A bill that would have banned the use of cyanide in mining and processing operations in Virginia was killed at the last minute Monday.

House Bill 1722 from Del. Shelly Simonds, D-Newport News, was sent back to committee the day before crossover, the deadline by which a chamber must pass a bill in order for the other chamber to consider it. With no meeting for that committee scheduled and only limited time remaining, the move left the bill effectively dead.

“Generally speaking, we’re not in favor of cyanide,” House GOP spokesperson Garren Shipley said Monday in response to a question about the bill’s fate. But, he added, “a number of members … were concerned that it was too broad” in its restrictions on mining operations, particularly as vehicle electrification drives up demand for batteries reliant on minerals.

“We may be in fact circumscribing ourselves,” he said.

Simonds, however, said that while Virginia has deposits of copper, a critical mineral used in battery production, “cyanide is not used in processing copper, or any other critical mineral used in batteries and EVs. Cyanide is used in gold mining and it is a poison that we do not need in our waterways in Virginia.”

Cyanide is commonly sprayed or applied to ore in gold mining to separate out gold from the surrounding rock.

Read more of this story reported and written by The Virginia Mercury.

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