"The project was fully permitted as recently as two years ago. With the existing environmental impact statement as the basis for re-permitting, we believe the process will be significantly shorter than if we were starting from scratch," said Glenn Dobbs, president and chief executive officer of the Spokane-based company.
It took the original developer of Montanore five years to get permits.
Dobbs, who has years of experience in the financial side of mineral exploration and mining as a private investor in Seattle, said he anticipates the permitting process to start by early 2005, and take about two years to complete. Construction could then begin on the mine, depending on market conditions for silver and copper. Prices have been up recently for both minerals.
The Lincoln County Commission welcomed the news.
"We have 16.2 percent unemployment in Lincoln County - the highest in Montana. We've seen the rise and fall of these kind of industries, but we would welcome responsible mining," Lincoln County Commission Chairman John Konzen said Thursday.
Dobbs promised responsible, environmentally friendly mining.
"Our intention is to come in and develop a mining operation that everyone, regardless of their philosophical orientation, can point to and say 'That's the way mining ought to be conducted,' " he said.
The mineral deposit is, by all accounts, fabulously rich. It is estimated to contain 260 million ounces of silver and 2 billion pounds of copper. The revised mine plan prepared by Mines Management Inc. envisions an operating capacity of 12,500 tons per day, yielding an average annual production of approximately 7.8 million ounces of silver and 32,000 tons of copper.
Mines Management Inc. is capitalized at more than $50 million and has been traded since March on the American Stock Exchange under the symbol MGN. As a private firm, it had a stake in the original Montanore project that began in 1988, when Noranda, a Canadian mining giant, acquired the mining claims on the east side of the Cabinets from U.S. Borax. It was restructured when it became a publicly traded firm regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Dobbs said.
Noranda received all necessary permits for the mine in 1993. It invested an estimated $100 million in permitting, engineering, acquiring baseline data and even built an extensive exploratory entry into the mountain to prove the feasibility of extracting the silver and copper deposits from beneath the Cabinet Wilderness. But it never mined a single ounce of marketable ore.
Like the more controversial Rock Creek mine that is just across the ridge from Montanore, the mine entrance will be just outside a narrow neck of the wilderness boundary, with the ore to be extracted from underneath the wilderness. But unlike the Rock Creek Project, processing and milling of the ore, and the resulting mountain of tailings, won't be along a major highway within a stone's throw of the Clark Fork River and just upstream from scenic Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho.
The out-of-the-way location may help Montanore avoid some of the fury of national, regional and local environmental groups that have opposed the Rock Creek mine.
Noranda began its project with great gusto and confidence, even going so far as to open a fully staffed office in Libby to urge things along. Permits were obtained remarkably quickly. It took Noranda only five years, compared to the permitting of the Rock Creek project, which has taken most of 15 years.
Although permits came quickly for Noranda, construction of Montanore was delayed several times by litigation and problems acquiring patents on its mining claims.
But the nine-person office for Montanore operations in Libby closed in 1995, and never reopened. In 2002, Noranda gave up on the mining plan, and withdrew from Montana.
"Noranda withdrew in 2002 and quit-claimed the mining claims to us," Dobbs said.
"Much of the baseline data that has been collected over the years will be invaluable to us because we won't have to do it all over again. The geology, the groundwater, even the wildlife doesn't change that much," Dobbs said in a telephone interview from Spokane.
Dobbs said the technology of mineral processing has improved significantly in the last decade. The mining plan will still use the familiar room-and-pillar method of excavating the ore, virtually identical to the Troy Unit mine operated by Asarco for years in Lincoln County. Efficiencies will occur in milling and processing, he said.
Dobbs said he expects only about 250 people being employed at the mine site during its operational life. Substantially more will be needed during the three-year construction phase. Most of the permanent employees presumably would be hired from Lincoln County's existing labor pool, he said.
Employees would commute by bus to the mine site for every shift, keeping road traffic to a minimum in grizzly bear country, he said.
As for grizzly bears, he said he was confident the mine could be built without threatening the federally protected beasts.
"People raise a lot of bugaboos and specters over this issue, but look at mining operations in British Columbia and southeast Alaska. Those grizzlies are right in there with the miners," he said.
Reporter John Stromnes can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or jstromnes@missoulian.com
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