Commissioners weigh in on Montanore

The Lincoln County Board of Commissioners has called upon the Montana Department of Environmental Quality to issue its Record of Decision and the necessary permits for the Montanore Mine.

In a letter dated Jan. 20, 2016, the commissioners asked Gov. Steve Bullock to push the department’s director, Tom Livers, to exercise his managerial discretion while ensuring the permits will withstand legal scrutiny.

“We state all of the aforementioned to underscore our understanding of the complex and delicate balance that your Department of Environmental Quality is attempting to strike in the permitting of the Montanore Mine in our county,” the commissioners wrote. “We also understand and recognize that there is some degree of flexibility that Director Livers can exercise in the Record of Decision regarding the Mine Operating Plan and we implore you to ensure that his discretion is fully utilized while maximizing defensibility in litigation and protecting our water resources.”

The commissioners referenced the economic devastation of struggling timber and mining industries, industries they said were the victim of processes driven by litigation instead of science.

“We, as a commission, all recognize that the social, economic and environmental welfare that has so drastically declined in Lincoln County is directly attributed to the unintended consequences of overlapping, duplicative and often conflicting state and federal statutes,” they wrote. “The end result of this unfortunate reality is that responsible management and development of our natural resoures is being determined in court rooms, and permitting processes are most often guided by jurisprudence rather than sound science. Our timber and mineral industries have been devastated, as has socio-economic stability that once offered opportunity to our citizens.”

The commissioners join members of the Montana federal delegation, Rep. Ryan Zinke and Sen. Steve Daines, who called for comprehensive approval of the mine project in a letter dated Jan. 7, 2016. Lincoln County Commissioner Mark Peck said the commission waited before acting in order to do their due diligence in gathering all the facts on the matter.

“The commissioners took extra time to coordinate with our state elected officials, the governor’s office and DEQ to make sure we had all the facts and acted appropriately,” Peck said.

The Montana DEQ and the United States Forest Service collaborated on the Final Environmental Impact Statement, which was released in December 2015. Craig Jones, MEPA/MFSA Coordinator for Montana DEQ, said the state agency’s Record of Decision will not be released prior to Jan. 29, 2016.

“DEQ has issued the Final EIS and must wait 15 days from the publication of the Final EIS to issue our decision document, also known as a Record of Decision (ROD),” said MEPA/MFSA Coordinator Craig Jones of Montana DEQ. “DEQ has decided to go beyond the 15 days and the earliest DEQ would issue the ROD would be Jan. 29, 2016. The ROD will include all of DEQ’s permits for the project. The ROD will explain what DEQ is approving and the rationale for this decision. I do not want to speculate what will be in DEQ’s ROD at this time due to the fact that DEQ is still in the process of drafting this document.”

Chris Savage, Kootenai National Forest Supervisor, said his agency is trying to coordinate timing of the Forest Service’s Record of Decision with the state’s release. The release could also be delayed by the need for coordination with other agencies.

“After the 30 days, we can publish the Record of Decision, however, we need to hear both from the EPA and the USFWS,” he said. “We need to hear from the EPA on the changes we made post objection period related to the Final Environmental Impact Statement and then changes that have been made between our FEIS and when U.S. Fish and Wildlife issued us their Biological Opinion, mitigation plan and terms and conditions. We had been meeting with them up to this point, so hopefully we will hear back from both agencies within this 30 day period, but that is really up to them.

“Also, we want to time the release of our ROD with the DEQ’s ROD. So there will be a lot of coordination with the state on that and that may bump us a little out of the 30 day window. In any case, we are hoping to release the ROD towards the end of January, but all these other things need to fall into place.”