Montana congressman tours Montanore Mine

U.S. Rep. Steve Daines  visited the Montanore mine outside of Libby Friday afternoon in light of the 2014 election in which he is campaigning for the U.S. Senate seat.

Daines, a Republican who represents Montana in Congress, toured the facility with several memebers of his staff as well as executives from Mines Management Inc. which claims the mine property.

The tour started with a walk-around of the main building on the mine property that lies about 15 miles south of Libby down Libby Creek Road. 

Mines Management CEO Glenn Dobbs showed Daines a map of the mine and explained the reason for the pathway the underground tunnels, called adits, have to take to access the ore bodies. Dobbs explained that much of the difficulty with formulating the mine’s structure has come from working with the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife that want to protect species such as the grizzly bears that roam in the same land as the mine.

Afterward, the group strapped on white construction helmets wrapped in headlamps and secured utility belts to each of their waists to head into the mine.

The group squeezed into a white van and headed into the mine’s adit, which is the entryway into the mine. The adit the group entered is about 14,000 feet long, and the group drove to approximately 7,200 feet. Dobbs explained that the second part of the adit is inundated with water from natural cracks in the land above the mine, and is closed so workers at the mine can get rid of the water. Three adits will be ready to use by the time the mine is approved, built and ready to function.

Daines asked about the susceptibility of the rock to collapse, to which Dobbs responded that it does not pose the same problems that coal mining and collapsible rock does. He also asked about ventilation in the of the dark, isolated mine, but Dobbs assured him that there are new pipes coming to replace the collapsible vent that blows in fresh air for workers. 

In early August, the Montanore Positive Action Committee, which acts to support and spread awareness of the developing Montanore mine, held a public meeting to discuss the mine’s future. 

Eric Klepfer, the permitting consultant for the Montanore project, said at that meeting that the final Environmental Impact Statement for the project has been drafted. That document, Klepfer said, was what the project has been waiting for. In April, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued the final biological opinion for the project.

In 2005, the Montanore project started an application to re-permit the use of the mine; the application was an amendment of the 1993 permits applications submitted by Noranda Minerals of Canada, which had by then withdrawn operations from the U.S. At that time, Mines Management estimated the process to be complete within 15 to 20 months.

Dobbs said at the August meeting that legal wrangling and environmental regulation extensions were the reason for the project’s long process.

This week, the Environmental Protection Agency filed for a two-week extension on the Environmental Impact Statement that was celebrated so strongly earlier at the August meeting — Dobbs said extensions such as this new one are the main cause for why the mine project has taken so long.

In response to a question about how important the mine is to the community and state, Daines emphasized that an opportunity like the mine is something that can’t be ignored. Dobbs said about 300 mines would be created from the mine’s production, and Daines said this rise is jobs would help the Libby community and the state at large. 

“This is a very exciting time for us to embrace a chance like this to open up jobs to a place like Libby,” Daines said.

As for the EPA involvement in the future of the project, Daines was assured that he is working to get the project going toward production.

“We’re going to monitor this closely with the Montanore team that is getting the mine up and running,” Daines said. “It’s just so important to this area. We want to have both our environment clean but we also want to create jobs. This will let us do that.”

Daines and his staffers were headed back to Kalispell after the visit to the mine.