Las Vegas – A federal appeals-court panel on Tuesday ordered a lower court to review the environmental effects of operations at two gold mines in northern Nevada in a ruling that advocates said could force closer scrutiny of the use of federal lands in the West.
Newmont Mining Corp., which owns the mines, downplayed the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which instructed the Interior Department and Bureau of Land Management to consider cumulative effects of mining at two sites northwest of Carlin.
“Operations continue as normal,” said Mary Korpi, a spokeswoman in Reno for Denver- based Newmont. “Basically, we’re very pleased with the ruling. We’re not impacted.”
Korpi noted that the court upheld most BLM and Interior findings on air quality, public water reserves, bonding to ensure reclamation of mined lands, a requirement for separate environmental studies on the two mines, and cumulative impacts for water.
However, the three-judge panel, quoting arguments by environmental group Great Basin Mine Watch, also said the BLM “cannot simply offer conclusions.”
“Rather, it must identify and discuss the impacts that will be caused by each successive (project),” the court said in San Francisco, “including how the combination of those various impacts is expected to affect the environment.”
The judges overturned a lower-court summary judgment for the government but rejected most procedural challenges raised by Great Basin Mine Watch. The lawsuit stemmed from mining applications filed by Newmont in 1997 with the BLM field office in Elko.
The panel returned the case to U.S. District Court in Reno for a rehearing on whether the BLM’s analysis of the cumulative effects of mining met requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act.
