Back in the Bunker?
via the Bunker Hill Mine Facebook page Miners change shifts at the Bunker Hill Mine in Kellogg. Photo taken around 1950.
The Central Treatment Plant in Kellogg, in operation for over 40 years and still functioning, was built to treat conntaminated water from the Bunker Hill Mine. (JOSH McDONALD/Hagadone News Network file)
The smoke stacks at the Bunker Hill Smelting Plant are pictured here on the morning of their demolition in 1996. (Courtesy photo)
COEUR d’ALENE — The Canadian company interested in buying Kellogg’s Bunker Hill mine has negotiated a new agreement that could lead to re-opening the mine in a limited capacity within four years.
Bunker Hill Mining Corp., headquartered in Toronto, entered into a renegotiated lease-purchase deal with mine owners after defaulting on payments last month.
The new agreement calls for Bunker Hill Mining Corp. to pay $60,000 per month instead of $200,000 per month toward the $45 million deal.
John Ryan, Bunker Hill’s interim chief executive officer, said the latest agreement allows his company to invest more money toward opening the mine, once the largest job source in the Silver Valley.
“We are very pleased to have worked out an agreement with the mine owner, Placer Mining Corp., to enable us to continue our effort to ultimately re-open the mine and make it a productive asset,” Ryan said.
He said the company this week submitted a written proposal to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regarding concessions to its cleanup payment obligations.
Discussions have involved Bunker Hill, the mine owner and the EPA.
“I believe the discussions we have had over the last several weeks have unified our common goal to continue to advance the project toward production,” Ryan said. “We’re basically negotiating for the mine, over a settlement for EPA.”
The sooner the mine is re-opened, the sooner it can pay for remediation and cleanup efforts, he said.
Opening the mine, which employed more than 2,000 workers before it closed in the early 1980s, requires earning the confidence of investors.
Ryan’s company plans to drill, starting in January, 30 test holes encompassing 40,000 feet of drilling. The information they gather will be wrapped into a report outlining the holes’ profitability. The drilling will include the mine’s zinc-rich Quill section.
“It’s the largest ore body in the mine,” Ryan said.
If Bunker Hill Mining secures financing, work to rebuild the mine could begin in 2020 and production would follow.
When the Bunker Hill mine closed — approximately 100 years after mining operations began in the area — the economy of the surrounding Silver Valley nearly collapsed, and the landscape was laid waste with pollutants that discolored the Coeur d’Alene River and poured a plume of toxic runoff into Lake Coeur d’Alene.
In 1983, the EPA declared the mine and its smelter complex the nation’s second-largest Superfund site and put to work a cleanup plan that included soil removal and river restoration.
The agency has been a presence in the Silver Valley ever since. Over the past 35 years, the EPA has spent $900 million in cleanup costs.
This week, the EPA poured concrete on a new water treatment plant south of Interstate 90 to assist in treating the 2,000 gallons of water laced with heavy metals released from Bunker, and other water sources, every minute.
That mine water was being fed into a treatment plant built in the 1970s, said Ed Moreen, who oversees the site for the EPA.
“It’s basically acid mine drainage that is polluted with heavy metals,” Moreen said.
Another project on EPA’s agenda is to build an underground wall to keep massive tailing piles from leaching 400 pounds of toxic metals a day into the South Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River.
The EPA covered the piles with an impermeable plastic layer and soil that has since turned the piles into giant, grassy mounds. The work prevented rain, snow and wind from moving contaminants, but it did not prevent lead and zinc from percolating through the ground to the river.
“It didn’t reduce the metals from moving into the South Fork, like we wanted it to,” Moreen said.
Completing the wall is a year away, he said.
In the meantime Ryan, who grew up in Wallace, said getting the mine back into operation will provide cash for cleanup efforts.
“We spent months going round and around,” Ryan said. “What we’re looking for is some relief. We’re really close. We’ve generally gotten positive feedback from investors.”
Opening the mine and having it operate under enhanced environmental rules, he said, will positively contribute to surrounding economies, but it can also save the EPA the $80,000 per month it pays to treat the mine water.
“If we can get back into production, we can at least mitigate it, if not solve the problem entirely,” Ryan said. “If we can get rid of the Bunker Hill water problem, we can increase the overall health of the South Fork.”
So far this year, in its continual remediation efforts, the EPA has cleaned more than 50 residential and commercial Silver Valley properties. It has paved roads with a barrier to cap mine waste, and removed more than 52,000 cubic yards of mine waste from the Success mine site in the Ninemile Creek drainage, according to EPA. The agency also paid to haul 10,400 truck loads of contaminated waste to repositories and continues to work on the underground wall for the Bunker Hill tailings. The wall is 90 percent complete, according to EPA.