Gold mine plans approved for Frank Church Wilderness (Boise, Hayden: appointed, 2015)

[mtngirlatheart]

Gold mine plans approved for Frank Church wilderness - Spokesman Mobile - June 25, 2015

BOISE – The U.S. Forest Service has approved a gold mining company’s plan to reopen a 4-mile road in a central Idaho wilderness and drill core samples to find out if two of its claims are profitable enough to be mined.

The federal agency in a statement Tuesday said Payette National Forest Supervisor Keith Lannom approved American Independence Mines and Minerals Co.’s plan in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness.

The plan authorizes the company to make 571 motorized trips annually into the wilderness area to build 11 drill pads. Vehicles would include four-wheel-drive pickups, a dump truck, a flatbed truck, a bulldozer and a small excavator.

The Forest Service said mining is allowed in the wilderness as mining laws and mining in the area predates wilderness designation. But the company has to focus only on work that’s necessary to prove the claims profitable.

“This work is being approved to ensure that valid rights exist,” Lannom said in a statement. “To do that, the mining claimant must be allowed to show they have made a discovery.”

The Forest Service said the approval means the company could start work after submitting a revised plan conforming to the agency’s approved plan. Payette National Forest spokesman Brian Harris said that process doesn’t include public review and is something of a formality.

American Independence Mines and Minerals is a limited liability company formed in December 2013, according to the Idaho secretary of state’s office. The person listed as responsible for signing annual reports is Conway G. Ivy, manager and president of Ivy Minerals Inc.

Ivy Minerals incorporated in Idaho in August 1978 with Ivy at president. His address in state documents is listed as Beaufort, South Carolina. A message left on his home phone Wednesday by the Associated Press wasn’t returned.

Both Ivy Minerals and American Independence Mines and Minerals list the same U.S. post office box in Boise as their address.

State documents list David R. Lombardi, an attorney with Givens Pursley in Boise, as a contact for American Independence Mines and Minerals. Lombardi on Wednesday said the company hopes to have its revised plan submitted and approved this summer so workers can start improving roads outside the wilderness. He said it wasn’t clear when work would start within the wilderness.

If the process moves forward and the company proves the mining claims in the wilderness are profitable, the next step would be for the company to submit a plan to the Forest Service on how it would go about mining for gold.

The company has eight claims in all in the wilderness in about the same area. Three of those claims were proven profitable in the late 1980s, but the Forest Service hasn’t received a mining plan.

Lombardi said the company wants to validate the two additional claims and then mine all five claims at once.

“It makes more sense to develop the claims together rather than piecemeal,” he said.

Before mining, though, the company would have to submit a plan that would trigger another round of environmental assessments. If that plan meets environmental requirements, the company could start.

Lombardi said mining in the area has historically been underground, but the company couldn’t rule out open pit mining.

“It depends on the results of the drilling and other exploration,” he said. “There would be a mining plan to address the minerals in the most efficient way possible with the least environmental impact possible.”

Jonathan Oppenheimer of the Idaho Conservation League said mining laws do make mining in the wilderness legal, but environmental laws still apply and the group is not ruling out a possible lawsuit.

“While there are certain rights that precede the designation of the Frank Church wilderness, there is still a responsibility on the part of the Forest Service to mitigate negative impacts,” he said.

© Copyright 2015 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

[mtngirlatheart]

Curious to hear some thoughts on this. Some comments I've seen on different online sources are that natives believe this could be a good thing while others believe it'll be quite the opposite. I'm actually really disappointed in this. So they don't allow bicycles and other motorized vehicles yet they are going to open up the roads for mining equipment? If they can in fact prove that this claim is valid and will produce, what kind of effect will this have 5 years from now?

[mtngirlatheart]

Also, something else I wanted to add... what effect will this have on the small towns that surround the Frank Church? I'm concerned because we've been in north Idaho for 4 years now and are seriously considering a move to one of these smaller towns outside of the Frank Church within the next year. Not really interested in going to a small town that's going to be booming within the next 5-10.

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by mtngirlatheart

Curious to hear some thoughts on this. Some comments I've seen on different online sources are that natives believe this could be a good thing while others believe it'll be quite the opposite. I'm actually really disappointed in this. So they don't allow bicycles and other motorized vehicles yet they are going to open up the roads for mining equipment? If they can in fact prove that this claim is valid and will produce, what kind of effect will this have 5 years from now?

There is an old Federal law that exempts mining from all the other wilderness restrictions. The only places that are fully protected from potential mines are the National Parks.

That, however, doesn't mean public opinion won't stop a proposed mine cold. There was a proposed gold mine site that is located just outside of Yellowstone's northeast entrance, close to Cooke City, Montana. Cooke City lies outside the park boundaries; during the winter, the only access to Cooke City is through the park itself via the Hayden Valley road.

Although the proposed gold mine was designed to follow all the regulations that cover the toxic chemicals that come from gold mining- arsenic, lead, and mercury among them- public outcry directed at the Sec. of Interior caused the permit to be withdrawn, and the mine site was never developed past its exploratory level.
The outcry came from the belief that the drainages in the northern park would all become polluted with the toxic metals. Since the entire park is downhill from Cooke City, the concerns were probably accurate.

[ScottStielow]

Originally Posted by mtngirlatheart

Gold mine plans approved for Frank Church wilderness - Spokesman Mobile - June 25, 2015

BOISE – The U.S. Forest Service has approved a gold mining company’s plan to reopen a 4-mile road in a central Idaho wilderness and drill core samples to find out if two of its claims are profitable enough to be mined.

The federal agency in a statement Tuesday said Payette National Forest Supervisor Keith Lannom approved American Independence Mines and Minerals Co.’s plan in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness.

The plan authorizes the company to make 571 motorized trips annually into the wilderness area to build 11 drill pads. Vehicles would include four-wheel-drive pickups, a dump truck, a flatbed truck, a bulldozer and a small excavator.

The Forest Service said mining is allowed in the wilderness as mining laws and mining in the area predates wilderness designation. But the company has to focus only on work that’s necessary to prove the claims profitable.

“This work is being approved to ensure that valid rights exist,” Lannom said in a statement. “To do that, the mining claimant must be allowed to show they have made a discovery.”

The Forest Service said the approval means the company could start work after submitting a revised plan conforming to the agency’s approved plan. Payette National Forest spokesman Brian Harris said that process doesn’t include public review and is something of a formality.

American Independence Mines and Minerals is a limited liability company formed in December 2013, according to the Idaho secretary of state’s office. The person listed as responsible for signing annual reports is Conway G. Ivy, manager and president of Ivy Minerals Inc.

Ivy Minerals incorporated in Idaho in August 1978 with Ivy at president. His address in state documents is listed as Beaufort, South Carolina. A message left on his home phone Wednesday by the Associated Press wasn’t returned.

Both Ivy Minerals and American Independence Mines and Minerals list the same U.S. post office box in Boise as their address.

State documents list David R. Lombardi, an attorney with Givens Pursley in Boise, as a contact for American Independence Mines and Minerals. Lombardi on Wednesday said the company hopes to have its revised plan submitted and approved this summer so workers can start improving roads outside the wilderness. He said it wasn’t clear when work would start within the wilderness.

If the process moves forward and the company proves the mining claims in the wilderness are profitable, the next step would be for the company to submit a plan to the Forest Service on how it would go about mining for gold.

The company has eight claims in all in the wilderness in about the same area. Three of those claims were proven profitable in the late 1980s, but the Forest Service hasn’t received a mining plan.

Lombardi said the company wants to validate the two additional claims and then mine all five claims at once.

“It makes more sense to develop the claims together rather than piecemeal,” he said.

Before mining, though, the company would have to submit a plan that would trigger another round of environmental assessments. If that plan meets environmental requirements, the company could start.

Lombardi said mining in the area has historically been underground, but the company couldn’t rule out open pit mining.

“It depends on the results of the drilling and other exploration,” he said. “There would be a mining plan to address the minerals in the most efficient way possible with the least environmental impact possible.”

Jonathan Oppenheimer of the Idaho Conservation League said mining laws do make mining in the wilderness legal, but environmental laws still apply and the group is not ruling out a possible lawsuit.

“While there are certain rights that precede the designation of the Frank Church wilderness, there is still a responsibility on the part of the Forest Service to mitigate negative impacts,” he said.

© Copyright 2015 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

How long has this project been under consideration?

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by ScottStielow

How long has this project been under consideration?

At least a decade, probably more.

If rare earth deposits are part of the mining company's plans, a permit most likely stands a much better chance of a faster permit than gold or any of the other minerals or metals. All of them are worth much, much more and are much scarcer.

Why? Because they are the foundation metals of everything inside your computer, your cell phone, your digital camera, and all the stuff inside our satellites. Some make the most powerful micro-magnets for their size than any other material, others conduct micro-currents of electricity better than any other, and on and on. All their peculair qualities are still being discovered and investigated.

Idaho has more potential for finding these rare (REALLY RARE) metals than anywhere else, due to our volcanic past.
Some of our old mine's tailings alone could become more profitable than what came out of the mines the first time. Rich silver, oil, or other mining metals were measured in pounds of raw ore. Rare earths are measured in tons of raw ore, and effective means of sifting and capturing them didn't even exist until the 1960s. Tailings piles are full of them, measured in grams, not ounces.
A microgram of some may be worth more than anything else ever dug from the earth if it alone does one tiny, critical job better than any other elemental metal. It's easier to get plutonium than to get some of this stuff.

Once a very rich deposit of them is found here, measured in grams vs. tons, we may be faced with a choice of sacrificing a mountain for them, for the economic good of the nation, pretty much like the mountain at the edge of Butte, Montana.
That mountain was so full of copper it became a hollowed honeycomb, using up a surrounding forest to hold the mountain up, and then was leveled from the top down until it became a pit as deep as the mountain was once as high.
The copper that came from Butte wired the United States for electricity, provided all the brass in the ammunition expended in 2 world wars, and made us the undisputed world power we are today. A couple of other western mountains suffered the same fate too. Copper ain't glamorous, but it sure is useful, and it is elemental in everything we now take for granted. Even more dirt and rock will have to be ground up and processed to capture the rare earths.

That kind of sacrifice.

It's a very big deal, because China is now the only nation willing to go that far. China has the only mine in the world operating right now.

Rare earths are to what oil was 100 years ago, except much more so.
Idaho could easily become the 21st century's Texas, twice over or even more. No one knows yet just how much of this scarce stuff we have, but for sure, we have a lot, all trapped in vertical rock here, very possibly more than anywhere else on the planet. Or they could be out in the Arco desert just as easily. Vulcanism brings them up out of the earth's deep mantle. The desert could make the Bakken oil field look like chump change in comparison to the need vs. supply.

As always, them that's the firstest gets the mostest out of the bestest. It will require millions to discover, billions will be spent, and will make trillions if the exploratory geologists are correct. And some may require atomic energy to capture in quantity. We have that, too.