{"id":10000,"date":"2020-05-29T06:38:49","date_gmt":"2020-05-29T11:38:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/gold-exploration-could-devastate-rapid-city-water-supply\/"},"modified":"2020-05-29T06:38:50","modified_gmt":"2020-05-29T11:38:50","slug":"gold-exploration-could-devastate-rapid-city-water-supply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/gold-exploration-could-devastate-rapid-city-water-supply\/","title":{"rendered":"Gold exploration could devastate Rapid City water supply"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Mining pollution threats recently earned Rapid creek, or Mniluzahan, a 2020 designation as one of America\u2019s Most Threatened Rivers. (Photo by Talli Nauman)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

RAPID CITY \u2013 As tribal governments awaited federal consultation over proposed increases in large-scale gold prospecting on Rapid Creek upstream from here, the grassroots Black Hills Clean Water Alliance filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service for illegally withholding public information during the permitting process.
\nRapid Creek, originally called Mniluzahan, is a main source of drinking water, irrigation, recreation, and spiritual renewal for residents of Rapid City and surrounding communities, and was named one of America\u2019s Most Endangered Rivers one month ago on April 14, due to the threat of mining megaprojects posed by the prospecting permits.
\n\u201cMining could devastate Rapid Creek\u2019s clean water, fish and wildlife and sacred cultural sites,\u201d Chris Williams, senior vice president for conservation at the national non-profit American Rivers said in announcing the designation.
\nAdding that the designation is a \u201ccall to action,\u201d he warned, \u201cThe Forest Service must seriously consider these risks and listen to the tribal nations who have cared for the Black Hills since time immemorial.\u201d
\nThe Clean Water Alliance submitted a formal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Forest Service in December of 2018 on four Black Hills National Forest prospecting permits under consideration in the Rapid Creek Basin.
\nOn this May 15, when the Forest Service had yet to release the information, the organization filed the lawsuit here in the Western Division of South Dakota U.S. District Court. The filing quotes FOIA and Forest service regulations requiring specific responses to such requests within 20 days.
\n\u201cThe agency records have been withheld without justification and access denied through a variety of delaying tactics that prevent oversight and scrutiny,\u201d the suit alleges, stipulating that the information was unavailable during 2019 public comment periods.
\nCongress enacted the FOIA \u201cto ensure that the government remains open and accessible to the American people and is always based not upon the \u2018need to know\u2019 but upon the fundamental \u2018right to know\u2019,\u201d the complaint noted.
\nLilias Jarding, founder of the Rapid-City based Clean Water Alliance, said the agency and U.S. Department of Agriculture \u201care hiding information from the public,\u201d and noted, \u201cThey are considering allowing gold exploration just upstream of Pactola Reservoir, which is Rapid City\u2019s water supply. We have the legal right to know what\u2019s going on.\u201d
\nPermitting and initial project activities involving the watershed in the Forest Service Mystic Ranger District are taking place at the Jenny Gulch Project near Silver City proposed by F3 Gold and the Rochford Project adjacent to the tribal trust land of Pe\u2019 Sla proposed by Mineral Mountain Resources, Ltd. of Canada.
\n\u201cMining for gold poses a serious threat to our sacred water from Rapid Creek,\u201d said A. Gay Kingman, executive director of the Great Plains Tribal Chairman\u2019s Association. \u201cOur drinking water, our environment, our land and the health of hundreds of people are at stake.\u201d
\nSpeaking at the American Rivers announcement, she said, \u201cInstead of polluting Rapid Creek, which connects to the Cheyenne River and the Missouri River, the longest river in America, we should be cleaning up our waters. We simply cannot allow greed and the quest for gold to endanger our water and our lives.\u201d
\nAmerican Rivers added, \u201cLarge-scale gold mining must be stopped from moving south into the Rapid Creek watershed, where it would threaten the Oceti Sakowin (The Great Sioux Nation) homelands, treaty territory and present-day reservation lands and rural and ranching communities.\u201d
\nF3 Gold has nearly 2,500 mining claims and wants to explore above the inlet to Pactola Reservoir; its claims extend into the lake.
\nMineral Mountain Resources has mining claims on over 7,500 acres and is drilling on private land near Pe\u2019 Sla, a major cultural site of the Lakota people. The site is so important that the Lakota and Dakota tribes purchased a portion of Pe\u2019 Sla in order to protect it, without regard to the fact that it was already their land under the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty.
\n\u201cWater is our first medicine and we need to recognize freshwater, such as Rapid Creek, as the living entity that she is,\u201d said Lakota grandmother Carla Rae Marshall. Also speaking at the American Rivers announcement, she advocated, \u201cWe must protect her as if our life and the lives of future generations of all species depend on it \u2013 because it does.\u201d
\nWith upcoming Rapid City Council elections, the Clean Water Alliance noted that Ward 4 candidate Walt Swan, Jr., \u201cis solid on water issues.\u201d In Ward 3, Jerry Wright and Chad Lewis \u201chave supported resolutions Clean Water Alliance has brought that now protect water.\u201d Two others who \u201chave helped protect water\u201d are Laura Armstrong and Ritchie Nordstrom, both running unopposed.
\n\u201cHere in the Black Hills, we are the guardians of a headwaters of the northern Great Plains. Water that flows out of the Black Hills below ground lies under at least four states and parts of Canada,\u201d the alliance said.
\n\u201cWater that flows out of the Hills above ground flows down the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers and into the Gulf of Mexico. The water we are protecting has places to go and things to do.\u201d
\nAfter the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty reserved the Black Hills to the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota in perpetuity, miners proceeded to enter the area anyway to explore for gold.
\nFor more than 150 years, the U.S. Government has tried to get legal title, and the Oceti Sakowin has rejected the offer of a settlement. In the meantime, billions of dollars of gold have been extracted from the same mining area now being billed as a world-class investment.
\nThe Great Sioux Nation has received no compensation for the gold, while, previous mining operations have harmed the land, wildlife, and water, resulting in two Superfund sites.
\nToxic cyanide, arsenic, and other heavy metals used in modern mining could pollute Rapid Creek and its related Madison Aquifer, American Rivers concluded.
\nNearly 90,000 people who rely on the watershed in Rapid City, Box Elder and Ellsworth Air Force Base alone, \u201ccould suffer serious consequences,\u201d including a loss of tourism revenue, the main income source here, it recognized.
\nAmerican Rivers and its partners called on the Forest Service to conduct thorough Environmental Impact Statements on the proposed mineral projects, involving formal consultation with 16 tribal nations, currently on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic.
\nThe organization, operating since 1973, named nine other endangered rivers for 2020. It cited the Upper Mississippi River (Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, Wisconsin), Lower Missouri River (Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas), Big Sunflower River (Mississippi), Puyallup River (Washington), South Fork Salmon River (Idaho), Menominee River (Michigan, Wisconsin), Okefenokee Swamp (Georgia, Florida), Ocklawaha River (Florida), and Lower Youghiogheny River (Pennsylvania).
\nHonored as River of the Year was the Delaware River (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, Maryland), \u201ca national success story for restoration and a model for equitable and innovative clean water solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Contact Talli Nauman at talli.nauman@gmail.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n

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Mining pollution threats recently earned Rapid creek, or Mniluzahan, a 2020 designation as one of America\u2019s Most Threatened Rivers. (Photo by Talli Nauman) RAPID CITY \u2013 As tribal governments awaited federal consultation over proposed increases in large-scale gold prospecting on Rapid Creek upstream from here, the grassroots Black Hills Clean <\/p>\n

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Shared by Native Sun News Today<\/a> May 29, 2020<\/p>\n

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