Light at the end of the tunnel?

A pool of water kept in check by a giant pump marks the end of the line at the 7,200-foot mark in a 14,000-foot tunnel into the side of the mountain. The tunnel, more properly known as an adit, was first drilled by Noranda Minerals in the early 1990s and stretches more than 14,000 feet to the ore beds below the Cabinet Mountains now known as the Montanore Mine.

Denver Winslow, the mine’s project engineer, and Rod MacLeod, the chief geologist, led a small group on a tour of the facility Tuesday morning.

Winslow drove the group to the adit site, roughly 13 miles off U.S. Highway 2 into the Cabinet Mountains. The adit, project office, maintenance shop, water treatment plant and percolation pond sit on a fenced off section of private property near the border of the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness area, nestled into the trees along the hillside.

Three workers currently oper

ate the site in a care and maintenance status, monitoring the equipment and testing the water from the plant to ensure its cleanliness before it is pumped into the percolation pond.

The pond itself is a giant man-made pond, also built by Noranda more than 20 years ago. Trees grow along the steep slopes up the pond’s sides, with just a tiny puddle of water in the bottom of pond.

“It’s about 50 times bigger than it needs to be,” Winslow said. “Even at full production, we’ll never need to pump this much water out of the mine.”

Currently, Winslow said, about 350 gallons of water per minute are pumped out of the pool at the 7,200-foot mark in the unused mine tunnel. The water is basically groundwater that seeps into the mine and runs downhill in the adit. The water is pumped out and processed through the state-of-the-art treatment plant and then released into the percolation pond. It seeps through the soil under the pond to recharge the aquifer under the mine site.

The group begins the tour in the project office, what seems to be a manufactured home converted into office space. Winslow provides a safety briefing, explaining the use of the W-65 self-rescuer device, which each person going underground must carry. In the event of fire underground, the device functions much like an underwater rebreather, providing breathable air for roughly one hour, providing enough time to exit the mine without the danger of smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning.

Winslow then provides safety helmets, equipped with lights, to each of the visitors. Heavy-duty mine belts hold the self-rescue devices as well as batteries for the headlamps. Each is also equipped with a heavy D-ring to provide additional security for miners working on elevated areas, although that won’t be necessary for this group.

Before going underground, the group is required to “brass in” at the maintenance shop. On the wall are a number of brass discs with employees’ names etched into them, as well as several numbered discs for visitors. The discs are in sets of two, one of which goes on the board under the “in” heading, the other is carried by the person going underground. The visitors were all required to sign in with names and the number of the disc assigned to them.

The brass-in procedure is a ritual practiced by underground miners for years, tracking both the names of people in the mine and providing a means for identifying bodies retrieved in the event of an accident.

The group then loads into a large work van and drives underground into the adit. The tunnel, roughly 18 feet wide by 18 feet high, descends at a grade of more than five percent as it reaches into the mountain to provide access to the rich beds of silver and copper under the mountains. An enormous ventilation pipe carries air from the surface to the bottom of the tunnel, providing fresh air to a non-existent workforce.

The walls of the tunnel are pockmarked with giant rock bolts, driven in to help maintain the stability of the structure. 

“It helps with stability,” Winslow said. “The bolts push the rock against itself, creating compression and making the rock more stable. We probably used more than we needed to, but we want to make sure we do it right.”

The drive back to the surface is relatively quiet, until the last turn is made and the opening comes into view.

“There’s the light at the end of the tunnel,” Winslow joked.

The light at the end of the tunnel, though, is exactly what Montanore owners and staff see.

The United States Forest Service has released their final environmental impact statement and draft record of decision, which has triggered the 60-day objection period. The statement provides official notice that the Forest Service intends to approve the project.

“They’ve said ‘we are going to approve the project’ and they are going to approve the project,” said Montanore contractor Eric Klepfer in a meeting with the Lincoln County commissioners Wednesday morning. “These are really critical milestones that have now been met by the Forest Service.”

The objection phase should be much less intensive than the previous public comment period, Klepfer explained to the commissioners, because the objections are limited in two ways. 

First, only people or groups with established standing are allowed to object at this stage. In order to have standing, the objecting party must have previously participated in the public comment phase of the project.

Second, objections may only be raised in reference to issues already broached during the public comment period. Objections based upon new information or on new subjects are not allowed in this phase of the process.

Klepfer said his review of the public comments leads him to believe there are less than 50 comments which could be turned into objections during this process, and those are really boiled down into just four or five separate issues.

“There were something like 30,000 point-and-click comments in the first phase,” he said. “They were the same letter copied into the comments from people in Massachusetts, New York and wherever. These people likely won’t be involved in objections.”

Once the objection period ends, at the end of May, the Forest Service has 45 days to respond to objections. That period may be extended if the agency decides they need additional time to adequately address the objections.

The Final Record of Decision would be issued sometime following the agency’s response to objections, but there is no statutory time frame in which the decision must be issued. The decision is then entered into the Federal Register, which triggers a 30-day waiting period before permits can be issued.

At the end of that period, which Klepfer anticipates could come as early as September, work on the mine will begin.

The evaluation phase of the project is the first stage. Winslow estimates the mine will employ between 35 and 50 people for that phase of the project, which will include rehabilitating the old Noranda tunnel all the way down to the ore bed at roughly 14,000 feet.

The data collected during the evaluation phase will determine the plan for the construction and operations, Winslow said.

Mines Management Inc. chief executive officer Glenn Dobbs said the construction phase could last between 18 and 24 months, which would involve even more employees.

A large number of the workers to be employed by the mine will likely be local, Klepfer said. 

“The skills are transferable,” he said. “A machine operator in the forest can operate the same machine underground. The basic technologies are transferable and there’s a good workforce already present here.”

Dobbs has estimated the mine will employ, at full production, between 300 and 350 employees for up to 20 years, which is welcome news to residents of economically-depressed Lincoln County, which suffers with one of the state’s highest rates of unemployment.

The county’s economic woes are severe enough to have generated interest beyond the borders of the county’s three main communities. The county has become one of the focal points of the federal land use and regulation discussion.

Sen. Steve Daines sent a letter to Chief Tom Tidwell of the United States Forest Service April 27, in which he expressed his desire to see the permitting process come to a timely conclusion.

“The U.S. Forest Service process commenced in 2005 and a Draft Environmental Impact Statement was completed in 2009 with a Supplemental Draft EIS issued in 2011. This review process, over the 10-year period, has been robust and thorough. The draft decision issued indicates a comprehensive monitoring and mitigation program that will be in place to ensure the highest standards are maintained…

“Jobs are dependent on timely completion of these final few steps which could be completed in late summer or early fall of this year. Regular updates from your office to my staff are requested so we can follow the progress,” Daines wrote.