No significant impact? BHNF, Spearditch Canyon under attack

Under the General Mining Law of 1872 even foreign miners have carte blanche to rape the Black Hills, so they are. 

Land seized from the Great Sioux Nation had been remanded to the tribes under the Treaty of Fort Laramie but Congress broke the agreement to pay down Civil War debt then exploited the Custer Expedition's discovery of gold in the Black Hills.

In 2020 American Rivers released a report that named Rapid Creek the seventh most endangered waterway in America, identified mining as a major threat then called on the US Forest Service to go beyond regulation outlined in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and "do more thorough environmental impact statements on proposed projects and potential impacts, including formal consultation with 16 tribal nations." 

Regulations are protections but as the war on the West escalates South Dakota has given up on environmental protection and self-reliance and yielded to moral hazard. Add the very high number of private inholdings within the Black Hills National Forest that make the wildland urban interface (WUI) very large to one of the highest road densities in the entire national forest system and Region 2 to lots of logging, hardrock mining and pesticides then understand why over a hundred species in South Dakota alone are at risk to the Republican Party. 

Solitario Resources is combing 580 mining claims and wants to drill 25 holes on some 33,000 public and private acres in the Spearditch Canyon watershed in Lawrence County. Solitario's predecessor parent, Crown, is notorious for violating laws in Washington State over 3000 times.

There were 383 formal objections from the public, and the Forest Service determined that 122 objections were “eligible for review.” However, no objection resolution meeting was held, as is typical with this process. Instead, the Forest Service will move directly to a decision. Its draft decision was that there would be “no significant impact” and to let the drilling go forward. Like 382 others – and like hundreds more in other phases of the project — Black Hills Clean Water Alliance put time and effort into this process. To see the Forest Service brush off our concerns with its repeated assertions that they did the minimum necessary is insulting. [GOLDEN CREST GOLD DRILLING PROJECT: BLACK HILLS NATIONAL FOREST ISSUED A “RESPONSE” TO PUBLIC OBJECTIONS]

While exploratory drilling wastes millions of gallons of water it tends to have minimal impact on the Forest itself but the drillers usually sell their data to bigger miners like Barrick, a Canadian earth raper.