Boy, I never thought I'd see the day when enviros in the Okanogan Highlands would actually agree to allow a gold mine at Buckhorn Mountain. But it's happened.

Today the Okanogan Highlands Alliance, the Washington Environmental Council and the Center for Environmental Law and Policy acquiesced and dropped their fight against the underground mine proposed by Crown Resources and Kinross Gold.

David Mann

This fight dates back to the 1990s, when the mine was envisioned as an open-pit affair like the ones that have left a trail of destruction across Western states, often sticking taxpayers with cleanup costs, as we revealed in this 2001 expose'. (Here is that package's story on the Buckhorn mine.)

In this incarnation, the mining companies are instead proposing an underground mine, which is inherently less environmentally damaging -- but which still bears watching. The enviros just didn't think the state Ecology Department was up to that task, so they got concessions that will allow them to directly keep an eye on things themselves, said their attorney, David Mann:

We weren't going to stop this underground mine. It's a very different mine than it was before and, frankly, the Legislature has set up an almost impossible process for appeals. . . . It's set up to be very deferential to Ecology.

And even if they had won, the miners would just have come back with another plan, Mann figures -- especially since the price of gold is now riding at something like $925 an ounce. With roughly a million ounces of gold to be found in the mountain, that starts to approach $1 billion worth of gold. Said Mann:

What we needed was, we needed to know we were going to see a problem as soon as it occurs.

What did they get? More places where pollution will be monitored; the companies will have to hire an outside firm to handle pollution monitoring instead of doing it in-house; they agreed to allow the enviros to hire their own pollution-monitoring outfit, which can do spot checks of its own, including unannounced inspections and site visits; and an annual meeting with Ecology and the company where they can raise hell if something's going wrong.

And -- oh, yeah -- the enviros also got $750,000 to do wetlands-mitigation work in the areas. Plus the companies agreed to retire the water rights to 25 acres of irrigated alfalfa when the mine closes after about 7 1/2 years. That water will stay in streams to benefit the environment.

There's more to the agreement, some of which is explained in the enviros' press release. Nothing at this hour on Ecology's website or Kinross's.