New Rapid Creek Watershed Action to help tribes protect Black Hills

RAPID CITY — Launching a Rapid Creek Watershed Action coalition June 16, members of the new local organization threw their weight behind tribal governments’ bids to rein in unfettered mining in the Black Hills.

The goal of Rapid Creek Watershed Action, or RCWA, is “to have the federally-controlled surface and subsurface lands within the Rapid Creek-Castle Creek Watershed upstream from Rapid City designated as a national recreation area and subject to a mineral claim withdrawal,” it announced.

The broad-based effort was initiated by a number of groups that invite others to join them by contacting them at their clearinghouse www.rapidcreekwatershed.org/

They are: Black Hills Clean Water Alliance; Black Hills Group, Sierra Club; Black Hills Paddlers; Clean Water Legacy; Dakota Rural Action; Black Hills Chapter Izaak Walton League; Rapid City Chapter NDN Collective; and Protect Pactola.

The Rapid Creek Watershed, or Mniluzahan Wakpa, is a significant native cultural resource at the headwaters of the Mississippi; it rises from the central Black Hills near the key Lakota sacred site of Pe’ Sla on tribal trust land.

The drainage is also important because it provides the water for South Dakota’s second-largest municipality of Rapid City, for the western state’s largest employer of Ellsworth Air Force Base, and for reservations, smaller communities, and agriculture along the creek that feeds into the Cheyenne and Missouri Rivers.

Upstream from Rapid City in the Black Hills National Forest, the Rapid Creek Basin is primarily used for recreation. Activities include hunting, fishing, bicycling, motorcycling, snowmobiling, boating, swimming, hiking, bird-watching, camping, equestrian activities, and ATV riding.

Outdoor recreation provided South Dakota residents 48,000 jobs with $1.9 billion in direct and indirect income in 2017.  Direct spending on hunting alone in the Black Hills is about $89 million a year.

However, the sanctity, drinking water, irrigation source, recreational opportunities and income are under threat from​ proposed large-scale mining, the national non-profit American Rivers said in designating Rapid Creek one of America’s Most Threatened Rivers of 2020.

Further designating the Rapid Creek watershed as a “recreation area” will allow the existing land uses to continue “without disruption from hard rock minerals exploration or mining on public lands or claims,” RCWA says.

The national designation would make it so that mining claims not yet “proven” are subject to withdrawal from eligibility for exploration and mining.

The recreation area would assure that exploration and mining are off-limits where the surface or the subsurface of the land is federally-controlled, by the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management or Army Corps of Engineers.

In 2019, The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe demanded elimination of gold exploration and mining here, approving a resolution that called upon the U.S. Congress to exempt the Black Hills National Forest from the reach the 1872 Mining Act.

That act forces federal agencies to allow private mineral extraction on public lands, regulators claim. It also waives federal severance tax and compensation for losses incurred by landholders in miners’ accessing of target resources.

The resolution was a response to the Canadian Mineral Mountain Resources Ltd. prospecting and slated gold mining along the headwaters of the Mniluzahan in Lawrence and Pennington County west of Rapid City.

The resolution also asked Congress to authorize an initial $200,000 of non-federal funds to fight the project.

A second tribal council resolution ratified at the same time not only called on the federal government to provide funding for the Great Sioux Nation to employ professionals to investigate the environmental and archeological impact of the project, but also authorized litigation regarding the operations.

During the 2019 South Dakota Legislative Session, Oglala Lakota lawmaker Peri Pourier and other tribal members elected to the statehouse failed to win support for bills they introduced to require public hearings on temporary water permits in communities affected by prospecting and mining proposals.

In addition to having concerns about Mineral Mountain Resources Ltd.’s exploration drilling underway at claims near Rochford and adjacent to Pe’ Sla, they fear prospecting by Minnesota-based F3 Gold Inc. at its Silver City Project adjacent to the inlet of Pactola Reservoir and in Jenny Gulch.

Mineral Mountain Resources Ltd. has claims on approximately 7,500 acres.  F3 Gold Inc. has almost 2,500 claims.

While tribal governments remain to be consulted on the projects, as required by law, one member group of RCWA, the grassroots Black Hills Clean Water Alliance, has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service for illegally withholding public information during the permitting process.

Two gold mining sites in the northern Black Hills have been declared Superfund sites, among the most polluted places in the country. Pollutants include toxic acid mine drainage, lead, arsenic, and the cyanide used to process gold.

“Using the water source for Rapid City and Ellsworth Air Force Base for gold mining doesn’t make sense, RCWA said. “Toxic mining spills could destroy the area’s tourism and outdoor recreation economy and make local water undrinkable.”

On the other hand, it said, “Keeping the Rapid Creek watershed for its current major use, outdoor recreation, makes sense.  If we’re going to create a recreation area and stop mining in the Rapid Creek Watershed, now is the time to act,” it added.

The coalition notes that treaty law, which is the highest law of the land, according to the U.S. Constitution, provides that the Black Hills belong to the Lakota. In 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the theft of the land, based on gold discovery, was a violation of the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie treaties. However, to date, the federal government has not returned any territory to the Oceti Sakowin.

Rapid Creek Water Action is appealing to members of the public to contact the South Dakota U.S. Congressional delegation offices with economic arguments to promote the national recreation area and to sign a petition for its creation, as well as to support efforts to get out the word.

“Gold mining has consistently resulted in numerous water contamination problems. Central Black Hills communities choose a recreation-based economy.  The time to preserve that economy for future generations is now,” it says.

 

(Contact Talli Nauman at talli.nauman@gmail.com)

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