Colorful Atlanta Gold CEO Ernie Simmons took his moment before the Idaho Senate Resources and Environment Committee Monday to harangue the federal government and environmentalists for all of the red tape modern miners face because of past environmental messes.
Simmons, a native Canadian who is proudly a naturalized American citizen, said Canadian companies like Atlanta Gold ask investors from all over the world to invest in Idaho and other states to dig up the mineral wealth that creates jobs and taxes and provides the material needed from everything from gold chains to cell phones.
“We’re advertising we want foreign investment,” Simmons said. “But we are not here to clean up past mine sites.”
That’s exactly what he’s doing at Atlanta Gold after losing a $2 million lawsuit for Atlanta Gold’s violation of the Clean Water Act from arsenic and iron coming out f an old line tunnel. For Simmons its remarkably similar to 30 years ago when his Canadian Mining Co employer at the time Noranda Corp. was forced to pay $35 million for a water treatment system to clean up the heavy metal laden water coming out of the the then infamous Blackbird Cobalt Mine 20 miles northwest of Salmon.
He had been sent to the Blackbird in 1980 to reopen the old mine and open an American source for the strategic mineral, cobalt. But the Congo government of Mobutu Sese Seko, the main source of cobalt, flooded the market and dropped the price so low the Blackbird Mine could open.
It never has. But Simmons vowed to open Atlanta Gold, on a tributary of the Middle Fork of the Boise River next to the Elmore County forest town of Atlanta.
“We can generate 400 jobs for 400 families in Idaho,” Simmons said. “ We can add significantly to the tax base from circulating dollars within the business community. And, we can do this for a number of generations.”
But Simmons said if the United States is going to tell the foreign investors who fund the Canadian companies like Atlanta Gold that he runs that it’s impossible to build and get into production a mine, “then stop taking our money.”
Simmons told the committee how he has mined all over the world and how other countries are much easier to get a mine into production than the U.S. He said he helped the Mongolian government set up its mining establishment.
“I’m the biggest landowner in the land of Mongolia,” Simmons said. “I own about a half a million acres.”
Republican Sen. Jeff Siddoway quizzed Simmons on what the Idaho Legislature could do for mining.
“It sounds like a guy could get rich just following you around,” Siddoway said.
What a blowhard. Obviously, successful mine openings escapes him. Since 1982, the promises of Atlanta Gold opening a mine near Atlanta has been redundant and laughable. As of this morning, my stock is four (.04) cents a share. wow. Perhaps Mr. Simmons should go back to Mongolia where he owns half the country (ha) and open a mine there.
With few exceptions mining companies have only one thing in mind and after they get it they can’t get out of town fast enough with no concern about the mess they’ve left behind. This guy is a blowhard who may be incapable of the right kind of sweet talk to get what he wants in Atlanta. The gullibility though of Idaho politicians in dealing with such exploiters shouldn’t be underestimated.