Firm challenges mining approval

Environmental groups aren’t the only ones opposing the Kootenai National Forest’s decision to permit the proposed Montanore mine near the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness.

In a lawsuit filed April 5 in U.S. District Court in Missoula, Libby Placer Mining Co. claims the Forest Service failed to fully consider the proposed copper and silver mine’s impacts on its 1,070-acre property bordering the mining project.

The private mining company alleges that by approving the permit, the federal agency violated the National Environmental Protection Act and the Forest Service Organic Act of 1897, which created the agency.

John Cleveland, owner of Libby Placer Mining, noted the “irony” of a mining company suing the federal agency over a proposed mine, but said despite the name of the family-owned company, its property has shifted away from mining interests.

“The property is comprised of patented mining claims that were originally located back in the 1880s, and placer-mined back in the 1890s through 1910,” Cleveland explained. “During the Depression, placer mining resumed, and it continued until about World War II, 1940 or so, and then that was sort of the end of any large-scale placer mining.”

Management of the property has focused on timber harvest in recent years, with up to 100,000 board-feet harvested annually.

With the Montanore mine’s proposed tailings impoundment — which would hold up to 120 million tons of mining waste under the permit — less than 300 feet from the property boundary, Cleveland also worries it would effectively nix the possibility of future real estate development on the wooded property.

“We have, I would say, flirted with the idea of developing the property. That has been sort of a long-term kind of plan, but certainly it surfaces occasionally,” Cleveland said. “Having that tailings impoundment adjacent to our property would totally scuttle any prospect of doing that. It would render the property pretty much worthless from a real estate development potential.”

The suit also alleges the impoundment’s dam would create a significant visual disturbance, claiming the feature would rise about 300 feet above the surrounding landscape and extend north and south for about one mile.

As permitted, the proposed mine is far closer to the plaintiff’s property than Montanore Minerals Corporation had proposed. The original site at Little Cherry Creek would have been about one mile from the two companies’ property line, but in its final decision, the Forest Service opted for an alternative location north of Poorman Creek, about a football field’s distance from Libby Placer Mining Co.’s land.

Quoting from the Forest Service’s record of decision, the suit states, “The scenic integrity of the LPMC property would be ‘permanently and substantially altered’ due to the ‘mostly unobstructed view of the 270-foot high impoundment dam face.”

According to the lawsuit, the site had been evaluated and rejected by Noranda Minerals Corporation, which had attained permits to mine the Montanore site in the 1980s, but never developed the mine. The company rejected the site due to “insufficient capacity and the presence of artesian conditions,” the suit states.

Libby Placer Mining also noted other projected impacts to the property: increased traffic congestion on Libby Creek Road, which runs through a portion of Cleveland’s property; dewatering of Poorman Creek and Libby Creek, which also run through the property; noise and dust from mining activities and groundwater contamination.

“Contamination of groundwater under LPMC property is expected to occur,” the lawsuit states. The Forest Service’s record of decision “acknowledges that [Montanore] will need to obtain a mixing zone extending 5,000 feet east of the impoundment — through the plaintiff’s property. Indeed the Forest Service projects that predicted concentrations in groundwater of antimony and manganese will exceed applicable nondegredation standards set by the state of Montana.”

Cleveland said those impacts are substantial as well, and also carry the potential to devalue his property from a real estate perspective. He said he isn’t necessarily opposed to the mine itself, but rather the agency’s decision to locate the tailings impoundment so close to his land.

“If that were moved, a lot of the water quality issues impacting my property wouldn’t go away, but they would be greatly diminished,” he said. “If the tailings impoundment is somewhere else, the negative impacts resulting from that would be elsewhere, and not under my property. That would solve a lot of problems.”

The Montanore mine is still awaiting approval by the state’s environmental agency. The Montana Department of Environmental Quality in February issued a partial approval of the permit, but determined that parts of the project’s discharge permit would violate state water quality laws and degrade fish habitat.

The state agency recently extended the public comment period for the mine’s discharge permit through May 18.

Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.