• The McDonald Meadows Gold Project would be one of the largest cyanide heap-leach mines in the U.S. — three times the size of the Zortman/Landusky mines near Malta, MT and five times the size of the Golden Sunlight mine near Whitehall, MT.
• The mining activities would affect 8 square miles (5,100 acres), with a total surface disturbance of about 4 square miles (2,600 acres). It would destroy 42 acres of wetlands.
• The ore is of such low grade (.02 ounces of gold per ton of ore) that 75 tons of ore would have to be mined to recover enough gold (1.5 ounces) to make a single bracelet.
• The proposed mine would be located on land primarily leased from either the State of Montana or the privately-owned Sieben Ranch Company. Canyon Resources currently pays $3 an acre for its state-leased land.
• The mine would operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 12-15 years. Canyon Resources plans to employ 390 miners during the production phase of the operation.
• A 3-mile section of Highway 200 would have to be relocated, moving it 1,300 feet closer to the Blackfoot River.
• Over 2,500 supply trucks would travel the highway every year, including 788 truckloads of diesel fuel, 386 truckloads of sodium cyanide and 236 truckloads of ammonium nitrate.
• Each day the mine would use an average of 2.5 million gallons of water, enough to flush 420,000 toilets.
• Canyon Resources, a small mining company based in Golden, Colorado is the owner and operator of the McDonald Gold Project. Canyon Resources Co. has experienced net losses in the last 5 years of $28 million - including $6 million in 1995 and $7 million in 1996.
• The mine could generate $2.2 billion in revenues for the mining company. The gold deposit (8.2 million ounces of gold) is buried under two buttes just 12 miles south of the Scapegoat Wilderness Area at the confluence of the Blackfoot River and Landers Fork.
• The pit would measure over a mile wide, nearly a mile long and 1,200 feet deep — large enough to contain 100 Giant Sphinxes. It would rival the Berkeley Pit in size, and would be located just 800 yards from the River.
• In order to mine ore from the pit, the groundwater level would have to be lowered 800 feet. During the first 3 years of operation, the mine would have to pump up to 15.8 million gallons of groundwater every single day from the pit. For comparison, the City of Great Falls typically uses 12.6 million gallons a day.
• Over 980 million tons of rock (enough to fill 130,000 100-car freight trains) would be excavated to create the pit — that's 175,000 tons per day over the life of the mine.
• The pit would not be reclaimed. It would be allowed to refill with water, and will remain forever.
• The waste rock piles would cover 900 acres, hold about 500 million tons of rock, and be 300-600 feet high.

• They would be unlined, and will leak directly into the alluvial groundwater system of the Blackfoot River and Landers Fork. 
  
• The crushed rock piles in the cyanide heap-leach would reach 300 to 600 feet in height (as much as 4 times taller than the State Capitol building. The pads would cover 880 acres (about 342 city blocks).
• A single plastic liner 6 mils thick would line the bottom of the leach pads. The EPA estimates that these liner systems average one leak per acre of liner — that's 880 leaks! Every cyanide heap-leach mine in Montana has had documented releases of cyanide solution in violation of their permits.
• The heap-leach pads would have a leak-detection system, but no leak collection system.
• The cyanide holding ponds would contain 100 million gallons of cyanide solution, would cover 70 acres, and would be only 1/4 mile from the Blackfoot River.

IMPACTS ON FISHERIES
IMPACTS ON WATER QUALITY

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