11/10/17

Belle Fourche watershed still at risk to mountaintop-removal mine

In January of 2016, the US Forest Service suspended the Draft Environmental Impact Study for a Wyoming Black Hills mountaintop-removal mine that would take rare earth minerals in the Belle Fourche watershed.

Now, Rare Element Resources CEO Randy Scott says its project to strip mine a part of the Bearlodge Mountains just upstream of the South Dakota border has a new investor.
RER announced earlier this month that Synchron, an affiliate of General Atomics, has purchased around 33.5 percent of the company’s issued common shares, a total of 26,650,000, for $4.752 million. “We are looking to complete one or two more steps of that to firm up the further downstream separation of the valuable rare earth elements, those that are used primarily in the production of permanent high strength magnets,” Scott says.
Read more here.

At least 23 prehistoric sites near Devils Tower National Monument, some of which are archaeological treasures eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, are also at risk to an 8000-acre expansion of Australia’s largest US aquifer uranium mining operation.

There's an election next year and this is virtually, even literally, in your family ranch's back yard, Marty.

Where the hell are those cross-state pollution rules anyway?

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