About The Mine
Revett Silver Company is proposing to build a mammoth copper/silver mine beneath and adjacent to the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness Area in northwestern Montana.
"There shouldn't be anything sacred about this spot. Plenty of mines are built in prettier places, a wilderness is just a line on a map."
Doug Ward Revett Minerals
V.P. Corporate Development
Mining operations would drive tunnels three miles deep into the heart of the wilderness to access the ore body. Ore would be mined by blasting out huge quantities of rock to create giant underground rooms, leaving overlying wilderness lands held up by rock pillars left standing in the rooms. Because the area is extensively faulted, collapse of portions of the wilderness lands and certain alpine lakes and streams could occur through subsidence, resulting in the total loss of some overlying lands and water bodies.
After tunneling into the wilderness area, the waste rock would be dumped in an unlined pile next to the Clark Fork River. The mine would generate 100 million tons of left over contaminated mine waste or "tailings," covering 340 acres and reaching approximately 300 feet high.
This tailings impoundment would not have a liner, and a minimum of 29,000 gallons per day of polluted water would leak into ground water destined for Rock Creek, the Clark Fork River, and Lake Pend Oreille.
After the underground blasting is commenced, it is estimated that 2,000 gallons per minute of pristine groundwater would flow into the mine and become polluted with heavy metals from the ore (including cadmium, copper, zinc, arsenic, manganese, aluminum, mercury, and lead) and also with ammonia and nitrates from the blasting explosives. Using unproven wastewater treatment systems, up to 3 million gallons per day of this mine wastewater would be discharged into the Clark Fork River, eventually ending up in Lake Pend Oreille.
Doug Ward Revett Minerals
V.P. Corporate Development
Mining operations would drive tunnels three miles deep into the heart of the wilderness to access the ore body. Ore would be mined by blasting out huge quantities of rock to create giant underground rooms, leaving overlying wilderness lands held up by rock pillars left standing in the rooms. Because the area is extensively faulted, collapse of portions of the wilderness lands and certain alpine lakes and streams could occur through subsidence, resulting in the total loss of some overlying lands and water bodies.
After tunneling into the wilderness area, the waste rock would be dumped in an unlined pile next to the Clark Fork River. The mine would generate 100 million tons of left over contaminated mine waste or "tailings," covering 340 acres and reaching approximately 300 feet high.
This tailings impoundment would not have a liner, and a minimum of 29,000 gallons per day of polluted water would leak into ground water destined for Rock Creek, the Clark Fork River, and Lake Pend Oreille.
After the underground blasting is commenced, it is estimated that 2,000 gallons per minute of pristine groundwater would flow into the mine and become polluted with heavy metals from the ore (including cadmium, copper, zinc, arsenic, manganese, aluminum, mercury, and lead) and also with ammonia and nitrates from the blasting explosives. Using unproven wastewater treatment systems, up to 3 million gallons per day of this mine wastewater would be discharged into the Clark Fork River, eventually ending up in Lake Pend Oreille.