Buckhorn Mine Violates Water Quality Permit

OHA calls on the State of Washington to issue Clean Water Act violations to the Kinross Gold Corp. subsidiary, Crown Resources, for the discharges of contaminated water at the Buckhorn Mine.

The mine has leaked contaminants since it began operations. The mine’s monitoring shows that the mine has failed to maintain a capture zone, which is supposed to keep mine contaminants out of surrounding ground and surface water. Recent water quality violations began with the spring thaw in May 2011, when a major mudslide erupted below one of the treated mine water discharge locations. The landslide released a 20 foot wall of mud, scouring the vegetation and ripping out trees for half a mile down Gold Bowl Creek.

During May and June, water quality in Gold Bowl Creek exceeded standards for nitrates from blasting and sulfates from acid generating rocks. Sulfide rock removed from the mine is stored on the surface, exposed to the elements and can form sulfuric acid. Nitrates from blasting have also been elevated in Bolster Creek, west of Buckhorn, and in groundwater wells east of the mine.

Water Quality Requirements have been Violated:

• Concentrations of mine-related contaminants have been increasing in surface water and in groundwater since the mine operations began
• Water infiltrating through the PAG development rock has leached contaminants into Gold Bowl Creek
• Erosion from treated mine discharge has contributed to slope instability
• Other unpermitted mine discharge has entered surface water

Please see the Winter 2012 Buckhorn Bulletin for more infomation.

Water Quality Problems at Buckhorn

Ground and surface water downgradient from the mine are being degraded by failure of the mine’s capture zone.

If Crown/Kinross was doing everything that is required, everything that was committed to, and everything possible to protect the environment around Buckhorn Mountain, one might be sympathetic to the difficulty of controlling the impacts of large scale mining. However, that is not the case. Shotcrete is required in the Buckhorn mine to prevent acid mine drainage that could develop because of potentially acid generating (PAG) rock in the Damaged Rock Zone (DRZ). The DRZ is the area in the mine fractured by blasting. Shotcrete is also supposed to be used as a barrier to prevent water from infiltrating into and out of the mine, which can spread contaminants.  Please see the Fall 2011 Buckhorn Bulletin for more information.

Development Rock Reporting Needs Improvement

Water leaching through development (waste) rock piles, especially in the spring, has increased pollutants in ground and surface water. Kinross is required to submit a report to the Department of Ecology each quarter  to provide an analysis  of the past quarter’s development rock information.  Ecology rejected the 1st quarter report submitted in August and is requiring the company to generate a report based on criteria at that time. Please see the Fall 2011 Buckhorn Bulletin for more information.

NPDES Permit Up for Renewal

The National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit is a five-year renewable permit. It is authorized as part of the Clean Water Act and is the main mechanism to ensure Water Quality Standards (WQS) are upheld. The mine must dewater the mountain in order to extract gold. That water must be treated to meet NPDES standards before it is discharged back into the environment. After a rough few years, the new reverse osmosis treatment seems to consistently put out water that meets standards. Please see the Fall 2011 Buckhorn Bulletin for more information.

Water Year 2010 

The annual coordination meeting to discuss Buckhorn Mine’s Water Year 2010 data took place at the Eagle Cliff Grange on the bank of the Kettle River on March 15th, 2011. Annual monitoring reports were submitted to the agencies a few weeks prior to the meeting. The purpose of the annual meeting is to review a summary of the previous year’s monitoring data, discuss the adequacy of monitoring plans and recommend any modifications that might be needed. OHA opened the meeting with a presentation of our analysis of the monitoring data, and followed up with a presentation and the independent review by Ann Maest of Stratus Consulting, which laid out our concerns regarding the company’s analysis. OHA also raised concern over contaminated mine leakage and offered suggestions to address the issue... Read more

Water Year 2009 

The 2009 annual reporting showed better organization and issues were, for the most part, addressed directly. Concerns remain regarding certain missing and faulty data and analysis, particularly with regard to meteorological and precipitation data. OHA and Kinross personnel continue to communicate on an ongoing basis about improvements. OHA continues to comprehensively scrutinize the monitoring of the mine... Read more  

Water Year 2008 

OHA found the 2008 annual reporting incomplete and lacking basic foundational data needed to analyze the mine’s impacts and to corroborate model predictions, and made numerous suggestions to improve the annual evaluation of the mine. In 2008, OHA completed an extensive review of the mine plans and developed a comprehensive matrix of annual reporting requirements to assess the degree to which the company satisfied the reporting requirements that year and presented the results to the Department of Ecology and Kinross.  Kinross committed to improving the completeness and comprehensiveness of the reports for the Water Year 2009 annual meeting, and followed through with regard to the reporting framework. The mine has extensive monitoring requirements to ensure protection of the environment, and changes have been made since 2008 to coordinate the discussion of results and analysis. Read more

Since 1992, OHA has worked to maintain the integrity of water resources on Buckhorn Mountain, stopping development of an open pit gold mine in 2000 and appealing development of an underground mine proposed in 2002. Both proposals faced strong local opposition... Read more (History of OHA's Mine Monitoring on Buckhorn Mountain)

One of the major flaws in Ecology's SEIS is its reliance on adaptive management, or more accurately, a plan that is titled, "adaptive management," but in reality has poor mechanism to adapt to changing situations. It would be more accurately be characterized as a monitoring plan. Adaptive management should be an active systematic process for continually improving management policies and practices by sequential learning from the outcomes of operational programs... Read more (Adaptive Management Background)