New lawsuit filed to challenge Montanore mine permitting

Hecla Mining Company faces another lawsuit regarding its proposed Montanore mine, this one challenging a wastewater discharge permit issued by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality that the plaintiffs say will threaten endangered bull trout and other fish.

Three conservation groups — Montana Environmental Information Center, Save Our Cabinets and Earthworks — filed the lawsuit against the department and Montanore Minerals Corp. Aug. 15 in Montana First Judicial Court in Helena. The groups seeks to have the permit declared “unlawful and set aside.”

The permit in question is a Montana Pollutant Discharge Elimination system permit, or MPDES.

The plaintiffs are represented by San Francisco-based Eathjustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm with a regional office in Bozeman. The firm previously has filed lawsuits challenging various aspects of the mine’s development proposal, including permits and other decisions made by the Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“(Montanore Minerals Corp.) has claimed that it would mine responsibly and the Montanore Project would comply with the laws that protect our environment, but so far that claim has proven to be false,” Earthjustice attorney Katherine O’Brien said via email. “While the state and federal agencies responsible for overseeing the project have had years to do their job, they have repeatedly taken shortcuts and broken the law. Until the company lives up to its word and the agencies live up to their responsibilities, we will oppose the project.”

Luke Russell, Vice President of External Affairs for Hecla, said via email that the company was “disappointed” but “not surprised” that “these repeat litigants would challenge” the permit.

“The groups involved in the lawsuit are opposed to mining,” he wrote. “So the merits of the permit application and the data supporting it, the applicable law, and the work by DEQ to evaluate all of the issues over the last several years could never be persuasive to them. Montanore will be developed in a responsible manner. The groups bringing the lawsuit present a false choice — pick between either environmental quality or development of natural resources.”

According to court documents, the plaintiffs allege the Montana Department of Environmental Quality violated “numerous” requirements and regulations, inlcuding the “omission of legally required pollutant limitations and reliance on a 25-year-old authorization issued for another company’s long-abandoned project at the Montanore site.”

The other company and project the documents refer to is Noranda Minerals Corporation, which “first proposed a project to access the Montanore ore body in 1989” and “began constructing an exploration adit in the Libby Creek drainage but ceased work in 1991 due to violations of water quality standards and declining metals prices.”

“We believe that their allegations are without merit,” Russell wrote, stating that the surface water discharge permit has been renewed many times since with increasingly lower discharge limits.

“In fact, the permit renewal which is being challenged contains the most stringent permit limitations yet,” he wrote.

“It is sad that (the Montana Environmental Information Center), Earthworks and other serial litigants continue to focus on funding their attorneys on the back of the working families of northwest Montana,” Bruce Vincent of Environomics said via email. “I hope the State of Montana vigorously defends their decision to grant an MPDES permit for Montanore and that the issue can be resolved soon so that the project can move forward with the necessary evaluation phase of the project.”

Vincent was one of six community representatives from Lincoln County that went to Washington, D.C. July 25 to ask federal agencies to fast-track approval of the evaluation phase of the Montanore mine and also that of Rock Creek, another area mine Hecla is proposing to develop.