Gold mine to court: Let us dump waste in lake

[spanone]

this is about GOLD, not something we need to exist
i can't fucking believe what justice scalia said.....


WASHINGTON - A lawyer representing an Alaska gold mine urged the Supreme Court on Monday to uphold the mine owner's permit even though he acknowledged that the company's plan to dump metal waste into a nearby lake would kill all aquatic life.

But mining company lawyer Theodore Olson told justices that the waste is more accurately defined as "fill." And, after a decade or more of mining, he said, the lake could be restocked with no permanent harm to the environment.

"There will be more fish in a bigger lake, and more livable conditions for the fish and the aquatic life after this process is finished," Olson said.

Justice David Souter called that logic "Orwellian." He said the mining company, Coeur Alaska Inc., and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which granted a permit for the mine, were "defining away" the problem by calling the wastewater discharge fill.

"When you are destroying the entire living (bodies) of this lake, it seems to me that it's getting Orwellian to say there are rigorous environmental standards," Souter said.

Other justices appeared to disagree, noting that an alternative to the dumping would destroy nearby wetlands and create a stack of tailings larger than the Pentagon.

"Isn't it arguable that the best place for really toxic stuff is at the bottom of a lake so long as it stays there?" asked Justice Antonin Scalia.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28625089/

[muntrv]

1. Let's dump Scalito to the bottom of the lake.

[Horse with no Name]

2. Good call. He fits the definition for "highly toxic stuff". n/t

[NOW tense]

3. How can this be a feasible idea?

Could I please destroy all life in the lake and let it run off to where ever? I will put some fish back in when I am done nudge nudge wink wink.

Of course they will go under and leave it to be a super fund site when they are done.

[thunder rising]

4. Except the I'll declare BANRUPTCY the day the mine shuts down!!! Sucker!

[NOW tense]

6. It seems like that is what every mine does. n/t

[spanone]

8. if it wasn't real i wouldn't believe it.....

[B o d i]

5. Theodore Olson? THAT Ted Olson from Bush v Gore?

He's on the wrong side of everything, if it pays well.

[dbackjon]

7. Yes that Olson.

Too bad he always didn't fly with his wife

[peekaloo]

9. Big Tony's getting lazy.

this was Homer Simpson's logic in The Simpsons Movie.

[HillbillyBob]

10. I have been hearing abou this bs for years at this particular site

so whats a few hundred tons of cyanide laced muck compared to GOLD the god of wealth to a few little fishies and an entire ecosystem?