock are plentiful enough for a copper mine. And despite mountains of opposition, the U.S. agency overseeing exploration maintains it’s powerless to stop the project.

Not 2 miles from the heart of Mazama, Vancouver-based Blue River Resources is proposing to drill as many as 15 bore holes 1,000 feet deep to see how much copper and molybdenum ore is there. The drilling could go on 24 hours a day for months, and would require the company to haul thousands of gallons of water up the mountain. The drilling could start later this summer.

With gold running out at a major mine 130 miles away in Tonasket and that company backing off its own massive exploration plan there, some in Okanogan County are hopeful that work in Mazama could lead to the region’s next mine.

“I’m tremendously supportive of the Mazama project,” said state Rep. Joel Kretz, R-Wauconda. “Many people are.”

But the Methow Valley has always been a bit apart from the rest of the county.

Goat Peak sits not far from the Pasayten Wilderness, directly across Highway 20 from a butte where entrepreneurs once tried to build a ski resort. They were driven off by a community that battled for decades to keep this valley largely undeveloped.

In fact, a sizable number of the 5,300 residents living in this 70-mile-long valley have expressed outrage at the prospect of exploration. The Forest Service received nearly 750 comments on the drilling plan, the vast majority opposed.

“This project has brought the most fan mail I’ve seen in awhile,” said Mike Liu, Winthrop District Ranger for the Forest Service.

No other issue in Liu’s five years here has generated quite this much controversy.

In part that’s because, as incompatible as mining and recreation may appear, the federal government’s General Mining Law of 1872 only allows regulators to try and force claim holders to avoid or repair environmental damage.

And the industry and U.S. government track record at preventing or cleaning up mine contamination is far from stellar.

“At the end of the day, we could require certain kinds of mitigation,” Liu said. “But to say ‘no you can’t develop,’ that’s not part of my authority.”

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) maintains hard-rock mining is the nation’s worst polluting industry, and has left a toxic legacy across the West that could cost taxpayers $54 billion to restore. Yet the 1872 law still lets citizens or companies slap claims on public lands for $5 an acre and mine without paying royalties to the federal government.

Those claims are given such priority that former Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck once told a congressional committee that even ecologically hazardous mining was “nearly impossible to prohibit.”

Methow Valley residents insist they’ll find a way.

For a community built by people who often abandoned busy lives elsewhere to live quietly where they can fish, climb rock spires like Liberty Bell, or walk among wildflowers after work, the mere possibility of a major copper mine is unthinkable.

“Allowing this to go forward is simply out of the question,” said resident Pat Leigh, who moved to the valley after visiting for years as a hiker and a backpacker.

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