The Buckhorn Mine: an economic and environmental success story

IN the midst of challenging economic times, I am excited to celebrate an economic success story in Okanogan County. Kinross Buckhorn Mine opened its doors in October — and will soon produce gold and 180 jobs. For years, Okanogan County struggled as orchards were taken out of production and cattle were removed from public lands. Reinvigorating this mine is critical to our region's resource-based economy — our mining industry had a $2.5 billion impact in 2005.

I attended the opening of the Buckhorn Mine, which was a long time coming — more than a dozen lawsuits and 18 years before the mine could be open. Despite being a resource-rich country, we are opening fewer and fewer mines.

We should take advantage of the fact the United States is one of the world's largest producers and consumers of minerals and metals. We use them in our everyday life — they are essential to our economic and national security. Yet I am concerned we are becoming increasingly dependent upon foreign countries to provide critical minerals needed to make Boeing airplanes, superconductors or military equipment. In fact, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, reliance on mineral imports has nearly doubled in the past decade. We can't afford to be dependent on foreign countries for our minerals — as we are for our oil and gas

One reason for declining development of mineral resources in this country is an increasingly burdensome state and federal regulatory structure. In fact, Washington state regulation nearly stopped this project.

In 1994, Battle Mountain Gold owned what is now the Kinross Buckhorn mine. State legislation threatened to stop any new mine. Such a law would have had devastating impacts on the people and jobs in Northeast Washington.

As a Republican leader on the House Resources Committee, I worked to protect our mining economy in Eastern Washington. With the help of state Sen. Bob Morton, R-Kettle Falls, the mining industry and environmental groups, we ultimately passed bipartisan legislation that kept mining in Washington state.

As permitting for the Crown Jewel proceeded, we continued helping the mine navigate the bureaucracy. We brought agencies and company officials together and resolved permitting issues for businesses, including mining companies, that wanted to do business in our state. In the district, we helped constituents understand mining issues, addressed their concerns and answered their questions. Today, state Rep. Joel Kretz, R-Wauconda, is continuing the fight to allow us to use our natural resources.

However, Battle Mountain Gold still faced more than 60 state and federal permitting hurdles. The project withstood administrative challenges to every permit as well as several legal challenges. After spending more than $85 million on the project, Battle Mountain Gold was on the verge of receiving its operating permit when it was taken hostage by the Department of the Interior and its solicitor, who attempted to change 127 years of law with the stroke of his pen. The process took 15 years, at a cost of $90 million.

When I came to Congress, I served as chair of a Task Force on the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). It is through NEPA that projects like Buckhorn get caught up in years and years of litigation.

NEPA started as a single-paragraph statute in 1969. Today, it spans 25 pages and has resulted in more than 1,500 court cases. NEPA was hailed as visionary when it was signed into law yet has since become a process that is too often used to delay, if not halt, projects and has produced unintended consequences.

This is simply unacceptable. We should not be strangling ourselves economically by not utilizing the resources we have been given or by putting them off-limits. We need to make some changes. Technology has advanced to allow projects to move forward in an environmentally friendly way.

We need to work together to support common-sense solutions to establish and maintain regulatory certainty and predictability for the mining industry and reduce excessive, duplicative and expensive permitting delays. I am glad that Kinross successfully navigated these challenges to get us to the grand opening of the Buckhorn Mine. But looking to the future, we can and must do better.