MEIC is perhaps best know for the twice-won, citizen-initiated law banning cyanide heap-leach mining in Montana, which has now been upheld in the district, federal, and state Supreme courts despite Canyon Resources, Inc.’s efforts to repeal it in order to develop a massive open-pit, cyanide leach gold mine less than 800 feet from the Blackfoot River headwaters. 

Initiative 137 was a response to the abysmal track record of open pit cyanide leach mining in Montana, as exemplified by cleanup fiascos  at the Golden Sunlight, Zortman/Landusky, and Kendall mines and the Montana Department of Environmental Quality's failure to adequately regulate such mines as required by state law.

RECENT UPDATE

(November 2008)   U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Final
Legal Challenge to I-137

PREVIOUS CHALLENGES

(May 2008)  Cyanide Ban Upheld

After the passage of I-137 in 1998, Canyon Resources sued seemingly everyone.  Challenges were filed in both state and federal courts.  The company challenged the ballot language, the qualification of the initiative, and its impact.

The passage of the initiative prevented Canyon from developing the McDonald Gold Project at the headwaters of the Blackfoot River.  Canyon challenged I-137 in State district court and lost.  It appealed to the Montana Supreme Court and lost.  Canyon challenged I-137 in federal district court and lost.  It appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and lost.  Canyon even tried—unsucessfully—to repeal the ban at the legislature, and with its own initiative (I-147), which lost at the ballot box in 2004.

The final suit was a renewal of Canyon’s claim that Montana owed it more than $500 million for banning its preferred method of mining.  Canyon lost that claim in federal district court, and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has now affirmed the lower court’s decision and dismissed the suit.  Hopefully, this is finally over.

IN THE NEWS 

Mining company loses again in court over cyanide ban (by The Associated Press - 04/23/08)