I assume "Vancouver-based" means Canadian, not Vancouver, WA.
I lived on the Alamosa River in Rio Grande National Forest, Conejos County, CO five months a year for 12 years. (1985-1996) During that time a Canadian firm, "Galactic Resources" purchased the mine at Summitville, CO. The purchase and operation were done through a shell corporation, Summitville Consolidated Mining Corporation.
Among other things we ran a university field geology program and were a member of OBFS (the Organization of Biological Field Stations.) My children played in the river literally every day. Our two PhD geologists were convinced that the entire operation was a sham, designed to run up the stock price with no real chance of economically viable gold recovery. They were right.
They poured the concrete base and installed the liner during the winter of 1986. It would snow 660 inches at Summitville that winter. From its inception the mine was a disaster, but it was not until a disgruntled employee reported large-scale cyanide leaks five years later that anything became public.
The siting of this mine occurred shortly after Colorado's major "tax-reform" and in their wisdom with cash-flow short-falls, reduced the staff of the Division of Mines to five. The mine was approved without anyone actually reading the application. There was another provision that an application not reviewed in a timely fashion was granted, sort of a reverse-pocket-veto system.
One year when I came out to the camp I felt like I had walked into a Rachel Carson novel. There was no wildlife. The deer, elk , beavers ,squirrels... everything was gone. The larger animals simply found other places to water. I am not sure what happened to the smaller ones. On my birthday our faculty biologist took me to his favorite fishing hole, below Terrace Reservoir. We fished for hours but didn't catch a thing. It turned out that the mine had a cyanide spill that killed everything in the river clear down into the Rio Grande but failed to report it.
When the state finally stepped in and required the filing of a site closure plan, the company filed bankruptcy. The parent company filed bankruptcy the following day. All assets had been looted. Several years ago the clean-up cost had passed $200,000,000 making it the most expensive Superfund Project at that time.
Here is one 1996 article about the fiasco.
http://www.monitor.net/monitor/9612a/friedland.htmlHere is EPA's link to the current clean-up status.
http://www.epa.gov/region8/superfund/co/summitville/I don't know if this is still the costliest Superfund site (probably not) but there is a very interesting economic dynamic at work here in the state of Colorado.
There is no questioning the fact that the mine generated about $200,000,000 in economic activity in the area. Thus, it was a good idea for the state to permit it to operate. Then another $200,000,000 was spent by EPA to clean up the mess SO... guess what there is TWICE AS MUCH BENEFIT in permitting a bad mine as there is a good mine!
If the state, instead of the federal governement (funded by fees on the chemical and mining industries... ultimately YOU AND ME!) had to eat more of the cost they would be more careful.
The thing that pisses me off about the whole thing is that my two youngest children were 4 and 7 and in the water constantly when the most serious pollution occurred. Cyanide is not long-lasting in the environment, but the copper level in Terrace Reservoir when the USGS came in and started testing wass 300 ppm. Remediation is called for under EPA rules at 1.7 ppm. Metals content in the water were as much as 176 times the allowable levels.
Anyway... if a Canadian firm comes in with the idea of recovering silver due due a spike in price, there a considerable chance that their goal is a spike in stock price and little concern about actually running an appropriate or profitable mining operation.
END OF RANT...
