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Tintina Resources to Conduct Third-party Environmental Study of Black Butte Copper Project, Montana

Published: November 9, 2017 |

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An environmental consulting firm has been hired at a cost of $420,000 to conduct a third-party environmental study of a proposed copper mine that’s under scrutiny because of its location in the vicinity of a popular floating and fishing river.

State law requires that the state Department of Environmental Quality hire a third-party contractor for all environmental impact statement work, said Kristi Ponozzo, DEQ public policy director.

Developers pay the costs of the studies.

“So we are kind of the intermediator in the billing process,” Pinozzo said.

In late September, the DEQ hired Environmental Resources Management to complete the copper mine EIS after it came out on top in the scoring process that included six applicants, said Craig Jones, DEQ’s Montana Environmental Policy Act coordinator.

ERM is an international firm with 160 offices in 40 countries with a staff of 4,500 that provide services in oil and gas, mining, power, manufacturing, chemical and pharmaceutical arenas.

It bills itself as a leading global provider of environmental, health, safety, risk and conservation services.

Developer Tintina Resources will pay ERM’s $420,000 cost of preparing the EIS for its Black Butte Copper Project.

ERM has subject matter experts with the necessary knowledge, skills and ability to review the project’s scientific data, and it’s been involved in the preparation of dozens of EIS documents including several in Montana, the DEQ said.

“ERM offered the combination of local management with the ability to leverage global expert resources if necessary,” Pinozzo said.

DEQ specialists will provide heavy oversight of the EIS work, but ERM will do much of the document preparation, writing and analysis, Ponozzo said.

The firm’s Montana office in Livingston will lead the review of the copper project.

It has a year to complete an environmental impact statement on Black Butte.

ERM’s proposed cost to complete the first stage of the project, which is developing the draft EIS, is $324,000, the DEQ said.

Completion of the final EIS will cost another $96,550.

ERM will bill the DEQ monthly for its services.

Jones, the agency’s MEPA coordinator, must approve the charges.

The DEQ will then bill developer Tintina Resources for ERM’s charges.

“They bear all that cost,” the DEQ’s Ponozzo said.

Tintina has a $50,000 deposit with the state.

The cost might be a little larger than other EIS work because it will involve handling and responding to additional public comments due to the high interest in the project, Ponozzo said.

“Part of that is we don’t have staff on hand to complete these types of projects in a timely manner,” Pinozzo said of why state law requires the state to hire third parties to complete environmental impact statements. “There’s a lot of analysis and work that goes into it.”

When the DEQ considers firms to do environmental impact statements, every firm that qualifies in the scoring process is sent to the developer.

The developer then can cuts the field in half, Jones said.

The DEQ chooses the highest scoring firm from the remaining firms, Jones said.

In the case of the Black Butte study, five applicants were sent to Tintina, which eliminated two of the firms. The DEQ chose ERM from the remaining three firms.

The DEQ and ERM are now in the process of conducting meetings to gather input from the public on the scope of the draft EIS.

The final two meetings were scheduled Monday night in Helena and Tuesday in Livingston.

Two copper-rich zones would be mined in the proposed $250 million project in Meagher County, which is 17 miles north of White Sulphur Springs near Sheep Creek.

The location of the mine near a Smith River tributary has resulted in concerns about dewatering and pollution caused by mine waste, but Tintina says it can safely extract and mill the ore while providing more than 200 good-paying jobs over the 19-year-life of the mine.

Source: Great Falls Tribune


To stop by Tintina’s website, CLICK HERE


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