KILGORE, Idaho — Local conservation groups say they have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service over the agency's approval to expand mining in the Centennial Mountains.
Canadian mining company Excellon Resources plans to build a gold mine in a 16,700-acre area of national forest north of Kilgore.
The Idaho Conservation League and the Greater Yellowstone Coalition are opposed to the mining company's five-year plan. They say Excellon will extract the gold with a cyanide heap leach mining technique, which could pose a risk to the nearby waterways that supply drinking water for the Eastern Snake Plain aquifer.
“Drilling poses real risks to water quality,” says Allison Michalski, senior Idaho conservation associate at GYC. “But the magnitude of these risks at Kilgore remain largely unknown, because the Forest Service never took the legally required ‘hard look’ at the threats to water quality and fish from exploration drilling.”
The groups also say the Kilgore project construction will hurt the habitat for local wildlife in the area.
Excellon says the conservation groups didn't file a lawsuit. Instead, the company says the groups are trying to reopen an existing lawsuit that was filed in 2018.
The company also says they do not currently have plans to build a mine and is only in the "exploration phase."
They also dispute the group's claim that the Forest Service didn't address the threats to water quality and wildlife.
On Excellon's website, the company says the project will help support local businesses. The project, which is currently in the "exploration and development" phase, has the possibility of expanding in the future, the mining company says.
"Multiple opportunities exist to enhance the project, including significant exploration potential," a page on the project reads. "The Kilgore project is scalable in size and throughput and is open for expansion to the north, south and west. Opportunities for step-out drilling exist around the current area of mineralization."
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