Montanore mine court orders inline with previous rulings, Hecla official says

A U.S. District Judge in Missoula recently issued two orders related to Hecla Mining Company’s attempt to develop the Montanore copper and silver mine south of Libby. A Hecla official said the orders were “not too surprising” because they were “essentially along the lines” of rulings the judge made May 30.

On May 30 Molloy ruled the Forest Service violated the Clean Water Act, the Forest Service Organic Act of 1897, the National Forest Management Act and the National Environmental Policy Act when it approved Hecla’s Montanore mine project in February 2016. He also ruled that the Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Endangered Species Act by insufficiently assessing how the mine would effect bull trout and grizzly bears.

In one of two rulings made June 29, Molloy both vacated the Forest Service’s February 2016 decision to approve the Montanore Mine Project and set aside and remanded to the agency its 2016 Record of Decision and 2015 Joint Final Environmental Impact Statement “for further action as outlined in the May 2017 Opinion and Order.”

In the other June 29 ruling, Molloy both vacated the Forest Service’s and the Fish and Wildlife Service’s decisions to approve the Montanore Mine Project and set aside and remanded to the latter agency its 2014 Biological Opinions and 2016 Record of Decision “for further action as outlined in the May 2017 Opinion and Order.”

Molloy’s June 29 orders were in response to joint motions made in early June by the plaintiffs — conservation groups including Save Our Cabinets, Earthworks and the Clark Fork Coalition — that have been challenging the mine project in court due to concerns about its potential environmental impacts.

“We’ve always said that Clark Fork Coalition is not against mining,” said Karen Knudsen, coalition director, via email shortly after Molloy’s May 30 rulings. “We’re for clean water. Which means we are against mining pollution.”

On May 30, Molloy granted in part and denied in part the plaintiffs’ motions for summary judgment in both matters. A little more than a week later the plaintiffs issued joint motions to request that “judgment be entered and for the agencies’ decision documents be vacated.”

Court documents indicate that the defendants — including the Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and Montanore Minerals Corporation — did not object to the entry of judgment but did oppose vacating the documents in part because doing so was “not necessary because it does no more than that provided for in the remand order.”

Hecla Vice President of External Affairs Luke Russell, the official not surprised by the June 29 orders, said that the Forest Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service now “have the opportunity to decide how to proceed, whether to issue a new record of decision for just the evaluation phase (of the mine) or once again address the entire project.”

The evaluation phase Russell referred to is the first of four planned mine development phases. The evaluation phase would be followed by construction, operations and closure and post-closure.

“The court basically laid out a path and we think there is a path that the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Forest Service can take to keep the project moving for the evaluation phase,” Russell said. “We’re talking with the agencies to advance the evaluation phase, we just don’t have a timeline yet.”