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BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The Nez Perce Tribe is suing a Canadian mining company contending the company is illegally allowing arsenic, cyanide and mercury to pollute a central Idaho area that the tribe has hunting and fishing rights to from an 1855 treaty with the United States.
The tribe filed the lawsuit Thursday in U.S. District Court seeking to force British Columbia-based Midas Gold and three Idaho-based subsidiaries to stop discharging pollutants.
Midas Gold has never mined in the area about 40 miles (65 kilometers) east of McCall but in the last decade has acquired mining claims and developed a plan it says will ultimately clean up the mess left by a century of mining by other companies.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has spent $4 million since the 1990s trying to clean up the area that includes streams with federally protected salmon.
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