USCM hypocrisy at Sheep Creek 

by Bob Williams, Stevensville 

USCM promised transparency, but USCM revised Plan of Operation PoO fails to disclose increasing width & height of narrow old Adit 1 tunnel.

   In the first 250’ of Adit 1, USCM would slant drill maybe 800 holes. Then detonate maybe 800 pounds of RDX & ANFO, (300 cubic yards X 2.75 # ANFO/RDX per cubic yard). To blast out maybe 300 cubic solid yards of augen gneiss, with chunks and blocks of hornblende amphibolite. If USCM enlarges Adit 1 from a 5’X7’, to a 7’X9’ 6”, tunnel. 

   No categorical exclusion for the PoO, as some blasted tunnel rock will contain arsenic. Or lead. Or asbestiform. Or radionuclides.

   No one would allow USCM to outside the tunnel mouth, pile up blasted out tunnel rock pieces with air spaces, in what might be, at 40% swell, a pile of 420 cubic yards. And 770 tons weight. 

    USCM has painted themselves into a corner, where a utility helicopter flies everything to the staging area. Now USCM would have to fly out what they take out! Enlarging 300’ Adit 1 tunnel so machines can extract 3,000 tons of carbonatite ore from one location, in one dike filled from deep massive molten carbonatite.

  Now they’d need 21, 20 ton dump trucks to haul blasted out tunnel rock away from the staging area. Haul some to a facility charging plenty, for perpetual responsibility for radionuclides. Haul some to another facility, charging big to perpetually hold, blasted out rock containing arsenic or lead, or hard fiber asbestiform rock.

    USCM knows MT DEQ and MSHA(Mine Safety and Health Administration), may want the tunnel roof to be made safe by driving upwards 5’ long bolts.  Bolting to them, thick wire mesh across the ceiling. MSHA may want an escapeway at tunnel end.

   USCM might drop 180 days of block sample mining, and push for the other part of their revised PoO, to on the surface, in 90 days, from 45 drilled holes, obtain 18,000’ of 3 ¾” diameter core samples.

   Then show core laboratory assays to a gov backed entity, that could slowly develop large scale processing. And large scale mining of carbonatite ore. From 60 dikes in the USCM claim block, of eleven square miles.