New Mojave Gold Mine to Set ‘New Standard’ for Conservation : Environment: Operator gains federal approval by meeting requests for tortoise habitat, ground water protection and covers for cyanide-laced ponds.

Federal officials will allow a controversial gold mine to open in a sensitive area of the eastern Mojave Desert next year, but the project’s operator has agreed to comply with a set of environmental conditions described as unprecedented in the booming gold mining industry.

Under a plan approved by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Viceroy Gold Corp. of Las Vegas will operate a so-called “heap leach” mine in the Castle Mountains, a rugged range 100 miles east of Barstow. Viceroy plans to mine for 10 years, extracting about $45-million worth of gold annually.

The heap-leach process has been controversial because it disturbs a large amount of land and uses a cyanide solution to recover gold from huge piles of ore.

Viceroy officials also drew opposition because of the location of their mining claim: it is within a national scenic area that includes prime habitat for the threatened desert tortoise, and it is earmarked as part of California Sen. Alan Cranston’s proposed East Mojave National Park.

But in an unusual agreement reached Thursday with the conservation groups, Viceroy pledged to comply with a host of conditions designed to protect wildlife and the environment and ensure the area is returned to its natural state once the ore deposit is depleted.

The environmentalists, in turn, agreed to drop their fight against the mine.

“We’ve set a new standard for gold mining in California, and it’s a precedent we’re going to push throughout the country,” declared Norbert Riedy of The Wilderness Society, one of six conservation groups that had opposed the mine. “This is a significant achievement for the public in terms of protecting federal lands from mining impacts.”

Chris Mitchell, vice president of Viceroy’s Canadian parent company, Viceroy Resource Corp., agreed and said the mine “will not have a significant impact on the environment.”

“This is a new threshold, there’s no question about that,” said Mitchell, noting that the mitigation measures would cost the company more than $3.5 million. “I’m sure the rest of the gold mining industry will be paying attention to our project.”

Heap-leach mining involves bathing piles of ore with a weak cyanide solution to extract microscopic specks of gold. The solution is then diverted into collection ponds, and the gold is filtered out through an additional process.

Advances in the technology--along with a rise in the price of gold--has sparked a mining bonanza in the deserts of California and Nevada, and elsewhere in the West. The improved techniques make it possible for companies to earn a profit on ore bodies previously considered worthless.

The heap-leach process has been controversial, however, because of bird deaths attributed to the cyanide-laced ponds and the threat of cyanide seepage into ground water. Hundreds of migratory birds and other animals have been killed after being attracted to the ponds, most of which are in arid areas of California and Nevada.

The eyesores left by heap-leach mining have been another target of protest. Huge amounts of ore must be carved from mountainsides and processed to extract small amounts of gold. In the Castle Mountains, for example, workers digging pits up to 600 feet deep will ultimately mine enough rock to fill the Los Angeles Coliseum 36 times, Riedy said.

The conditions required by conservationists and the BLM address most of these sensitive issues.

For starters, there will be no so-called “poison ponds”: Viceroy will use covered storage tanks and an enclosed pipeline system to prevent the exposure of wildlife to cyanide. The company will also place liners beneath the ore piles and install a monitoring system to detect leaks that might threaten ground water.

To protect the lumbering desert tortoise, Viceroy will fence the project site and reroute an access road away from areas containing dense populations of the reptile. To compensate for tortoise habitat lost to the mine, Viceroy will buy and preserve 745 acres of prime habitat elsewhere in the desert.

Both Riedy and Mitchell agree that the centerpiece of the plan is a 10-year reclamation program designed to return the mine site to its natural state as quickly as possible.

The program includes staining the pits’ rock walls to match the surrounding terrain, recontouring the disturbed landscape and revegetating the site with native plants that will be harvested from the desert and reared in a nursery.

“The important element here is that there must be a certain diversity and density of plants by the time they reach the end of the reclamation program,” Riedy said. “In the past, mining companies have just thrown some seeds out there and walked away. This is a huge improvement.”

The program is guaranteed by $1 million in bonds posted by Viceroy, which forfeits the money if the reclamation fails.

Another unique element of the agreement requires Viceroy to pay $2 million into a fund for “environmental enhancement.” Typically, mining companies leave giant pits behind once their ore body is exhausted, arguing that the expense of backfilling would make their projects uneconomical. Riedy said this fund may enable Viceroy to backfill one of the two pits at Castle Mountain or acquire land for preservation elsewhere in the East Mojave.

In a statement, BLM State Director Ed Hastey praised Viceroy as “extremely cooperative” and predicted the mitigation measures will protect the desert’s scenic values and wildlife.

Riedy also gave the company some credit. Viceroy, he noted, agreed to prepare a new mining plan and environmental impact statement after conservationists appealed the BLM’s initial approval of the project in 1987.

“We are very, very pleased with what we’ve been able to achieve,” Riedy said. “The mining industry has left us with acres and acres of public lands that are sterile, unproductive and useless as wildlife habitat and for recreation. This agreement definitely sets a new standard.”