Elko Daily Free Press 4-23-10

BLM plans meetings on Hollister

ELKO — The U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s Elko office plans four public meetings next month on Great Basin Gold Ltd.’s proposal to go into full gold production at its Hollister Project in Elko County.

The meetings will be in Elko, Winnemucca, Battle Mountain and Mountain City to gather public comment for preparation of an environmental impact statement on the project.

The schedule includes:

• May 10, 4-7 p.m. — BLM Winnemucca District Office, 5100 East Winnemucca Blvd., Winnemucca.

• May 11, 4-7 p.m. — BLM Battle Mountain District Office, 50 Bastian Road, Battle Mountain..

• May 12, 4-7 p.m. — BLM Elko District Office, 3900 E Idaho St., Elko.

• May 13, 3-6 p.m. Pacific Time, 4-7 p.m. Mountain Time — Justice Court Building, Mountain City.

Great Basin subsidiary Rodeo Creek Gold Inc. is test mining now at Hollister and seeks BLM approval to mine roughly 400 tons of ore per day from the underground operation.

The company expects full production to provide 200 jobs. Hollister currently has 140-150 employees, including 92 at the project site, according to the operations project manager, Doug Crawford.

The other employees work at company facilities in Winnemucca, which is where many of them live. Although Hollister is 47 miles northwest of Elko, the improved roads to the project are closer to Winnemucca and Battle Mountain than Elko.

The EIS also would allow Great Basin to expand surface exploration drilling.

“Hopefully, the draft EIS will be out of public comment around December 2010,” said Janice Stadelman, the Elko BLM’s project coordinator for Hollister.

“If everything were to go on schedule, then we would be looking at around August 2011 to issue a decision,” she said Wednesday.

Great Basin Gold President and Chief Executive Officer Fred Dippenaar said Wednesday the publication of the notice of intent to begin scoping for the EIS was within the time frame the company had anticipated.

“While waiting for the NOI process to be completed, Rodeo Creek, in conjunction with the third-party EIS contractor and the BLM, was actively gathering information, developing various field survey protocols and a groundwater hydrology model, as well as drafting the first two chapters of the EIS,” he said in an announcement.

The mine portal is in old East Pit from mining in the early 1990s, and the surface disturbance would include exploration drilling, new facilities and road changes. Ore would be processed off site.

“Cultural issues and Native American concerns are the primary issues,” Stadelman said.

The Hollister Project is in the area of the Tosawihi Quarries District, where the Western Shoshone mined chert (silica) to make arrowheads and tools as long as 8,000 years ago.

Great Basin Gold also announced Wednesday that the first gold pour at its Esmeralda Mill near Hawthorne that processes Hollister test ore was April 14. The company additionally reported that it has reached an agreement with Newmont Mining Corp. to process a stockpile of ore at Hollister.

Newmont agreed to buy 35,000 to 50,000 tons of ore, and Great Basin stated it expects 28,000 gold equivalent ounces to be recovered under the Newmont agreement for net proceeds of $26.3 million.

Hollister has been operating as an exploration project under BLM permitting. The BLM reported the project has created 66 acres of approved surface disturbance on public lands.

The BLM also stated that approximately 75 percent of the existing facilities are on previously disturbed ground within the open pit.

The proposed expansion to full-scale mining would disturb an additional 58 acres of public land for a total of 124 acres of surface disturbance, according to the BLM.

The proposed road changes would include the Mud Springs, Ivanhoe and Little Antelope Creek roads.

The BLM published a notice of intent to prepare the EIS in the Federal Register on Monday, opening a 30-day scoping period.

Written comments may be mailed to: BLM, Hollister Underground Mine Project Coordinator, 3900 East Idaho St., Elko, NV 89801-4611, faxed to 775-753-0255, or e-mailed to janice_stadel man@blm.gov.