Even in the bitter cold of winter, the hunt goes on in the high country deserts of northeastern Nevada for what latter-day sourdough miners call ”no see `um gold.”
Behind America`s latest gold rush is newly developed technology that uses the deadly poison cyanide to extract major profits from rocks with gold deposits so small that previous generations were unable to exploit them.
The resulting boom brings great wealth to Nevada, but it also sparks angry debate. Environmentalists charge that the cyanide, so poisonous that a speck no larger than a rice grain can kill an adult in seconds, poses major dangers to wildlife and that the vast pits created by the operations are blighting the landscape.
Others criticize the fees of $2.50 an acre, set by the Mining Act of 1872, that allow prospectors to buy a gold mining claim on public lands for less than the cost of a six-pack of beer in Elko.
The heap leach mining process has created a modern-day gold rush all across the American West, but the biggest strikes in this latter-day bonanza are surfacing in the gold fields surrounding Elko.
In some cases, mine promoters note, the gold recovered is no larger than bacteria, yet by bathing vast quantities of rock in cyanide, even deposits with as little as 0.01 ounces per ton can show a profit.
Nevada now produces 54 percent of the gold mined in America, and the United States has become the world`s third-largest gold producer, behind South Africa and the Soviet Union.
The boom here is so intense that one of the biggest new mine operators, Canada-based Echo Bay Mines, has left stacks of its annual stockholders report on the pamphlet racks at Elko`s airport, hoping to encourage investors.
This report says that in 1990 Echo Bay extracted 241,596 ounces of gold from its Round Mountain mine at a cost of only $198 per ounce while the price that year was $370 an ounce. Similar costs are reported by Echo Bay`s competitors.
Many places along the Tuscarora mountains west of Elko have been scraped down to lifeless hardrock in the quest that saw U.S. gold production grow tenfold in the last decade.
”We feel pretty good. No, we feel great,” said Elko Mayor Jim Polkinhorne. ”We figure the mines around here are going to keep running full blast as long as gold prices stay above $275” an ounce.
While gold prices have fluctuated wildly since the U.S. removed the $35-an-ounce ceiling in 1971, they have never dipped below $325 an ounce. In the early 1980s gold hit highs near $850 an ounce; the current price is $356. Driven by the mining boom, Elko has grown from 8,000 people in 1980 to 23,000 in 1990. The city`s Chamber of Commerce estimates that the mines generate 8,000 jobs while agriculture, once the area`s predominant industry, provides 600.
”We`ve only got maybe 100 ranches in the entire county, and we have more than 100 gold mines now,” Polkinhorne said. ”Mining is changing the face of our cowboy country.”
But the boom has a downside.
The congressional General Accounting Office (GAO) released a report last summer praising mine operators` efforts to protect wildlife, but noting that more than 9,000 cyanide-related animal deaths occurred at gold mining operations in Nevada, California and Arizona from 1984 to 1989.
In November, Colorado officials acknowledged that a leak in a holding pond at a cyanide leach mine operated by Summitville Consolidated Mining Co. had killed every fish along a 17-mile stretch of the Alamosa River in the state`s scenic San Luis Valley.
And just as the first of the Elko area`s mines opened in 1988, more than 1,000 ducks, geese and other migratory birds died when they mistook a cyanide- laced holding pond at a heap leach mine for one of the marshes they use on their annual flights.
The leach process uses millions of pounds of cyanide each year. For example, in 1990 the Dow Chemical Co., the largest U.S. supplier, estimated it had sold 160 million pounds of cyanide, and about 80 million pounds to Nevada alone.
Mine operators defend the poison`s use, noting that it quickly loses its lethal qualities when exposed to sunshine.
But critics warn that the chemical often seeps deep into the ground, where it retains its potency indefinitely and becomes a potential source of groundwater pollution.
Fences, nets and even loudspeaker systems blaring music have been installed to keep wildlife away from the ponds where the poison is at full strength, the operators add.
Throughout the West, hundreds of people have seized on the 1872 mining law to stake claims that have given them title to public lands, most owned by the federal Bureau of Land Management, at the $2.50-an-acre rate, a tiny fraction of their actual value.
The 3-foot-high white plastic pipes used by thousands of private prospectors to stake their claims stand in rows all over the sage-dotted Nevada landscape.
Mark Rasmussen, a heavy equipment operator at one of the mines operated by the Newmont Mining Co. of Denver, said he and many of his friends stake their claims as a ”crapshoot,” hoping that after they mark off an acre of ground as their own, one of the big mining companies will come along and find gold there.
On Monday, the American Mining Congress, the lobby for mine owners, plans to launch a major effort in Denver to head off congressional reformers, including Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.), who seek legislation to replace the $2.50-per-acre fees with a lease agreement.
The reformers also propose charging royalties and, for the first time, forcing mine operators to repair the large scars opened by their mines, said Robert Webster, spokesman for the mining lobby.
Bumpers notes that a few people have found great wealth by staking claims under the Mining Act. The GAO estimated in a recent report that since 1970 the government has sold land worth up to $47 million for just $4,500.
In Aspen, Colo., renowned as a playground for the world`s glitterati, one savvy prospector staked a gold claim on slopes owned by the Aspen Ski Co.
Other frequently cited cases include one in Phoenix, where an enterprising citizen staked a mining claim within the city limits for $47 and now could sell it for $376,000, and a claim near the casino strip in Las Vegas staked for $775 in 1983 and appraised at $1.8 million in 1991.
Bumpers calls the 1872 Mining Act ”America`s biggest ongoing scam” and charges that mining companies extract an estimated $4 billion per year worth of minerals from public lands without paying any royalties.
