Engineering and Mining Journal - Whether the market is copper, gold, nickel, iron ore, lead/zinc, PGM, diamonds or other commodities, E&MJ takes the lead in projecting trends, following development and reporting on the most efficient operating pr
Issue link: https://emj.epubxp.com/i/70939
REVETT MINERALS lion for the grizzly mitigation program (See Grizzly Habitat, p.72), $4 million for the water treatment plant, and $6 million in construction costs for the Evaluation Adit. "For Phase 2, the recla- mation bond could range from $45 mil- lion to $75 million for a $350 million capital investment to get the mine start- ed," Miller said. The mineral resources for Rock Creek are currently estimated at 136 million tons with a grade of 1.67 oz/ton silver and 0.72% copper for a total of 229 million oz of silver and 2 billion lb of copper. "These beds were not thoroughly drilled and they are open-ended," Miller said. "We had to stop drilling from the surface in the 1980s and there is great potential for adding more reserves." The Evaluation Adit is a two-year long program under exploration license for resource delineation to confirm hydroge- ology, geochemistry, rock mechanics, and most importantly, feasibility. Once feasi- bility and financing is complete, it would take three years to commission the mine. "If we started today it would take five years," Miller said. The 2003 RoD, issued by the USFS, along with the Biological Opinion, issued by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, were challenged by various environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in both state and federal courts on a number of occasions. In general, these challenges have been successfully defended by the federal agencies through the Department of Justice and by Revett as an intervener/co-defendant. Essentially, there were two main legal challenges. One against the RoD, which looks at all impacts in accord with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and one against the Biological Opinion, which addresses potential impacts to species listed as threatened or endangered. Because of overlapping issues in the two legal chal- lenges, the challenges were subsequent- ly combined by the District Court of Montana in 2008. In May 2010, the District Court of Montana dismissed the plaintiffs' chal- lenges relating to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) along with chal- lenges to the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, but set aside and remanded the 2003 RoD to the USFS for further action with regard to NEPA procedural matters. The District Court identified several items requiring further clarifica- tion in the 2001 Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and therefore required the issuance of a Supple- mental EIS under NEPA. The items requiring further clarification included location of facilities near the buffer zone for the Habitat Conservation Areas, sediment mitigation measures during Phase I development, and incor- porating several Supplemental Infor- mational Reports into the administra- tive record. The NGOs subsequently appealed the District Court's May 2010 ruling. In November 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit upheld a May 2010 decision from the U.S. Federal District Court of Montana, dismissing ESA challenges to the proposed Rock Creek mine. Now work continues advanc- ing the project through its next steps with the completion of the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) and re-issuing the Record of Decision, hopefully by the end of 2013. www.e-mj.com JUNE 2012 • E&MJ; 73