Montana DEQ director to meet with officials in Park County on hauling mine waste

Montana DEQ director to meet with Wyo. officials

POWELL, Wyo. — The director of the Montana Department of Environmental Quality says he will meet with local officials in Wyoming next month to discuss plans to haul mine tailings over the Chief Joseph Highway.

The tailings would originate at the McLaren gold mine near Cooke City, Mont. Last spring, the Montana agency hired a contractor to haul some 48,700 tons of tailings to a processing site in southern Montana.

The tailings would cross into northern Wyoming along the Chief Joseph Highway. Some in Wyoming worry the trucks could cause safety problems and increase wear and tear on the road.

Montana DEQ Director Richard Opper said Friday his agency didn’t do a good job communicating with officials in Park County. He also said his agency failed to communicate with Montana residents along the 330-mile haul route.

Opper said critics were absolutely right in questioning a lack of public involvement in the plans and he understands concerns about the impacts of the hauling.

“Earlier communication would have solved a lot of problems,” he said.

Hauling out the tailings is part of a planned $24.4 million cleanup of the McLaren Mine, which is leaking toxic materials into a creek.

Only about 20 percent of the total contaminated material would be hauled away from the mine site. The rest would be put in permanent storage next to the site.

Opper said hauling some tailings offsite would make the permanent storage more secure.

Landowners and local legislators, including state Sen. Hank Coe, R-Cody, and Reps. Dave Bonner, R-Powell, and Pat Childers, R-Cody, have expressed concern about hauling the waste through part of northern Wyoming.

Richard Ridgway, president of the Sunlight Landowners Association, has people in his neighborhood worry that slow-moving trucks could be a road hazard.

Some have suggested Montana that has an interest in extracting gold from the tailings — at the expense of wearing down Wyoming’s section of the road. Opper dismissed the notion.

Hauling the tailings would cost about $5 million. Gold would have to be worth $1,220 an ounce for the state to break even on the project, he said.

Gold prices have been in that neighborhood lately but Opper said any profit would be reinvested in the cleanup.

Information from: Powell Tribune - Powell, www.powelltribune.com