The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

328 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
Gorton finished drafting the gold mine measure less than an hour
before it was approved, still in his handwriting, by the conference committee.
“Indignant as hell,” he persuaded his fellow lawmakers that the
project had been unfairly blocked by the Clinton Administration. Battle
Mountain Gold Co. of Houston had invested $80 million over seven years
to secure dozens of state and federal permits and win legal battles with
environmentalists and the tribes, Gorton said. Now the Interior Department
was citing a little-known provision of an 1872 mining law limiting
the amount of federal land that could be used for mining waste. It
wouldn’t stop in Okanogan County, Gorton warned. Babbitt was trying to
shut down mines and confiscate vast stretches of land across the West “by
fiat as a dictator.” 11
Opponents said the company’s plan to blast 97 million tons of rock off
the back side of Buckhorn Mountain would be a body-blow to the landscape.
They also noted that the site of the proposed Crown Jewel mine—a
name tailor-made for irony—was largely on federal land. Their main fear
was that the cyanide-water mixture used to leach gold from powdered
rock would pollute waterways. Nevertheless, the state Department of
Ecology had signed off on the project, which offered the promise of 150
jobs in one of the state’s poorest counties. “An honorable government
doesn’t treat its citizens the way they treated Crown Jewel,” Gorton said.
“Bureaucrats in the bowels of the Interior Department don’t make the
laws of the United States.” 12
Norm Dicks backed Gorton, saying the company had been treated unfairly,
but Murray said it was flat wrong to rewrite mining laws “in the
middle of the night.” 13
enviRonMentALists And the tRiBes christened Gorton “Cyanide
Slade,” the “Midnight Rider,” galloping once more with industry lobbyists.
First the forests, then the dams; now an open-pit gold mine. Even if
you liked the idea, “watching this law’s birth would be like watching your
own surgery for hemorrhoids. It might be good for you in the end, but
you’d just as soon avert your eyes,” one columnist wrote. Dotzauer’s collection
of clippings was growing. 14
Gorton observed testily that no one ever complained when he worked
with lobbyists for consumer-advocate groups. Environmentalists and the
tribes routinely sent their lobbyists to help senators write bills. “It happens
all the time.” And why would he turn down advice from great lawyers
and experts in specialized fields? “I don’t want to write something
that doesn’t meet the purpose it’s designed for.” As for riders, “The ad-