Easier said then done. We are a mining family and my husband still mines after 35 years. When you close a mine it's not like shutting off the lights and you can turn them on again. They are usually stripped and they flood.
You have to sink great amounts of money to open them up again. It has to be well worth the money to do that since you are also dealing with rules and regulations and every Indian that thinks it's holy ground.
I didnt think it would be easy, I just think it will be necessary.
Time to tell the Feather-Indians that they are US citizens and have no more special claims. Time to get off the rez.
In addition to everything you said, (which people really need to understand about ANY industry in the US that goes dark and is shipped off-shore - whether it be steel plants, mines, manufacturing, farmland that is converted to something else, etc), once you shut down a mine that had been in operation, you need to file a new NEPA permitting process, and if the mine had been in conforming operation from before the Clinton administration, the new NEPA and NPDES permitting requirements are MUCH tougher than the old rules under which the mine had been operating.
For a mine of fair size, I’d reckon that permitting and other issues require an up-front cost of at least $0.5B to get the first load out.
In addition to everything you said, (which people really need to understand about ANY industry in the US that goes dark and is shipped off-shore - whether it be steel plants, mines, manufacturing, farmland that is converted to something else, etc), once you shut down a mine that had been in operation, you need to file a new NEPA permitting process, and if the mine had been in conforming operation from before the Clinton administration, the new NEPA and NPDES permitting requirements are MUCH tougher than the old rules under which the mine had been operating.
For a mine of fair size, I’d reckon that permitting and other issues require an up-front cost of at least $0.5B to get the first load out.