Hard-Rock Lawyer From Colorado Takes On The Mines

BOULDER, Colo. - Like an Old West gunslinger, Roger Flynn relishes a good shootout.

But Flynn, 37, a gung-ho environmental lawyer, is using decidedly New West tactics to take on one of the West's oldest industries: hard-rock mining.

And his work is earning him a reputation as a major nemesis to the hard-rock mining industry from Cripple Creek to California.

Flynn is the ultimate underdog, working alone in his donated office in Boulder and taking on armies of coat-and-tie corporate attorneys - with striking success.

"Roger Flynn is a one-man dynamo who operates from a very simple premise - mining companies should be held accountable for their environmental performance," said Stephen D'Esposito, president of the Mineral Policy Center, a national environmental group.

"He's a hero to communities who often face long odds when going up against the high-priced lawyers and consultants used by the industry."

Mining interests furious

Flynn has made a career of throwing legal challenges at the industry, scrutinizing everything from compliance with water-pollution laws to post-mining cleanups.

Most recently, he beat up the industry with the very 1872 law that started a rush to the West by opening public land to mining.

Citing a a loophole in the law, he blocked a major gold-mine proposal in eastern Washington.

The move so infuriated the mining industry and its allies in Congress that it prompted Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., to introduce a rider to the recent Kosovo-spending bill seeking to overturn the decision.

"It's an interesting time for mining," said Flynn with a laugh as he described the frenzy among mining executives and their lobbyists caused by his latest maneuver.

Flynn's evolution into one of western America's chief mining antagonists comes at a time when the industry is under a microscope.

With the spread of enormous, open-pit mines that tear out mountainsides and use great quantities of cyanide to leach out gold, environmental groups are paying more attention to mining hazards.

One example is the Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mining Co. in Colorado.With a permit covering 4,232 acres, it has some residents worried about water pollution, damage to historic buildings and loss of views.

In the mid-1990s, a group of Victor residents contacted Flynn about the mine, citing concerns about the level of acidity of the water coming off the mine's property into a drainage called Arequa Gulch, a tributary of Cripple Creek.

Flynn took up the cause with enthusiasm. The way he saw it, the state wasn't seeking tough enough water-quality standards for the mine.

He helped persuade the Environmental Protection Agency to look into the matter. The agency agreed with Flynn and demanded that the state take a tougher stand.

That led to a legal fight between the mine and the state of Colorado.

Flynn joined the case and made several key arguments before an administrative-law judge. Last year, the judge ruled against the mine on all points. Though the case isn't closed - the mine is appealing - it has cost the company plenty.

"He definitely changes and shapes the debate in a way that wouldn't occur otherwise," said Bob Micsak, a vice president and attorney for Independence Mining, parent of the Cripple Creek & Victor mine.

A grudging respect

Micsak, like others in the industry who have dealt with Flynn, has grudging respect for his opponent, calling him a serious force in the business.

While opponents respect him, they also see problems with the way he attacks his job and the industry.

Though he admires Flynn's talent, Micsak is critical of his tactics.

His opponents mainly complain that he is too rigid and legalistic, his rhetoric is overheated and, as he has grown more experienced, Flynn is less willing to compromise.

They admit he is a technical master of the law, but they contend he doesn't look at the bigger picture.

"Roger is enamored by the law and has forgotten about the environment," said Kit Kimball, a longtime mining lobbyist and consultant.

Kimball cited as an example Flynn's lack of participation in state policy matters, such as finding new ways to clean up abandoned mines.

Flynn shrugged off the criticism.

"If I use the Clean Water Act to control runoff, the mining industry sees that as a technicality," he said. "Lawyers, that's what we do. We use the technicalities.

"It seems industry doesn't like the result, which is more control on mines. Protecting the environment to them is a technicality."

Such jabs are typical for Flynn. He's not afraid of the heat. He's used to being labeled as extremist and inflexible.

But, he says, if he were as extreme as some of his opponents claim, he'd be looking to shut down mines, not just demanding that they adhere to environmental regulations.

"Look at Cripple Creek - we're not against the mine, we're arguing over water quality," he said. "It could be up against a citizens group that fights to have no mine at all."

Big fights are part of the lure for Flynn. He actually had a late start. After college he worked as a manufacturing engineer for four years before realizing he wanted to practice law. He enrolled in law school.

He became interested in mining when, as an intern for a public-interest law firm, he started to raise questions about a small gold mine.

As he became familiar with the state agency that oversees mining, he was struck by what he perceived as an indifference to citizens' views. "You probably can't have more of an underdog than people trying to take on big, multinational mining companies," Flynn said. ". . . It was about the biggest David and Goliath story you could come up with."

He graduated and, two years later, using space borrowed from the Environmental Defense Fund and financial support from a patchwork of foundations, he set up the nonprofit Colorado Mining Action Project.

His timing was perfect. The story of the Summitville mine - an ill-fated southern Colorado gold mine that leaked toxic runoff into the Alamosa River - began to unfold.

Flynn jumped into the fray, using the opportunity to expose the shortcomings in mine regulations. He was soon escorting reporters from Time magazine and CNN to see the site.

The ensuing coverage put Flynn in the spotlight and brought in the business. By mid-1994, Flynn changed the name of his business to the Western Mining Action Project in response to cases he was taking up throughout this half of the country. It helped, of course, that Flynn was taking cases for free - with his salary and expenses covered by grant money.

Now, Flynn runs what he called the only environmental-law firm in the West ("Maybe the world," he jokes) devoted strictly to scrutiny of hard-rock mining.

Flynn's latest and biggest success - his use of a long-overlooked portion of the 1872 mining law to stop the Crown Jewel gold mine on Buckhorn Mountain in Okanogan County, Wash. - was tempered when Congress approved the exemption for the mine in the Kosovo bill in May.

But Flynn seemingly never surrenders: "We have other aces up our sleeve," he says.