Conservationists have long worked to protect the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness in northwest Montana from one of the world’s largest proposed copper and silver mines—the Rock Creek Mine. While the Rock Creek Mine is temporarily on hold, the parent company—HECLA Mining—is proposing to explore the eastern portion of the same Rock Creek-Montanore mineral deposit, which would also invade the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness.
The Cabinet Mountains Wilderness—one of the original 54 Wildernesses designated when the 1964 Wilderness Act was signed into law—is a 35-mile-long range of glaciated peaks, valleys, and clear lakes that’s home to a small population of threatened grizzly bears, as well as threatened Canada lynx and bull trout. The water flowing through streams in the Wilderness is some of the cleanest in the country.
Mining is fundamentally incompatible with preserving the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness, its wildlife, and its clean water. But HECLA Mining, who owns the mineral claims in the proposed Rock Creek mine as well as this area, wants to drill a few thousand feet of tunnels into the Wilderness from the east, whereas the Rock Creek mine would come from the west. The proposed exploration work would build tunnels that cross the Cabinet Mountains divide in the Wilderness, from the Libby Creek watershed into the Rock Creek and Bull River watersheds. Mine exploration tunnels, like those proposed here, often fill with water, impacting groundwater flow.
The Forest Service's Libby Exploration Project Draft Environmental Assessment has failed to adequately address the mine’s potential impacts to the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness or the effects of mining exploration, paired with climate change, on wildlife and water availability. In fact, the EA claims there are zero impacts to Wilderness from thousands of feet of new tunnels!
Wilderness values like solitude, silence, and remoteness could be impacted by the close proximity of industrial mining activity and any associated development. Further, mine exploration waste would be stored outside the Wilderness next to Libby Creek and wastewater dumped into the creek, despite it providing critical habitat for threatened bull trout.
The proposed Rock Creek/Montanore mines have a long, complicated history, with the courts having several times rejected state and federal approvals because the mines would violate multiple laws. This new draft EA is a step closer toward a huge operating mine—or series of mines—that would harm the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness. Please take action by February 19 to help stop the proposed Montanore mine and defend the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness and its precious wildlife and clean water. |
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Speak in your own words, but include the following points in your comments, which can be submitted here: https://cara.fs2c.usda.gov/Public/CommentInput?Project=62833 - Mining is fundamentally incompatible with wilderness preservation.
- The EA admits some impacts to Wilderness would occur, but downplays them.
- This proposal is to assess mineral potential for eventual mining in the Wilderness and is an extension of the larger Rock Creek Mine proposal. However, the EA erroneously claims no cumulative impacts to the Wilderness from this proposed mine even though the goal of exploration is to develop a mine in the Wilderness. The EA further ignores connected actions, specifically the larger proposal to develop a mine or mines in the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness.
- The EA erroneously fails to recognize that the Wilderness includes the subsurface. Extending a tunnel 4,200 feet in the Wilderness does have an impact even if the tunnel does not—yet—come to the surface. The current tunnel, built in the 1990s, has its entrance not far outside of the Wilderness and intrudes into the Wilderness underground. This proposal would greatly expand the tunnel by a few thousand feet, all in the Wilderness.
- The EA claims no significant degradation to surface water in the Wilderness, but that is degradation nonetheless. The wilderness section of the EA claims no impact to groundwater, yet the groundwater section of the EA admits a 500-foot draw down of the water table where the tunnel would be built underground in the Wilderness, and states that an expected increase in flow—of 135 gallons per minute—would add to the existing flow from the current tunnel. Further, the EA refers to impacts after de-watering rather than during the de-watering phase. Thus, the impacts to hydrology are not well quantified or analyzed.
- The EA admits there would be increased noise that affects the Wilderness. However, the EA fails to mention whether impacts from heavy equipment used to build the tunnel underground in the Wilderness could affect the surface in any way.
- The project would last for 16 years and is an extensive proposal of rehabilitating 7,000 feet of existing tunnel and building an additional 4,200 feet of tunnel, all in the Wilderness. A full Environmental Impact Statement is needed for this long-lasting project that will negatively impact the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness.
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Help us protect the Cabinet Mountains and Wilderness around the country. A generous member has pledged to DOUBLE all first-time donations up to $30,000 this year. |
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