In Our View: Pinchot Peril

Part of the reason U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., lost his re- election bid in 2000 to Democrat Maria Cantwell was his effort to ease environmental restrictions on a proposed cyanide-leach gold mine in Okanogan County.

Mining and Cantwell are in the news again on two fronts, and she’s on the right side in both. First, she’s fighting a Colorado company’s application to operate an open-pit copper mine in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest just north of the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument in the Green River drainage.

“If approved,” she said in a statement this week, “this mine could jeopardize critical scientific research, family recreational opportunities, threatened salmon and steelhead runs and municipal water supplies.”

Indeed, the Longview City Council last month formally opposed the mine, fearing runoff would flow into the Green River, which feeds the Cowlitz River, from which Longview draws its water. City councils of Kelso and Castle Rock had previously opposed the application to the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service.

Even if runoff were not at issue, this is a bad idea. Mount St. Helens is the only active volcano in the lower 48 states and the government has wisely protected the area around the hot peak for tourism and science. Allowing a working mine nearby would be the governmental equivalent of shooting ourselves in the foot.

Cantwell’s other mine-related effort is tangentially related. She is among those in Congress seeking to finally rewrite the 1872 – yes, 1872 – federal law governing hard-rock mines. Signed by President Ulysses S. Grant at a time western expansion was being promoted, it allows mineral extraction without royalties and messing up the land without cleaning it up.

Originally published by Columbian editorial staff.

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