Oregonians have roughly two months to weigh in on a Nevada company’s plans to mine gold on public and private land in eastern Oregon using the toxic chemical cyanide. It’s among the final hurdles the Paramount Gold company needs to clear in order to open the first such mine in the state. Envi ronmental groups have expressed concern about potential cyanide pollution in the area’s groundwater and have been outspoken against the commonly used method of gold mining and the proposed mine. The company first sought to open a mine in Malheur County in 2012 but did not file a complete permit application for the Grassy Mountain Gold and Silver Mine about 20 miles southwest of Vale and about 70 miles west of Boise until 2023. The application then had to go through a year and a half of technical reviews and approvals, according to a timeline compiled by the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries, which is overseeing state-level permitting. On Thursday, the agency and other state natural resource agencies issued draft permits for the project and they are accepting public comments via email until 5 p.m. Mountain Standard Time on Feb. 6, 2026. The public can also attend a public hearing on Jan. 29 at 5 p.m. MST either online or in person at the Vale Senior Center. Submit public comment to the draft permits to [email protected]. Attend an informational meeting on Jan. 29 at 5 p.m. MST online or at the Vale Senior Center. The underground gold mine would be located on less than 7 total acres, mostly on private land. But the full project area — including roads and facilities to store spent chemicals, water and rocks — spans roughly 488 acres of mostly public land managed by the federal Bureau of Land Management. The agency solicited public comment for its permitting in August. Paramount would also rely on a state groundwater permit to draw up to 72 gallons of water per minute to run the operation. Ore at Grassy Mountain would be blasted and drilled about 500 to 1,000 feet below ground, where the gold is not found in chunks or veins, but is evenly distributed as tiny pieces within the rock. The extracted rock would then be ground into fine particles and mixed with water to separate the gold, leaving a liquid slurry called “tailings.” The tailings would be stored in a facility at the mine, containing unknown concentrations of heavy metals and some level of residual cyanide, according to Antony Sparrow, a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. But the company would need to undertake several processes to get cyanide concentrations reduced to the “lowest practicable level to meet the state-regulated hazardous waste disposal exclusion,” Sparrow said in an email. In a statement following Paramount’s 2023 application, the Oregon chapter of the environmental nonprofit Sierra Club called the industry “a dirty business and highly disruptive of the natural and human environment.” Sierra Club officials expressed concern as well about the mine’s potential to damage land that is part of the traditional territory of the Northern Paiute people. Bureau of Land Management officials have said if any of the cyanide or other chemicals from the mine were to leak into groundwater, the drinking water in nearby Vale would be “extremely unlikely” to be impacted because the city relies on a separate groundwater basin. Officials wrote that “no chemicals used in the mining and gold recovery process will remain onsite after mining ends.” The company expects construction to take two years, followed by seven to eight years of mining, four years of remediation work on the land and 20 years of monitoring. The mine could, according to Paramount estimates, produce 380,000 ounces of gold — or 23,750 lbs — and 554,000 ounces of silver, collectively worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Company officials say it would also create 270 jobs, up to $10 million in annual wages and bring $15 million a year in taxes to the region. The post State seeks public input on Oregon’s first cyanide-processed gold mining operation appeared first on Salem Reporter. ...read more read less