Judge orders construction of Nevada gold mine halted

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday ordered a temporary halt to construction at Barrick Gold of North America’s Cortez Hills Mine in Lander County, Nev. The ruling is a blow to Barrick, which has nearly completed construction of the Cortez Hills facilities and is developing the open pit with an expectation of production beginning early next year. It’s a victory for environmental organizations and Western Shoshone tribes that filed an appeal after the U.S. District Court in Reno denied their request for an injunction against the project. “We think it’s very significant. How long it stays in place is another question,” said Julie Cavanaugh Bill of the Western Shoshone Defense Project, one of the organizations that filed the lawsuit against the U.S. Bureau of Land Management over its approval of the Cortez Hills project. “We’re very pleased, but we feel bad for the contractors and workers.” Barrick and Bureau of Land Management officials declined comment early Thursday evening. The three-panel appeals court in San Francisco approved the appeal,claiming the BLM violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to perform sufficient study of dewatering impacts and potential mercury air emissions for ore transport at the mine...read more