Grass Valley Planning Commission Tours Proposed Idaho-Maryland Mine

Published on Jun 7, 2006 - 9:44:00 AM

By: Dorothy Talan-Quaid, YubaNet

On Monday four members of the Grass Valley Planning Commission, along with citizens, media and mine employees toured the three properties that are part of the proposed Idaho-Maryland hardrock gold mine in Grass Valley, Calif. A total of 24 people attended the tour led by Grass Valley Planning Director Tom Last and Patricia Nelson, Director of Environmental Affairs for Idaho-Maryland Mining Corp.

There are five members on the planning commission. Commissioner Eleanor Kenitzer went on the tour but later recused herself from participating in the follow-up study session at City Hall as she is currently employed by Idaho-Maryland Mining Corp, a subsidiary of Emgold Mining Corporation. Kenitzer works as the Administrative Assistant to the mine's Operations Manager, Doug Cloutier. Kenitzer is also a member of the board of directors of the Grass Valley Chamber of Commerce. The Chair of the Planning Commission, Dale White, was absent from both the tour and study session due to a work emergency.

The junior mining company (www.emgold.com), headquartered in Vancouver, B.C., hopes to win city approval to reopen the old underground mine and explore for gold that it believes previous miners left behind before the mine closed in 1956. Emgold wants to mine 2,000 feet deeper than the original mine (approximately 3,000 ft.). 70 miles of flooded tunnels would have to be dewatered and treated mine water would be dumped into South Fork Wolf Creek.

Should the mine be approved, it would be Emgold's first and only mining operation. The mine would shut down in 2027 and the property would be reclaimed and redeveloped for another industrial activity.

The largest of the proposed mine properties (101 acres) is located between Idaho-Maryland Road and East Bennett Street off Centennial Drive, just outside the city limits. The two others are located off Whispering Pines Lane and Brunswick Road and next to the old lumber yard on Brunswick Road at East Bennett Street. Of the 138 total surface acres to be developed, Emgold owns about 45 acres and leases the rest, with an option to purchase.

Visitors were given a map of the properties detailing the proposed development at each site. The largest property (101 acres called the Idaho-Maryland site) is currently zoned medium-density residential (55 acres) and business park (46 acres). The application includes a request to change the General Plan on this site only, from business park and urban medium density to manufacturing-industrial. One of the other properties (Round Hole site) is already within city limits. The other (New Brunswick site) will remain in Nevada County's jurisdiction.

Plans call for the construction of approximately 250,000 square feet of buildings including a visitor's center, offices, a warehouse and truck shop, an explosives storage area and a ceramics plant. Truck traffic will use the Idaho-Maryland entrance to the property and employees will enter from East Bennett Street. The mine will operate on a 24-7 basis.

Given the location of the old mine, storing and reclaiming mine tailings on the site are not an option. Emgold wants to recycle the tailings into ceramic tiles through a proprietary process it calls Ceramext. Should Emgold be successful in manufacturing and distributing a ceramic by-product on a commercial scale, it would be the first mine in the U.S. or Canada to turn mine tailings into tiles.

One aspect of the terrain that stood out is the pale, barren "soil" at the north end of the property near Wolf Creek. Nelson said the soil is actually the dried remains of an old retention pond used when the mine was in operation more than a half-century ago. The Idaho-Maryland closed in 1956, the same year the Empire Mine, located next door, ceased operations. When asked if the soil could contain toxins that would need to be addressed before the area could be developed, Nelson said, "We've done some testing, I'd have to look at the results, but I believe we were kind of low on arsenic."

Classified as a semi-metal, the element arsenic is one of the most potent cancer-causing agents known. While it occurs naturally in the rocks of the Sierra Nevada foothills, hardrock mining can bring large amounts of arsenic to the surface where it can accumulate in soils, sediments, waterways and wells.

The Idaho-Maryland: A "low arsenic zone?"

Ross Guenther told the group that the Idaho-Maryland mine is in a "low arsenic zone," in spite of the fact that it is located next door to the fabled Empire Mine that today poses a public health risk due to arsenic contamination. The California Department of Parks and Recreation, which currently owns Empire Mine State Park, inherited the toxic legacy when it acquired the mine from Newmont Mining Corporation. Arsenic that "exceeds soluble threshold limit concentration" from a constructed mine drain (the Magenta Drain) is being discharged through an open ditch that runs through Veterans Memorial Park in Grass Valley, eventually emptying into Wolf Creek, Bear River, and the Sacramento River. Over the winter, the rain-swelled drain overflowed into neighbors' yards and driveways.

In addition to arsenic, State Parks has to deal with aluminum, antimony, barium, cobalt, color, dissolved oxygen, iron, manganese, pH, settleable solids, total suspended solids, turbidity and vanadium limitations, all of which are included in their proposed permit to further assess the damage and construct a water treatment system.

On June 23 there will be a public hearing at the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board in Sacramento regarding State Park's new effluent limitations and time schedules to determine water quality and complete studies and planning for the treatment plant.

Bottom line, the Wolf Creek watershed is heavily impacted by cumulative damage from former mining in Grass Valley and the health risk has continued unabated for a century. Money to mitigate the contamination, to the tune of $5 million for just the first year of efforts, will have to come from California taxpayers. Interested parties can download the proposed orders and learn more by going to: http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/centralvalley/tentative/.

Gravity separation, flotation, and cyanide were used to separate gold from the ore taken out of local mines and will be used again if the Idaho-Maryland reopens, Last told tour-goers. To separate the microscopic flecks of gold from the ore-bearing rock, Emgold plans to employ a cyanide leach process using enclosed containers. Even though Emgold plans to recycle cyanide for reuse, the beneficiation process will still require adding approximately 400 pounds of fresh cyanide a day, all of which will have to be trucked into the mine over city and county roadways. Last said the cyanide will be "contained on-site." A mine water treatment plant, storm water detention pond and a mine water-settling pond will also be at this location.

A man-made berm made of old mine tailings and soil separates the property from Wolf Creek. "We don't know that this is a stable area to build on or keep as a berm," Nelson said. Plans call for a re-grading of the road on top of the berm, with a 100-foot setback from Wolf Creek. The tailings could be removed and processed for possible gold content, as part of the grading process, said Nelson.

The New Brunswick site (37 acres) is near the intersection of East Bennett and Brunswick Road, next to the old lumber mill (currently owned by Sierra Pacific Industries). Existing silos on the site will be kept intact, as a historical resource, according to Nelson. This will be the site used for dewatering the flooded shafts. Plans call for a water treatment plant with a pipeline for discharging the treated effluent into South Fork Wolf Creek, which joins Wolf Creek in downtown Grass Valley (behind Safeway). This site will remain in the county.

The third property, called Round Hole (1 acre), is located north of Whispering Pines Lane and Brunswick Road. "A small building is proposed here," Last said, "and it will be used for emergency access and ventilation." A ventilation fan will be located underground in the shaft and, in the event of an emergency, a cage will be lowered down the five-foot diameter shaft to raise workers from the mine, just as they did in the mine's former days, according to Ross Guenther, who has been trying to reopen the mine for over 30 years. Another emergency access will be located at the New Brunswick site.

Planning Commission Study Session

The Planning Commission reconvened in council chambers after lunch for a study session to discuss the site visit and receive an update on the city's ongoing environmental review of the project.

Jeff Harvey, a consultant with Environmental Science Associates, the consulting firm hired by the city to prepare the MEA, Initial Study, and EIR, gave commissioners an overview of the project and the environmental review process. Harvey said the study session was "informational only, there is no action to be taken by the commission today, no decisions to be made, this is strictly for information for yourselves and for the public." Harvey called the city's environmental review process "a bit unique, specifically for this project." The city insisted on a comprehensive review "because of the scope of the project and because of community concerns about the project and because of the scale of the project relative to this community," Harvey said. In fact, should the project be approved, the Idaho-Maryland would be the only mine in California located within a city's borders and the largest gold mine in the state.

The three-phase review process began in January 2006 with the Master Environmental Assessment (MEA), which gathers and reviews existing data from previous studies, site history and information materials submitted on the applications to develop a comprehensive list of environmental issues and constraints pertaining to the property, and identifies the agencies involved in making decisions about the project, Harvey said. "The MEA has been substantially completed," Harvey said, "and we expect to have it submitted to the city this week or early next week."

Phase II, the Final Initial Study and Scoping, will be conducted between June and September. It's "an opportunity for the applicant, if they see the environmental issues that have been identified and they believe, that by minor changes or whatever level of changes they want to make to their application, that they could eliminate some of those concerns and issues, they would have the opportunity to do that, at this stage," Harvey said. "If they believe that all of those issues can be mitigated and dealt with, they may elect to go simply forward in the process where we will then convert the MEA to a standard CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) Initial Study, and that would be issued with the notice of preparation to the community, the state clearinghouse, to all of the agencies that would be involved, to everyone who has expressed concern about this project," Harvey added.

That notice would trigger a 30-day comment period, during which another meeting would be held with a presentation similar to Monday's session, according to Harvey. After the comment period, a "scoping summary" would be prepared that will summarize all of the issues identified, all of the studies to be undertaken, and will define what the total scope of the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) will be. The EIR is the third step, or Phase III, of the review process and is scheduled for completion by May of 2007.

Harvey said although there were many issues raised by city council members, commissioners, staff, other agencies and the community, water quality and the effects of dewatering the mine were the two primary issues. Those issues, particularly water issues and potential risks associated with the mine project, will be addressed in the EIR, which will include the results of many additional studies being conducted by the applicant and others and the results of studies completed over the last decade by other agencies, according to Harvey.

"We expect to be able to describe this in a pretty high level of detail by the end of the environmental impact report process and to evaluate what are the potential impacts on individual wells, and to evaluate what kinds of mitigation measures are appropriate, to make sure that those well owners have a guaranteed, high quality water supply," Harvey said.

Industrial projects have a lot of layers, Harvey told the commissioners, with permits being issued by local, state and federal agencies. Those agencies and their permitting requirements have been inventoried and the agencies have been noticed, Harvey said, with their input collected as part of the environmental review process.

Commissioner David Emanuel said noise and dust abatement were two issues raised by people on the site visit. Harvey said the rock-crushing operation would be housed in above ground, insulated buildings designed to mitigate the noise. An air quality permit is required for all of the manufacturing operations proposed on the site and required air quality controls, which will be evaluated in consultation with the Air Pollution Control District to determine the level on controls and how they relate to the proposed operations.

Commissioner Ralph Silberstein thanked mine officials for the tour, which he said was very informative. Silberstein had prepared a list of concerns in January, after a meeting where holding a study session was discussed. Many of those issues had already been discussed by Harvey or addressed during the site tour. But Silberstein thought it was important to identify some of the other issues at Monday's meeting, including changes that will have to be made to the city's General Plan if the property is rezoned, changes in the city's growth rate, impacts to the area after the proposed gold mine shuts down in 2027, and the use of energy resources required to run the mine's manufacturing operations.

Commissioner Gloria Hyde asked if the development plans would start with a "clean site." She asked, "Will there be a survey and will there be a cleanup plan for any toxicity that exists today before you start whatever you're going to do?" Hyde also asked if any wetlands had been identified on the property and said she thinks a complete site survey should be done to protect wetlands, if any, as well as address existing toxicity from former mining.

Nelson said a Phase-1 hazardous materials assessment has been completed, along with a geo-technical investigation, and the applicants are working with other agencies to determine what level of cleanup needs to be done on the site prior to initiating a new mining operation.

"It seems like we're lacking quite a lot of information I'm sure you have," Hyde told Harvey, "and maybe you think it's not necessary for us at this stage, but we wouldn't have to ask these questions if we had that."

Harvey said it was a very good question to bring up at this stage and said the wetlands issue is being studied as part of the biological investigation. "I don't have a clear answer for you," Harvey answered.

Emanuel asked city staff when the commission could expect to see the final application. Last said once the MEA is received, the commission will receive copies and the applicants will be given the opportunity to make changes. Once those changes, if any, are made, each commissioner will receive a copy of the application for their review, according to Last.

Community Development Director Joe Heckel said the city council and planning commission would be more actively involved in the process once the EIR stage begins, in about eight months.

Copies of the current application are available at City Hall, the Grass Valley Public Library, Madelyn Helling Library and online.

Related Articles:

Arsenic Leaching Prompts Public Health Advisory in Grass Valley

Baykeeper and State Parks Reach Agreement on Toxic Legacy of Empire Mine

Grass Valley Provides Online Information on Proposed Idaho-Maryland Mine

Grass Valley Hosts Public Outreach Presentation on Emgold's Proposed Mine

YubaNet's 5-Part Special Report on the Idaho-Maryland Mine: Golden Gamble in Grass Valley

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