When the Idaho Conservation League’s Justin Hayes saw in 2004 federal pollution reports the remarkably high levels of mercury Nevada gold mines were emitting he got curious.

He saw reports of high mercury levels in Salmon Falls Reservoir on the Nevada border. He knew Idaho, working with the Idaho National Laboratory, was looking into the potential that prevailing winds were carrying the mercury into Idaho.

EPA had instituted a voluntary program in partnership with the Nevada mines to reduce mercury emissions but Hayes wasn’t convinced it gave the industry enough incentive to stop the emissions he considered a threat to Idaho children especially.

His wife Cyndi is a doctor who specializes in prenatal care and she taught him about the effects of mercury. When mercury falls into water, it accumulates in fish. Children of women exposed to high levels of mercury from tainted fish during pregnancy can suffer brain damage and learning disabilities.

They have two children, seven-year-old son Riley and 5-year-old daughter Kellan, who was an infant when Hayes got interested in the issue.

Even Nevada environmentalists were convinced the problem wasn’t as bad as Hayes said. But only 20 percent of the industry there was participating in the voluntary program.

Hayes rented a portable mercury monitor and went on a drive in 2005, beginning in southern Idaho into northern Nevada searching for mercury. He started on the Shoshone-Paiute’s Duck Valley Indian Reservation that straddles the Nevada-Idaho border and immediately picked up higher than normal readings.

As he got closer to the Jerritt Canyon Mine 50 miles north of Elko, the readings rose to very high levels. He measured even higher levels near other Nevada mines that convinced him the voluntary mercury program wasn’t doing enough.

Idaho officials came to the same conclusion when INL tests showed in 2005 that mercury levels in the air south of Twin Falls rose 30 to 70 percent higher than normal levels when winds blew from the southwest, where the gold mines are located.
In 2006, Nevada made the program mandatory and required all mines that emitted mercury above a certain level to use the maximum available technology for cutting mercury emissions.

Russ Fields, president of the Nevada Mining Association, said at the time Idaho's monitoring results and the Idaho Conservation League's active engagement with Nevada environmental officials and the miners played a "significant role" in putting the program in place.

"It would have gone forward without the Idaho Conservation League," Fields said. "It might not have gone forward as fast."

Nevada’s decision was an important step not just for its residents and surrounding states. In the new global marketplace. It would have been years until the federal government could have put in place the kind of rules Nevada could implement fairly quickly.

With the rules in place in Nevada, they would be the standard for gold mining mills worldwide, Fields said.

Most of the gold mining industry in Nevada moved to meet the new standards, either altering operations or buying new equipment. But Hayes’ inside sources told him that Jerritt Canyon’s mercury emissions were higher than its claims to have cut mercury emissions between 1998 and 2005 by 97 percent. Nevada knew it but wasn’t moving fast enough.

He wrote EPA Region 9 administrator Wayne Nastri in a May 17, 2007 letter that based on Nevada's tests, the company may have intentionally routed emissions around its pollution control equipment.

Hayes met with Nastri, who told him he would do something about it.
“From that moment on we got the sense that EPA was really working aggressively on this,” Hayes said.

Tests conducted by Nevada showed emissions near the 1998 levels that resulted in 9,300 pounds of annual mercury pollution. At 9,300 pounds per year, the mine was emitting more than 90 times the annual emissions of a coal-fired power plant like the one rejected by Idaho officials near Jerome in 2006.

In March, Nevada air regulators shut down Jerritt’s milling operation after a one year investigation, according to Leo Drozdoff, head of the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection. He was careful to point out how two other mining companies had installed equipment that produced a dramatic reduction in mercury air emissions, as he announced the closure.

"These events demonstrate not only that the incentives we've built into the program are producing early emissions reductions, but also that the regulations contain strong enforcement provisions," said Drozdoff. "This is exactly how the program was intended to work."

Yukon-Nevada Gold Corp. closed Jerritt Canyon’s gold mine earlier this month then this week shut down its milling operations. It reported a net loss Thursday of $14.6 million for the six months ending June 30 due to the Nevada-ordered shutdown.

The company laid off 240 underground miners Aug. 8 and this week laid off all remaining workers at the mill because of a malfunction, company officials said in a press release.

“A professional engineering firm has been contracted to provide essential on-site activities including ongoing environmental monitoring,” the company said.

Hayes said Friday the company’s financial woes didn’t have to happen. Other mining companies in Nevada like Kinross, Barrick Gold and Newmont Mining Co. installed pollution control equipment both before the state required and after.

"Part of their demise was their failure to address reality when it was apparent to everyone else,” Hayes said.