For 150 years, miners came to the Stibnite Mine to dig their fortune. A plan to reopen it has stirred an environmental debate.

For 150 years, miners have come to the Stibnite Mine located in central Idaho to dig their fortune. The latest arrival: Perpetua Resources, a Canadian mining company looking to reopen the mine which hasn't been used in more than two decades.

The mine was abandoned in the 1990s. Changes to the river that flows through the mine site caused the fish to spawn upstream—leaving them without clear passage to the Pacific Ocean. This caused the fish decay to contaminate the river, but Laurel Sayer, CEO of Perpetua, told CBS News' Jeff Glor the company could clean up the mess left behind by, for one, reconnecting the river. In the 1940s, antimony, a chemical element that is a byproduct of gold, was mined here and used in the production of ammunition that helped the U.S. win World War II. Today, the vast majority of antimony is produced in China and Russia, which some say is a national security risk. Sayer said reopening the Stibnite Mine would help solve this problem.