Evelyn Schlatter

The Bureau of Land Management released a statement April 30 to the press that it rejected a hardrock mining lease application (chose the “no action” alternative, in agency-speak) from General Moly (formerly Idaho General Mines, Inc) for an area 12 miles northeast of the Mount St. Helens volcanic crater. The BLM director for Washington and Oregon said that the agency wasn’t able to determine whether a hardrock mining lease would be compatible with the purpose for which the lands were originally purchased.

The open-pit mine was originally slated to be anywhere from a few hundred to 3000 acres, from which copper, molybdenum, and silver would be extracted, over the next 30-40 years. BlueOregon noted that much of the area originally considered for the lease entered an area protected under President Clinton’s 2001 Roadless Rule and mining at Goat Mountain could have affected threatened salmon and steelhead runs in the Green River as well as drinking supplies of Kelso, Longview, and Castle Rock. For a handy map of the Mount St. Helens area, click here.

General Moly, based in Lakewood, CO applied for a fractional interest hardrock mining lease in March 2005 for 217.3 acres and a fringe acreage lease for 682.2 acres in the vicinity of Goat Mountain and the headwaters of the Green River. The planned mine, on the south-facing slope of Goat Mountain, would have eradicated much of the mountain.

Mining ain’t nothin’ new to the Mount St. Helens area. According to this dated USGS information, the majority of metallic minerals in southwestern Washington are within the St. Helens and Washougal mining districts. As early as 1892, miners staked gold, silver, and copper claims in the St. Helens district, though massive fires in the early 20th century and in the late 19-teens and on into the 1920s halted a lot of mining ops there. Some interest revived in the district during the Depression era, and sporadic prospecting went on from 1940-1960 but didn’t prove economically feasible, though in the 70s, some mining for gold, silver, and copper continued, but Washington State’s mining economy tends to lean heavily on construction materials like sand and gravel, crushed stone, Portland cement. At the bottom of the mining ladder in the state are zinc and gold. [USGS Mineral Yearbook]

But with the price of gold and other metallic minerals going up, it stands to reason that someone might be interested in doing a little gold, copper, or silver mining in that area. Even if it IS an active volcano. Oh, yeah. THAT little detail.

At any rate, the issue’s not dead. General Moly could apply for an exploration permit at any time, and the federal government still retains discretion to approve actual exploration. But for now, the mine is off the mountain.