Supreme Court considers clean-water case

Enviromine

Publishing Date: 06 Feb 2009 2:42pm GMT
Author: Mining, People and the Environment

THE US Supreme Court heard submissions in a test case that may open US lakes and waterways as disposal sites for mine waste.

The test case, which could see a new interpretation of the US Clean Water Act, is considering disposal of tailings material from Coeur d’Alene Mines Corp’s Kensington gold mine in Alaska into the Lower Slate Lake. The Army Corps of Engineers gave Coeur d’Alene a permit to dispose of tailings from the mine in the Lower Slate Lake.

The Ninth Circuit court annulled the permit following a challenge by the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, on the grounds that the tailings material, being treated as fill material, would exceed effluent limits and kill the lake’s fish population. The Supreme Court case now rests on the definition of the tailings material. Should the material be defined as ‘fill’ it would be considered inert and not require more stringent environmental controls provided by the Environmental Protection Agency.

But the case’s wider implication for the disposal of tailings in lakes across the US has angered environmental groups. “The whole reason Congress passed the Clean Water Act was to stop turning our lakes and rivers in to industrial waste dumps,” Tom Waldo, a lawyer for Earthjustice, said in his argument at the Supreme Court hearing. The court is expected to reach a decision on the case by June.