understand the impact

Rise Gold's plan calls for an estimated 42-48 billion watt hours per year (GWH). That's about 12% of what all of Nevada County uses in a year - and 100% of the electricity used by all of our businesses combined. The plans also calls for significant use of fossil fuels which contribute to greenhouse gas and climate change. 

GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS

The Final Environmental Impact Report tells us the mine would result in staggering increases in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions: 9000 metric tons annually. But if they took into account the additional 4000 related to cement manufacturing that would happen offsite, it would be well over the the 10,000 metric ton significance threshold the consultants chose to use for the analysis.

Using these measures, they would have us believe the impact is “less than significant”, but climate change experts call the measurement thresholds arbitrary and outdated. And legal experts make the case for why the threshold needs to be set at "net zero".

ENERGY

The Nevada County Energy Action Plan calls for a significant reduction of residential electric use. As it turns out, that plan calls for a reduction of 42 GWH annually by 2035, almost the exact same yearly usage as the mine. In other words, the mine would completely erase our planned gains.

Residents of Nevada County are already struggling with severe climate-related impacts such as extreme drought, heat waves, water shortages, and threat of forest fires, so making the situation worse is not an option.