EDITORIAL PAGE — Whose side are they on?

The president of Crown Butte Mines was right to question the integrity of the environmental review process in the United States at last year’s Northwest Mining Conference in Spokane, Wash.

It is easy to understand the company’s frustration. Crown Butte has been working for more than five years to advance the New World copper-gold project in Montana, but this effort has been thwarted by a well-organized effort to quash the proposed mine.

New World has become the cause cl bre for misinformed environmentalists who believe that by stopping the project they will have protected an American treasure, Yellowstone Park, from being “degraded.” Leading the charge, at least on the international stage, is the World Heritage Committee (an arm of the United Nations agency, UNESCO) which recently declared that the project poses a danger to Yellowstone. The committee previously had the park named a World Heritage Site.

The proposed mine is, in fact, in an area that was mined decades ago and, moreover, is situated well outside the park’s boundaries. The land encompassing the project was purposefully excluded from the park because of its known mineral potential.

Crown Butte President Joseph Baylis explains that the project area was mined as far back as the 1870s, and is “more akin to an abandoned industrial site than a pristine wilderness.” He points out, as he has time and again, that the company has reclaimed land that was damaged years ago. The company also has a U.S. Forest Service award to show for its effort. And, contrary to what some critics claim, no drainage from the mine will flow into the park.

Crown Butte has worked with 20 state and federal agencies and spent more than $40 million to move the project forward. It spends between $2.4 million and $4 million annually to maintain the permitting process.

Baylis’ main concern is that this process, under the National Environmental Policy Act, is being manipulated “to frustrate legitimate business.” In particular, he points out that some federal employees working in agencies with regulatory authority are helping outside interests oppose the project.

As an example, he cites a public meeting at Mammoth Hotspring, Mont., where some of the most outspoken opponents of the mine were members of the National Park Service, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior. “And yet, these are the same people we have entrusted with the permitting process,” he adds.

Crown Butte further criticizes the federal government for “co-operating” with the World Heritage Committee against the project, a charge the Department of the Interior denies. Even so, the New World issue has become a political, rather than a scientific, issue. On that level, Crown Butte is right not to accept the World Heritage Committee as a legitimate source for a scientific review.

Crown Butte says disallowing the mine for solidly scientific reasons would be acceptable. What it will not accept, Baylis says, “is prejudice and subversion of the regulatory process.” We agree with this view, because if subversion can be directed at Crown Butte, it can be directed at other mining companies as well. If there is to be confidence in the permitting process, rules and regulations must be dealt with by government agencies on a fair and impartial basis, using the tools of science and reason, rather than emotion and rhetoric.