The mining company would pay for pollution with cryptocurrency

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A gold mining company launched a new idea to a federal judge of Idaho on how he would have wanted to pay a quarter million dollar fine for environmental violations

No, not with # 39; gold.

Canada Based on Atlanta Gold Inc., the chief US magistrate judge, Ronald E. Bush, planned to raise money through a cryptocurrency sale.

Cryptocurrencies are coins or tokens that only exist electronically and whose creation and transactions are protected by digital cryptography. Bitcoin is the most famous example.

The Atlanta Gold plan would result in a new cryptocurrency called Four Nine Gold. The company presented Bush with a white paper explaining how the sale of the new currency would work. Atlanta Gold then asked the court to extend the payment deadline from 30 August to 31 December so that it could sell the coins.

The judge was not influenced.

"The white paper describes several risks associated with buying Four Nine Gold tokens and indicated that residents of China, Japan, South Korea, and the United States could not buy tokens," Bush wrote.

"The Court can not and does not trust information" Supplied by Atlanta Gold, Bush continued.

The judge ordered Atlanta Gold to pay $ 251,000 by September 14, "a day less than a full year since the court's ruling was issued."

"No comment," said the lawyer of Atlanta Gold & # 39; s Boise, Michelle Points, on if Atlanta Gold will meet the September 14 deadline.

The company has explored the gold deposits in the mountains around the historic mining town of Atlanta for more than 30 years.

In 2011, two environmental groups, t The Idaho Conservation League and the Northwest Environmental Defense Center, sued Atlanta Gold in the federal court of Boise, accusing the company of violating water laws clean and failing to reduce the levels of pollutants flowing to Montezuma Creek, a tributary of the Middle Fork of the Boise River.

US District judge Mikel Williams in 2012 found that the mining company was at fault. He ordered Atlanta Gold to pay $ 2 million for repeated violations of the Clean Water Act, and to solve problems or face further financial sanctions.

The high spring outflow in 2014 sent uncontrolled releases of cross-linked arsenic water flowing from an old tunnel mine into the Atlanta gold mine project in Montezuma Creek

In 2016, the court reopened the case because Atlanta Gold did not comply with the court order. On September 15, 2017, Bush fined $ 251,000 for the Atlanta gold for violations.

Cynthia Sewell is the government of Idaho Statesman and investigative reporter. Contact him at (208) 377-6428, [email protected] or @CynthiaSewell on Twitter.

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