Case Study

Site of the first US mining CBA, Montana

Enduring mining oversight and mitigation through a focused Good Neighbor Agreement

Case study from Building Community Power: Community Benefits Agreements Across the Global Energy Supply Chain by Climate and Community Institute

In rural south-central Montana Sibanye-Stillwater Mining Company (Sibanye), one of the world’s largest precious metal miners, operates two underground mines to extract platinum and palladium destined for manufacturing catalytic converters in automobiles. Mine pollution threatens local rivers whose clean waters are crucial for agriculture and the area’s world-class trout fishery, and mine traffic presents a serious safety issue on narrow rural roads. Following a dispute over a planned mine expansion in the late 1990s, Sibanye’s predecessor Stillwater Mining Company and a conservation group called the Northern Plains Resource Council (NPRC), together with its two affiliate groups, Stillwater Protective Association and Cottonwood Resource Council, agreed to negotiate an agreement that aimed to address community concerns and avoid costly litigation.

The process of negotiating an agreement brought together strange bedfellows that were accustomed to long legal battles over mine development. Indeed, Northern Plains and its affiliate groups had previously sued the state of Montana over the mine’s permits, a process that went on for nearly a decade. But after the state legislature changed the very laws on which Northern Plains’ lawsuit was based, a judge dismissed the lawsuit without prejudice, meaning that the substantive issues were unresolved and could be taken up at a later date but effectively required the conservation groups to start the process from scratch.

“We could sue and try to hold back the timeframe of the [mining] development and hope they go away. But we decided against that [because] that was kind of fruitless. We were aware [of] good examples of failures in trying to delay, where you spend a lot of money and there's no influence at all. And so we just had to make that hard decision of [choosing] a different option – is there some way that we can make the performance of this company, this development acceptable?”

– Jerry Iverson, a local rancher and NPRC member

For Iverson and NPRC, the decision to negotiate with the mining company was motivated by the dismissal of the lawsuit and the prospect of having to start the litigation process anew, knowing that there was no guarantee of success. Negotiating became primarily about securing power and influence over mine development:

“We wanted long-term power. We wanted to have influence on how the development occurred and what the impacts were. And the company does not want to give that away. We kind of had to take it. We had to be a sufficient threat to the company that they would be willing to give up some of their power in order for us to allow them into our community.”

The negotiation process itself also presented significant challenges in rural Montana, where resource extraction has long driven the local economy. According to local rancher Paul Hawks, who also participated in the original GNA negotiations as an NPRC member, existing local deference towards resource extraction led NPRC and its affiliates to only negotiate on their relatively narrow set of issues:

“In no way were we representing the local officials or the voters of the county. We were just our own group. A lot of the county was against what we were doing because they basically thought we were going to shut the mine down and they wanted those jobs.”

For Iverson, limiting negotiations to NPRC, its affiliates, and the mining company ensured that NPRC’s values and influence would not be diluted.

“Our opponents were not at the table with us. We had pretty strict values, [and] only people that supported our values would join our group and form a coalition of similarly valued people. And that's what we had in our negotiations. We weren't negotiating for everybody. We were negotiating just for ourselves.”

In 2000, the parties successfully finalized negotiations on the Good Neighbor Agreement (GNA), which established a complex framework for addressing the mines’ lifetime environmental and social impacts beyond federal and state regulations. The GNA directs the mining company to cover the cost of the Agreement’s implementation, including:

hiring a manager and administrator employed as full-time staff of NPRC;
funding two technical advisors chosen by the citizen groups;
implementing an adaptive management plan for water to track pollution and its impacts;
requiring progressive investments in mitigation efforts upon discovery of pollution exceedances;
directing certain mine-owned parcels be placed under conservation easements;
banning mine-sponsored housing outside of municipal boundaries; and
managing traffic through a busing and carpool program for mine employees.

Water sampling to assess mine impacts to the Stillwater River, as required by the Good Neighbor Agreement. Photo by Tai Kondo Koester.

The Stillwater River in Montana. Photo: "Stillwater River" by James St. John, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

In exchange, NPRC and its affiliates relinquished the right to sue over new mine permits while retaining the right to arbitrate to enforce the GNA. Each of the two mine sites covered by the GNA is governed by a four member oversight committee, including two voting members each from the mining company and NPRC. The oversight committees have the ability to make decisions over a broad set of issues, such as:

mitigation steps for mining activity;
implementing and enforcing the GNA’s adaptive management plan for water quality;
managing employee busing and traffic plans;
coordinating community outreach efforts regarding mine developments and safety;
researching and implementing new technology/best management practices; and
reviewing and commenting on mine permit applications prior to submission to state and federal agencies.

For Hawks, another key element of the GNA is the contract’s language that ties it to the physical mines as opposed to the company.

“At some point down the road, [the company is] going to be sold to somebody else. Certainly in mining, that's the way it goes. They're there to make a profit, sell [the project] to somebody else. So you have to have strong language that carries with the project – so ours is tied to the mines, not to a company.” – Hawks

Tying the GNA to the physical mines has made it particularly durable to the mining industry’s inherent volatility, allowing it to persevere through ownership changes in 2003, 2013, and 2017.

Although the GNA remains in effect nearly a quarter-century after its signing, the Agreement is not without challenges. The GNA has suffered the strains of an ever expanding scope of work – driven in part by changing mining operations – that demands serious time and energy from volunteer community members. The budget has ballooned to cover the costs of third-party engineering contractors (Levy-Uyeda, 2020; Eggert, 2023). There remains debate between Sibanye and NPRC over the costs of mine closure that will satisfy the Agreement’s bonding requirements. There are also challenges posed by divisions within the community. Those who may be sympathetic to the mines perceive backers of the GNA as placing undue restrictions on mining activity thereby stifling economic development. Changing rural demographics driven by an influx of retirees have exacerbated divisions, reflecting broader conflicts statewide over wealth and political leanings (Ehrlick, 2021).

Reference List:

“Good Neighbor Agreement between Stillwater Mining Company and Northern Plains Resource Council, Cottonwood Resource Council and Stillwater Protective Association”; Sibanye-Stillwater, “US PGM Factsheet: The Good Neighbor Agreement.”

Kenney et al., “Evaluating the Use of Good Neighbor Agreements for Environmental and Community Protection.”

Levy-Uyeda, “Can a Mining Corporation Ever Truly Be a Good Neighbor?”; Eggert, “Forest Service Forwards Plan to Keep East Boulder Mine Operating.”

Ehrlick, “Residents Demand More Protection from East Boulder Mining Company • Daily Montanan.”

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