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The American mining industry is making a comeback. There's bipartisan support for producing more minerals and metals in the U.S. for national and economic security. Prices for gold, silver and other metals are at historic highs, and places that have opposed mining in the past are rethinking those positions. Montana Public Radio's Ellis Juhlin reports.
ELLIS JUHLIN, BYLINE: Roughly a thousand people live in Lincoln, Montana. Over a hundred of them are inside the town's log-cabin-style community hall tonight - a nod to the long history of timber harvesting. But tonight's meeting is for a different industry - mining. An Australian company called Sentinel Metals invited people to come hear about their plans to explore for gold about five miles outside of town. Krista Lee Evans is Sentinel's spokesperson.
KRISTA LEE EVANS: The exploration project is, you know, a great opportunity to provide some - a few local jobs and gain a better understanding of what the deposit looks like.
JUHLIN: Finding at least some gold is a pretty sure bet. Thirty years ago, a different company assessed the area and said there was enough to justify a big, open-pit gold mine. Recovering gold from the ore would have required dousing it with a chemical solution containing cyanide. At the time, there was a lot of opposition.
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JUHLIN: Lincoln sits near the headwaters of the Blackfoot River. It meanders through a valley of pine forests, snaking through fields of cattle and shadowed by sheer cliff faces. This morning, red-winged blackbirds are singing. The river was made famous by the novel-turned-movie "A River Runs Through It."
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MARK GERLACH: Please don't let this happen to the Blackfoot. Support I-137 to phase out cyanide leach mining.
JUHLIN: That's a TV ad from 1997 for a ballot initiative to ban cyanide mining in Montana, which was launched in response to the mine proposed near the river. Voters passed it, so no mine ever materialized here.
DERF JOHNSON: The Blackfoot River is just a sacred place for all Montanans, and so it raised alarm bells across the state.
JUHLIN: Derf Johnson is with the Montana Environmental Information Center, a government and industry watchdog group that helped pass the cyanide mining ban. He says executive orders and other actions by the Trump administration make this...
JOHNSON: The most (laughter) generous federal administration in terms of the mining industry and what they're asking for, possibly, you know, in the modern era, definitely.
JUHLIN: And Montana's politics have shifted to the right since the '90s. For most of that decade, Democrats held two of Montana's three seats in Congress. Now, both senators and its now two congressmen are enthusiastic Trump supporters, and Trump won Montana by big margins in the last three elections. Back at the meeting called by the new mine company, Jennifer Klinker, who owns a tow truck company in town, echoes what most people are saying tonight.
JENNIFER KLINKER: We support them 110%. What they're doing and they're bringing into the community of Lincoln, is absolutely phenomenal, and Montana needs something.
JUHLIN: A lot of people here would like to see Montana return to the days when extractive industries like mining and timber harvesting dominated the economy. But environmental advocate Derf Johnson says a lot of Montanans are also aware that mining has left behind big, expensive and long-lasting contamination, too.
JOHNSON: We really are ambivalent and skeptical of mining, no matter your political persuasion, and want to see things, if they are permitted, to be done correctly so that we don't have, you know, water pollution and air pollution and all the negative consequences that come with mining.
JUHLIN: Sentinel Metals says it's still in the very early stages of deciding whether to mine here. It insists that if it does, it won't threaten the health of the Blackfoot River. The river remains a cherished jewel for many Montanans. But if the company does move forward with development under President Trump, it would face far fewer regulatory hurdles.
For NPR News, I'm Ellis Juhlin in Missoula, Montana.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BLACKWATER FEVER'S "NIGHT CREEPER") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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