Revett CEO enthusiastic about Troy Mine
by Brent Shrum, Kootenai Valley Record
August 8, 2010
After a tough couple of years, Revett Minerals chief executive officer John Shanahan is enthusiastic about the comeback of the Troy Mine and optimistic that the company’s Rock Creek project will clear its remaining legal hurdles.
Shanahan, who had served on Revett’s board of directors since 2005, took over as CEO in 2008 with the expectation that he might be guiding the company into bankruptcy. Following a death at the mine in 2007 and with the economy in freefall, "it was a pretty tough time," he told the Lincoln County commissioners last Wednesday.
After spending some time in Troy, however, Shanahan found that the 180 workers at the mine had no intention of giving up. Voluntary pay cuts were taken across the board, the miners came up with innovative ways to cut costs and increase productivity, "and they got it together," Shanahan said.
By the end of 2009, the pay cuts had been returned and the future was looking a lot brighter than it had a year earlier.
"We are going to survive as company, and we’re going to come out of this a hell of a lot better than we went into it," Shanahan told the commissioners. "And we’re getting there."
Morale among the miners has improved, Shanahan said. Employees have shown their confidence in the company’s future by holding onto their stock as its value has increased, and Revett’s commitment to training a workforce with strong ties to the community has paid its own dividends.
"It comes back to you, because in late ’08 when anyone who could have taken off and found another job somewhere would have, we lost two people," Shanahan said.
Revett acquired the Troy Mine in 1999, and production resumed in late 2004 after a 12-year hiatus. At the time, the mine had a three-year lifespan and was to serve as a training ground for Rock Creek. Nearly six years later, exploration has revealed another six years of proven reserves, "and it’s extremely promising" that the life of the mine will be extended even further as additional copper and silver deposits are discovered, Shanahan said.
"We’ve got some more work to confirm, but my gut feeling is that we’ll see some good opportunities there," he said.
Meanwhile, the Rock Creek project near Noxon continues to slog its way through the federal court system.
A draft environmental impact statement for Rock Creek was released in 1995, with the final EIS coming out in 2001. A record of decision was issued in 2003, starting a series of legal challenges by environmental groups.
This spring, Revett suffered "an absolute kick in the teeth" when Judge Donald Molloy of the federal court in Missoula declared that the EIS was insufficient and needed more work, Shanahan said. But Shanahan found hope in Molloy’s lengthy ruling.
While the judge found procedural deficiencies in the EIS, he seemed to be satisfied with the science, Shanahan said.
"For Judge Molloy to re-affirm the science part of it, I think was a major victory for us," he said.
Shanahan sees Molloy’s ruling as a way of saying that "enough is enough" and proving a "road map" to survive the inevitable appeal to the Ninth Circuit.
It will be important to be able to show the appeals court judges that the Rock Creek project will have minimal impacts on the environment that are far outweighed by mitigation measures, Shanahan said. Like Troy, the ore at Rock Creek is not burdened with heavy metal contaminants like lead, arsenic and antimony that can degrade water quality if not treated with great care, he said.
"What nature has provided up in those mountains is as good and as clean as anywhere you’ll find in the world," he said.
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Editor’s Note: See the August 3, 2010 edition of the Kootenai Valley Record for the printed version of this story. The Kootenai Valley Record publishes once a week, on Tuesdays, in Libby, Montana. They are a locally owned community newspaper, located at 403 Mineral Avenue in Libby. For in-county and out-of-county subscription information, call 406-293-2424, or e-mail kvrecord@gmail.com.
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