Mines Management CEO optimistic permits will be authorized
by Duane Williams, KLCB-KTNY Radio
August 14, 2013
Glenn Dobbs, CEO of Mines Management, owners of the Montanore, told a group of Libby residents and businesses Thursday (August 8), he expects the Montanore will be permitted within a year.
Mines Management has spent $150 million dollars over the last ten years on the project and still has not received a permit.
It has been one roadblock after another for the mine formerly owned by Canadian giant Noranda Minerals, and before that US Borax. The silver deposit is huge. The latest obstacles have been the purchase of two mining claims adjacent to the adit area of the Montanore by what appears to be a shell company by the name of Optima. The full effect of that purchase is yet to be seen.
The other latest development is Montanore and US Fish and Wildlife’s conflict involving fish mitigation and the City of Libby’s Flower Creek Dam project, which is fraught with its own permitting issues.
US Fish and Wildlife had wanted to use the Libby City drinking water reservoir as a mitigation for bull trout in Libby Creek and the Montanore project by poisoning the city reservoir, Libby’s only source of drinking water, to eliminate all other fish species, and moving the bull trout into Flower Creek above the new dam. That dam’s construction is stymied by the US Fish and Wildlife reversal of a decision and now demanding a Biological Assessment and Biological Opinion of the replacement dam’s impact on Grizzly Bear and Bull Trout population in and around the replacement dam.
But despite all of the obstacles, Dobbs is optimistic that Montanore will be a reality.
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By Duane Williams, KLCB-KTNY Radio, e-mail: klcb@frontiernet.net, www.klcb-ktny.com.
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