Nevada miners blast new federal reporting rule

Miners contend the new reporting requirement is unnecessary and a waste of time, but environmentalists insist it will alert the public to potential dangers caused by mining.

Russ Fields, president of the Nevada Mining Association, said mining companies have no problem with reporting the amount of cyanide and other chemicals brought to their sites.

What they object to is reporting the amount of naturally-occurring minerals - such as arsenic - imbedded in small concentrations in waste rock, he said.

"A teaspoon of arsenic is a very dangerous thing; you don't want to be around it," Fields said. "But when that teaspoon is the sum total concentration in a hill of rock, it does not pose a health risk.

"(The report) isn't really meaningful when it applies to mining."

But Lee Dazey, northern Nevada director of the environmental group Citizen Alert, said just because toxic metals are imbedded in waste rock doesn't mean they can't harm the environment.

Digging up and exposing these metals to the weather allows them to creep into watersheds and the food chain, she said.

"It's the same with uranium, you start messing with it and that's how it gets into the environment," Dazey said. "Even though it's a natural element, their mining practice is making it accessible."

Mines will be required to file the reports beginning in July. Many other industries have been required to do so since passage of the federal Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act in 1986.

The law was passed in the wake of a chemical leak at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India that killed more than 6,000 people.

In a related development, a former Reno-area water heater manufacturer has been fined $107,981 for failure to file the report.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials said American Water Heater Co. of Stead did not file reports from 1993 to 1996.

"People have a right to this information and a right to know if they are being exposed to these chemicals," said Adam Browning of the EPA.

A company spokesman said the failure to file was an oversight and the problem was promptly straightened out after the EPA's 1997 discovery of the violations.

The agency and company agreed on the fine last month. The company becomes only the fifth Nevada company to be fined for failing to report its toxic releases.

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