>>The company extracted roughly 800,000 tons of copper and zinc before flooding the area, turning it into Goose Pond. >>The former mine is now a Superfund site

>>The company extracted roughly 800,000 tons of copper and zinc before flooding the area, turning it into Goose Pond. >>The former mine is now a Superfund site, and a 2013 study by researchers at Dartmouth College found widespread evidence of toxic metals in nearby sediment, water and fish. Cleanup costs, borne by taxpayers, are estimated between $23 million and $45 million. Yup, that company successfully extracted the value and externalized the costs onto the taxpayers - they got the benefit and we hold the bag of crap. Which is precisely why the laws were passed in the first place, because this was not an exception, but standard procedure. If they want to relent and allow standard mining, then they need to require an up-front bond of the appropriate amount to fund the cleanup, on the scale of $100 million. Anything short of that is utterly foolish (it's not like we're ignorant of standard mining practices). <sarc>I'm sure the financial genius MBAs can figure it out (along with how to still screw the general public plebes). </sarc>