Supreme Court Shock: Ruling Says Lethal Mining Waste Can Be Dumped in Lakes

This sets a terrible precedent . Yeah , it is ALL about money .

"The Story of Stuff"

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

from the article------"It's absolutely appalling, and now, it's legal. The court's decision will allow Coeur Alaska Inc, a gold mining company, to dump 4.5 million tons of waste into Lower Slate Lake. And that bit about extermination above, that's no exaggeration--the mining company, environmental groups, and even the Supreme Court are all well aware that dumping the waste will literally extinguish all life in the lake."---------

That is because cyanide is used to extract gold from ore.

Cyanide is a toxic chemical that blocks the ability of cells to use oxygen. You will suffocate---no matter how fast you are breathing. Ever heard of it? Adolf Hitler, Josef Goebells, Hermann Goering and other Nazis used cyanide to kill themselves because it is such an effective poison.

Cyanide is a chemical weapon of mass destruction. Putting cyanide in drinking water is a terrorist act. The government is supposed to be protecting us from terrorists.

Instead---the government is telling the terrorists that it is OK dump 4.5 million tons of cyanide into the water in the US. Who knows where that water will end up-----if it rains, where will that cyanide go? All water that falls on land as rain, eventually ends up in the oceans----and a lot of people use it along the way.
Cyanide is not biodegradeable. Cyanide kills anything that ingests it. Wonder why the fish are disappearing from the oceans? Cyanide is not the only toxins we are pouring into the oceans.

The government is not protecting you from terrorists----the government is helping the terrorists who want to use chemical weapons of mass destruction. Couer Alaska is a terrorist organization that wants to use a chemical weapon of mass destruction on US soil-----and the US government says it is OK.

If Sandra Day-O'Connor could have just held out a little longer we would have been just fine.

Bush changed the rules because this is toxic slurry instead of toxic waste I DON'T SEE THE DIFFERENCE but Bush changed it right before leaving office. Lets see if he owns stock in COURE GOLD. sounds like Halliburtin. I wiil check it out. I wouldn't put it past him. And like I said right when Palin leaves her beloved AL. she could have looked moderate and try to fight this. But
good riddance to bad toxic SLURRY=Palin.

Thanks Leah - you are my new Hero.

IMHO we need to be global ecologists now... and let ALL know that yes we will stick to principles regardless of who's backyard is involved.

Thanks
Luv from the Ambassador of Green at www.ctngreen.com/news

This is appalling! This can't be happening!!!!

Sounds like someone or someones had mining stock hidden away somewhere. I guess it's like all other toxic waste. As long as it's not in your back yard. When did the Corp of Engineers start writing policy that supercedes the E.P.A,'s mandates?

Awful . Jerks . Our kids and theirs are betrayed by them .

They live has some of the best fight choreography that has been barely matched by some of the Duane Johnson movies! Roddy and the Rock are top notch entertainers!

"The Bush Administration....once again.
His legacy will haunt this country for many years."

Only if we let it csmonut, only if we let it.

read the ruling for yourself and then form an educated opinion:

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/08pdf/07-984.pdf

which in turn goes directly into the ocean. In this world all you have to do is pay and you can pollute as much as you want. isn't that cool. money money money.

Lets get all the tree huggers to go do a lake sit in....take the liberals and environmentalists with you please...

It's rulings like this that shoot common sense right between the eyes. WTF, indeed! I pray for zombie apocalypse... EAT THE BRAINS OF THE STUPID!!! BRAINS!!!!!!!

Found this on: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090622/us_nm/us_coeur_alaska_court_3

excerpt:
Officials at Earthjustice, one of three environmental groups involved in the case, expressed disappointment over the ruling.

"The Clean Water Act was intended to halt the practice of using lakes, rivers, and streams as waste dumps," said Tom Waldo, who argued the case. "Today's decision does not achieve these purposes."

The officials said the Bush administration rule giving the Corps of Engineers authority in such matters had reversed thirty years of successful regulation under the Clean Water Act. They urged President Barack Obama to act immediately to repeal the rule.

The Bush Administration....once again.
His legacy will haunt this country for many years.

Definitely the best solution. Very smart.

Make each and every member of the USSC who voted for this have to drink from that lake after that sludge is dumped. Bastards! This is criminal.

Well there is some good news. For the exception of regions of extreme heat and pressure (Center of the Earth or the Sun) you can probably find life there.

So once they've killed everything in this lake some sort of bacterium will realize there is a treasure trove of 'food' and begin eating the toxic waste. Lord knows what the biproduct of THAT will be but 'technically' life will be there.

Overall though this is just another reason why the US is going down with the fail whale.

20 bucks says people will blame Obama for this.

WTF!!
Gee...does this ruling from the Supreme Court mean that wastewater treatment plants no longer have to abide by the EPAs CWA?
Does this mean they can just quit treating the water and send the waste directly into the discharge waters?
Sounds like it to me.
If the Supreme Court says it's OK to discharge and dump toxic *#@* into the lakes and streams, then it's OK for wastewater treatment plants.
Bushes legacy...rotton SOB.

To bad that arsenic is what is most often used to remove gold from ore, this will not kill just the fish and plants... the largest population of bald eagles in the country is in that area, Kodiak bears, geese, moose, arctic fox, you name it, all of these listed animals use lakes and streams like this one, that is the most prolific area of Alaska... not to mention that there are an enormous number of small time gold operations through out Alaska that will be able to use this now as well. Arsenic also is very similar to mercury where it builds up in the system of prey animals that eat exposed animals... so this will also hurt hunting, making it a interstate commerce issue seeing as Alaska has a huge seasonal hunting tourism thing going on... the Inuit can claim grievance, there are a million ways to fight this, and if it is not, well... it will not be good.

The company's lawyer, former Bush solicitor general Theodore Olson, told the justices that after 10 years or so of mining, the company would restore the lake and re-stock it with fish. "There will be more fish in a bigger lake, and more livable conditions for the fish and the aquatic life after this process is finished," he said.

Remember how long it took Exxon to repay just pennies on the dollar for the environmental disaster they unleashed with Exxon Valdez? They waited years and years. Some of the people they owed died before collecting a penny. An entire industry perished.

Olson snickers all the way to the bank.

senile bastards. hopefully they'll all just croak

The destruction has already begun. See this link for before and after photos. The rapists have already gone too far:

http://www.earthjustice.org/library/background/photos-related-to-the-kensington-...

This lake is part of a rare and fragile ecosystem, a temperate coastal rain forest that is also a national park. Yes, this is a Bush bomb, continuing to destroy long after the freakin' moron left the White House. It's the gift that keeps on giving to the GOP's wealthiest supporters.

A TOXIC ALCHEMY
January 19, 2009
WHY DOES the United States have a Clean Water Act, if not to protect a pristine Alaskan lake with thriving fish populations from the poisonous waste of a gold mine?

That is the question posed by a case that the US Supreme Court heard Monday. A mining company wants the right to dump millions of gallons of the toxic liquid into Lower Slate Lake in the Tongass National Forest. The slurry is a by-product of chemically treating crushed ore-containing rocks to produce gold flakes.

Coeur-Alaska is seeking legal sanction to destroy the aquatic life in the lake. Its bid has gotten as far as the Supreme Court only because of a decision in 2002 by President Bush's Environmental Protection Agency that gutted the 1972 Clean Water Act. Whatever ruling the court makes in this case, Congress should end any doubt that the 1972 law prohibits this form of pollution.

Bush's 2002 regulation redefined mining waste as fill, which under certain circumstances can be dumped in streams or lakes. It was a favor to companies in Appalachia that blast off mountaintops in search of coal and want a cheap way to get rid of the tailings. In 2005, the Army Corps of Engineers, with the EPA's nod, allowed Coeur-Alaska to apply this loophole to its Kensington mine near Lower Slate Lake. Environmentalists persuaded a federal appeals court to find the plan in violation of the Clean Water Act.

The company's lawyer, former Bush solicitor general Theodore Olson, told the justices that after 10 years or so of mining, the company would restore the lake and re-stock it with fish. "There will be more fish in a bigger lake, and more livable conditions for the fish and the aquatic life after this process is finished," he said.

Justice David Souter said the company and the Army Corps were "defining away" the problem by labeling the lethal discharge as fill. "When you are destroying the entire living (bodies) of the lake," Souter said, "it seems to me that it's getting Orwellian to say there are rigorous environmental standards." Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg got Olson to concede that restoration of the lake was not guaranteed.

A green light to Coeur-Alaska would set a dangerous precedent. Among the immediate beneficiaries would be the owners of the proposed Pebble gold and copper mine in Alaska, who would have the right to dump their waste into the headwaters of Bristol Bay, the center of North America's most abundant wild salmon fishery.

The court can stop this hollowing out of the Clean Water Act with a ruling against Coeur-Alaska. But whether or not the court goes along with this travesty, Congress should amend the act to leave no doubt that mining wastes are a polluting discharge.

WTF?

HOLY CRAP!!!

"It's just, the defense goes, that it's the easiest way to get rid of it. And it's 'less environmentally damaging than other options.'"

Does anyone else smell bullshit? It might be the easiest way to get rid of it, but it's certainly NOT the best environmental option for disposal. Pick up a book, find out how nuclear waste is disposed, and do it the RIGHT WAY!!! WTF!!!

(Sorry for the excessive !!!, but this is absurd.)

More info on this issue ...

Court Refuses To Re-hear Kensington Mine Decision

Clean Water Act preserved as Ninth Circuit protects lake from mine tailings

November 2, 2007

Lower Slate Lake, AK

San Francisco, CA -- An Alaskan lake and the federal Clean Water Act remained intact this week after the Ninth Circuit Court refused to reconsider a scheme to dump mine tailings into the lake.

Coeur Alaska, Inc. had asked the full court to overturn a 3-judge panel's decision in May that prevented Coeur from filling Lower Slate Lake with tailings from Kensington gold mine, near Berners Bay in Alaska. None of the court's 27 active judges agreed to re-hear the case.

Other mining ventures in Alaska and the rest of the nation were set to similarly destroy lakes if the court had allowed Coeur to proceed, said Tom Waldo, the Earthjustice attorney who successfully sued Coeur and the Army Corps of Engineers for granting a permit to Coeur.

"Coeur wanted to dump 4.5 million tons of mine tailings into the lake, killing all fish and aquatic life. The court said that is illegal under the Clean Water Act," Waldo said. "The whole reason Congress passed the Clean Water Act was to stop turning our lakes and rivers into industrial waste dumps."

"The Bush Administration selected the Kensington Mine to test the limits of the Clean Water Act. The Army Corps had never issued a permit like this before. Fortunately, the court drew the line. The Clean Water Act does not allow a corporation to kill a lake with chemically processed mine wastes."

Coeur could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but Waldo doubted the court would even consider the matter, in large part because it's such an obvious attempt to turn the Clean Water Act into a permission slip for destroying the nation's waterways.

The only real and responsible next step for Coeur is to continue working with local and national conservation groups -- who were represented by Earthjustice in the legal action -- to find a way to dispose of tailings that complies with the Clean Water Act and protects Berners Bay, Waldo said. Mine representatives and the conservation groups have been meeting for weeks to discuss the issue.

Earthjustice represented the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, Lynn Canal Conservation, and the Sierra Club.

Waldo said communities across the United States should take heart from what the Ninth Circuit Court has done for the country.

"If they were allowed to dump mining wastes in Slate Lake, they could do it into any lake, river or stream in the country. The Ninth Circuit has emphatically said -- that's illegal," he said.

There are hundreds of thousands of citizens in Iran who are fighting a similar battle and they're fighting it in much the same way as this battle will likely have to be waged - outside the courts and outside of a political/judicial context that favors the ultra-wealthy while denying the evidence of intelligent science.

I have not yet seen how the vote was split. I'd be quite surprised to learn that GOP-appointed judges voted against this. The only way to stop immoral and unethical decisions such as this one is to stop the influence of money on Supreme Court justices. Follow the money trail back to the corporate donors and eliminate either the money, the trail or ...

Who owns the lake?
That's a moot point, as the water table in the region is shared by all bodies of water.

Is it already contaminated?
Again, a nonsensical observation. If it's already contaminated, make the contaminators pay to restore it, don't pour more contamination in.

Is it an isolated reservoir?
Considering the size and complexity of most underground aquifers, it is highly unlikely that this body of water is truly "isolated."

How big is it?
How does this matter in a decision that could set a precedent for lake dumping in North America?

Is it a natural lake or created by the company?
Unless it is a lake created by the company specifically to hold toxic sludge - lined with man-made impermeable materials and natural clay barriers, this observation is meaningless.

It's time to put on the green scarves, put a big hurt on the contaminators, and send an ecological message to the Supreme Court.

The BIG MONEY court.

what else should we expect from what is essentially, still a Bush court?

Treehugger.com - Not the most objective reporting by the tone of the article.

Further, details of the ruling are nowhere to be found:

Who owns the lake?
Is it already contaminated?
Is it an isolated reservoir?
How big is it?
is it a natural lake or created by the company?

before you treehuggers get ripe, I'm only advocating informed reporting rather than emotional diatribes cloaked as media.

WTF?

water is becoming a major issue and these clowns are going to just pour toxic sludge into them.... what a crime...

everyone envolved in this dumping should be forced to live on the lake... the judges, the people who own and work for the companies doing the dumping.. all of them and their families should call this soon to be toxic dump home.

then we will see how much wisdom they feel they had in their ruliings.