SANDPOINT — The Rock Creek Alliance is cheering a Montana Department of Environmental Quality ruling that holds up the creation of new mines until mine developers settle cleanup bills for past projects.

“We feel like we’re on solid ground here. The reason this legislation was passed originally and made into law was in direct response to the Pegasus mine bankruptcy,” said Rock Creek Alliance Executive Director Mary Costello.

Phillips Baker Jr. was a top executive at Pegasus Gold Corp., which developed the Zortman-Landusky mine near the Fort Belknap reservation. The company went bankrupt in 1998 and the project became the subject of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lawsuit that required $32 million cleanup costs.

Rock Creek Alliance contends Pegasus left taxpayers on the hook for cleaning up the Zortman-Landusky mine, in addition to the Basin Creek and Beal Mountain mines.

“But the legislation — the ‘bad actor’ provision that the legislature passed after Pegasus Gold went bankrupt was pretty clear — any principal or company headed by the principal can’t mine in Montana unless they come back and clean up their mess,” Costello said.

The Rock Creek Alliance is also pleased DEQ is acting to thwart repeats of mining fiascoes that occurred under Baker’s tenure at Pegasus.

Baker is a president of Hecla Mining Co., which seeks to develop the Rock Creek and Montanore silver and copper mining projects in northwestern Montana. The projects, particularly Rock Creek, have been met with determined opposition in Idaho due to impacts to water quality in the Clark Fork River and Lake Pend Oreille.

Three subsidiaries of Hecla Mining — Montanore Minerals Corp., Troy Mine Inc. and RC Resources — filed suit in Montana’s state court to overturn the “bad actor” designation.

The complaint against Montana DEQ distances Hecla from the Pegasus mine and other projects in which Baker was involved. Moreover, Baker’s role at Pegasus was as its chief financial officer.

“In his roles with the Pegasus entities, Mr. Baker neither directed or controlled mining operations at any of the Pegasus entities’ mines,” the subsidiaries’ legal counsel, William Mercer and Victoria Marquis, said in the complaint.

The subsidiaries’ counsel further argue that Montana DEQ’s director misconstrued the statute and made inaccurate and unsupported assumptions.

“The Montana Department of Environmental Quality has misinterpreted the statue and Hecla will vigorously challenge the decision,” Luke Russell, Hecla’s vice president of external affairs, said in a statement. “Requiring one company to pay for reclamation responsibilities of another, unrelated company, is a clear misapplication of the law.”

Hecla said it was a “huge stretch” to suggest that Hecla, a 127-year-old company, to pay for an unrelated company’s cleanup tab.

Keith Kinnaird can be reached by email at kkinnaird@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow him on Twitter @KeithDailyBee.