THE MINE

Book Synopsis

Set in Portland, Oregon, the Wallowa Mountains, and Washington's San Juan Islands, THE MINE is a knife-edged thriller that captures the battle between a young, hard-charging biologist intent on closing an illegal cyanide-leach gold mine, and a corrupt mining company that will stop at nothing to defeat him. A newlywed devoted to his wife and his first professional job at Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality, biologist Ryan Evans is shocked when DEQ approves permits to expand a massive cyanide leach gold mine by four-fold, nearly ten square miles. His obsessive investigation uncovers deep corruption, fraud, and the likely murder of a DEQ investigator. And this knowledge may destroy all that he has ever cherished.

Background

In 1990, the Summitville Gold Mine in Colorado released a flood of cyanide, heavy metals, arsenic, and sulfuric acid into the Alamosa River, killing all aquatic life for over 17 miles of the river and contaminating downstream farmland. The Canadian company, Galactic Resources, soon filed for bankruptcy and abandoned the site. The mine is now an EPA Superfund site and to date, the EPA has spent over 200 million dollars for ongoing clean-up.

In 1990 the Brewer Gold Mine in Jefferson, South Carolina failed, flooding the Lynches River with over ten million gallons of solution containing cyanide and a long list of toxic heavy metals. The spill killed at least 11,000 fish and decimated 50 miles of the Lynches River. The Brewer Company later abandoned the site, and the leach mine is now a Federal Superfund Site. Taxpayers will be paying many millions of dollars for cleanup into perpetuity.

These are just two examples of how gold is mined today. While fiction, THE MINE is based on Colorado's $200,000,000 Summitville Mine disaster, Europe's Aurul Mine catastrophe which decimated over 150 miles of the Danube River, and the coming debacle to top them all: Alaska's 20-square mile Pebble Mine.