Canadian company pursuing mining rights near Mount St. Helens
By Barbara LaBoe / The Daily News | Posted: Friday, June 25, 2010 8:00 pm
A Canadian company is reigniting the Mount St. Helens mining controversy, though company and federal officials say they're years away from any mining near the volcano.
Ascot Resources, based in Vancouver, B.C., has an option to buy the mineral rights owned by General Moly. According to a Marketwire press release, the total purchase price is $2 million, though that would be paid in stages during two years.
General Moly, formerly Idaho General Mines, applied for a mining lease in 2006 that would have allowed hardrock mining 12 miles from the volcano in the Green River Valley just outside the 110,000-acre MountSt. Helens National Volcanic Monument. The project was opposed by environmental groups, the city councils of Castle Rock, Kelso and Longview and U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.
General Moly abruptly halted its plans in 2008 just hours after the U.S. Bureau of Land Management rejected the mining lease application. The company owned 50 percent of the mineral rights, with the federal government owning the rest, so a mining lease was critical to the project.
Ascot isn't asking for a lease. Instead it has asked the U.S. Forest Service for permission to drill 14 test holes up to three miles deep to better evaluate the ore underneath. The drilling would be in the same area where more than 100 holes were drilled in the 1970s and are designed to give the company a better understanding of the ore underneath.
"Mining is way to premature a word," said Robert Evans, Ascot's chief financial officer. "Exploring is what we're doing."
Ascot is asking to do testing before securing any leases. The company still would need to get BLM approval before any mining took place but could do exploratory drilling with just Forest Service permission, said Ron Freeman, public services staff officer with the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.
Access for any drilling would be using existing abandoned roads used in the 1970s, so there would be minimum disruption to conduct the tests, Freeman said.
Actual mining approval would take several more steps and approval and is years away, Freeman said.
"We're years and a lot more exploratory work from any kind of mine development," Freeman said. "It could be 10 years before a mine is even proposed."
Still, the news isn't welcome to the Gifford Pinchot Task Force. The Portland-based environmental group led the fight against the proposed mine in 2008, saying mining would threatened recreation in the area and the water systems of nearby towns. The Green River is part of the Cowlitz River basin.
"It was a bad idea then and it's a bad idea now," said Emily Platt, the task force's executive director. "Nothing has changed that would make this project have a different impact. ... And it doesn't change the widespread opposition that the project has. No one cares if they go through the Forest Service or the BLM. They still oppose destruction of a water source."
BLM received nearly 34,000 public comments about the proposed mine in 2008, and virtually all opposed the lease. The widespread opposition was listed as one reason for rejecting the lease.
As for the drilling, Ascot would like to do the work this summer, but Freeman said the Forest Service hasn't made any promises. Officials are still deciding what level of analysis is needed before deciding on the drilling permit but are leaning toward taking public comment first, he said.
Evans said he wasn't concerned about the previous BLM rejection because the company was still deciding if it even wants to mine the area.
"We don't know if there's anything there yet," he said.
He said the company plans to hold public meetings in the area the second week in July to answer questions about itself and its plans. The exact date and location has not yet been set, Evans said.
The area in question is nearly 900 acres in the vicinity of Goat Mountain about 12 miles north of the volcano crater. Mining would be for copper, gold, silver and molybdenum.
According to the company's website, this would be its first U.S. mining project for Ascot, which has three other projects in British Columbia.
