EAST BOULDER OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE
August 8, 2007
PALLADIUM LODGE, BIG TIMBER

MEETING SUMMARY

Attendees:

            •      CRC/Northern Plains Representatives:  Jerry Iverson, Paul Hawks (voting members)

            •      Technical Consultant:  Sarah Zuzulock

            •      Northern Plains Staff: Shannon Lewis

            •      Stillwater Mining Company:  Matt Wolfe, Jeff Sargent (voting members),

       Bruce Gilbert

1.         Introductions

The meeting convened at 1:05 PM with Jerry Iverson as chair.  Paul and Jerry, Matt and Jeff were identified as the voting members for today’s meeting.

2.         SMC and Council Updates

A.  Production and Employment:  Since February SMC had an incident rate of 3.5% of reportable accidents in 200,000 man hours.  SMC is currently employing 560 persons with a target of 590 by the end of the year.  Since February the mine produced 278,400 tons and average ore recovery was 89%.  The mine shipped 95,000 oz of ore since February. SMC used 57.7% of tailings for backfill with a target of 58%.

B.  Selective Mining Initiative: Currently 17% of production is produced out of captive cut and fill stopes.  SMC is  projecting 28% by the end of the year, but it will realistically be around 20%. The reason the production in the selective mining initiative is so low is because manpower has recently become an issue.  It takes longer to develop a seasoned miner and SMC is currently employing younger, less experienced miners. 

C.  EIS:  At this time chapter 2 is being finalized and they are beginning chapter 4.  There is still no scheduled date to send out chapter 2 for public comment.  It is projected that we may see a draft of chapter 2 later this year or the 1^st quarter of 2008

D.  Agency Meetings: Since the February meeting there has been an Air quality inspection and a water quality inspection by the DEQ.  SMC is currently arranging a mine tour for the DEQ on August 27^th to visit the water management facilities both on site and at the proposed Boe Ranch site.  The tour will focus on newer DEQ employees to give them an overview of the facilities.  SMC would also like to schedule another bond meeting in September.  The bulk of the bond review will be about the tailings impoundment reclamation plan.  Overall the bond review process will require at least two more meetings to be complete.

E.  Confirm sampling Dates, 2007 Monitoring Schedule: Sampling and monitoring events are ongoing.  Biological monitoring for the East Boulder has been scheduled for September 5^th and 6^th.  Surface water sampling will take place on August 13^th and 14^th and groundwater sampling will take place August 20^th and 21^st.  Quarterly surface water sampling will take place September 3^rd and 4^th.

F.  Brownlee Vent Raise: The Brownlee Vent Raise construction and reclamation is complete.  The topsoil has been replaced, the earth was seeded and fertilized and rock spread around.  Reclamation progress will be monitored for the next few years.

G.  TSF Stage Borrow Material Investigation: SMC has started the construction of stage III of the tailings impoundment with waste rock from the mine.  They project a shortfall of materials sometime in 2010.  They have started looking for a borrow area to supplement the lack of rock necessary for stages III through V of the tailings impoundment.  They recently ran a drill to determine if there was material for the tailings expansion and it was determined that there would be enough material for the final stages of the tailings impoundment.  Once the borrow area is established SMC will permit the area for the life of the project through reclamation.

H.  Office/Dry Expansion: The rock is in place and buildings are proposed to be completed by the end of October.

I.  Event Pond:  SMC has constructed an event pond, which is a lined pond with a 600,000 gallon capacity.  The plans for an event pond came about from the audit of water systems risk assessment for unplanned discharges.  During this audit they found that there were three primary risk areas for an unplanned discharge.  An overflow of the surge pond into the perc pond.  An overflow of the reclaim tank, which is processed water and that tank would overflow onto the ground.  And water/tailings coming out of the mine tunnels.  The event pond is located near the concentrator and there will be pipes running from all the risk areas into the pond.  Water that ends up in the event pond will be pumped back into the circuit eliminating the risk of discharge of untreated water.

 J.  Environmental Management System: A consultant has been selected to help develop the environmental management system. The consultant has done audit training and from there they have started a comprehensive environmental audit.  Environmental audits for the East Boulder and the smelter are scheduled for the week of August 13^th – 17^th.  From that point SMC will reorganize the structure of the policies and procedures currently in place to accommodate the new environmental management system.  The entire process will take the rest of this year and most of next year.  When the process is complete SMC will do an internal audit at all sights.

K.  TMDL: The State put out the draft TMDL in May.  Currently SMC is putting together comments, which will be submitted by Friday August 10^th.  Some of the suggestions in the TMDL would modify the MPDES permit although the State can’t quantify any impact.

L.  Financial Report:  The most recent financial report was reviewed and overall we continue to be under budget. 

M.  Bond Review: 

ON THE RECORD  2:55 PM

Voting members:  Jerry Iverson, Paul Hawks (chair), Matt Wolfe, and Jeff Sargent were identified for the record.

3.  Administrative Matters

Motion #1:  Paul  moved and Matt seconded a motion to approve the minutes and official transcript  from the last meeting.                                                          Motion Carried

Shannon reviewed the action items from the August meeting and all action items had been completed.

4. Review of the GNA Implementation Schedule:

Sarah reviewed the implementation schedule and answered questions.  The draft Snowmaking report was completed and comments were submitted.  The Snowmaking report will be completed and sent to the agencies in October. We can expect a draft of chapter 2 of the EIS to be released sometime in September and submit comments in January.  A draft MPDES permit could potentially be released in December and comments submitted in February.  We anticipate a draft of the bond released for public comment sometime in December and the final bond amount to be determined and posted in February.  Biological monitoring will commence in September and we expect a draft 2007 biomonitoring report by December.  Sometime during the first quarter of 2008 contractor selection will begin and a work plan for the survey to be completed.

5.  MPDES and Snowmaking Report

Matt reviewed the results of the snowmaking report and answered questions.  The results of the snowmaking report were similar to the previous winters when earlier tests were conducted.  The tests saw approximately 80 percent or more reduction of total nitrogen and up to 90 percent reduction if soil conversion of nitrates are taken into account.  Overall, the report was well written and provided additional knowledge that the results of snowmaking are consistent.  Snowmaking should be included as an option for nitrogen removal in the next MPDES permit renewal.

A.  Water monitoring and optimization reports for 1Q 200 and 2Q 2007: Sarah reported that no exceedances of tiered trigger levels occurred in the 2^nd, 3^rd, or 4^th quarter.  Elevated nitrogen concentrations at the mine site wells located outside the mixing zone continued to show elevated nitrogen concentrations in all three quarters.  The 2^nd quarter revealed there were elevated levels of chloride, but it returned to baseline during the 3^rd quarter.  The 3^rd quarter revealed increased sulphate concentration at EBMW-9 at 18 milligrams per liter and it returned to baseline by the 4^th quarter.  SMC did not direct discharge or encounter unaltered groundwater and all water was sent to percolation after biological treatment. 

B.  Discussion of 2007 Water management Plan & 2006 Optimization Report: Matt presented the 2007 mine water management plan and the 2006 optimization report.  In 2006 all mine water was treated for nitrogen through primary denitrification.  With an average nitrogen removal efficiency of 99% and total nitrogen discharge averaged 1.3 lbs/day.  The Anox System was constructed and commissioned and an average of 80 gpm of mine water was processed through the Anox System during the 4^th quarter.  The Anox System is expected to be fully commissioned by the second half of 2007 and treatment through the Anox system will be 95% or greater.  In 2006 an average of 89.6% of water was recycled to the underground mine, an average of 8.8% was recycled to TSF and an average of 1.6% was discharged.  In 2007 SMC is projecting an average of 88% of water to be recycled to the underground mine, an average of 6% to recycled to TSF, and an average of 6% to be discharged.  SMC plans to use their water right to utilize about 16,000,000 gallons of river water as makeup water for the mill circuit. 

C.  High School Volunteers:  High School Volunteers could not be used in compliance sampling or be allowed on mine property.  However, SMC would be willing to put together a course on water sampling with the High School sometime in the fall. 

D.  Update on AnoxKaldnes Advanced Water Treatment Improvements: The Anox system was commissioned in October and the first month SMC started gradually increasing ammonia treatment (nitrification).  The Anox system has been getting near 100% nitrification, averaging 95%-99.9%.  Drops in efficiency could be related to temperature, due to no roof on the system.  Phosphorous concentration has been a concern because phosphorous is necessary for the conversion from ammonia to nitrate.  The mine has been monitoring phosphorous content by sampling weekly.  The third cell, the denitrification cell has had more problems than the first two cells.  Most of the problems could be related to temperature, and the consistent feed on methanol.  The methanol feed is automated and it has been getting air bubbles in the tubing, which causes the pump to lose its prime. SMC has been monitoring the pump and anticipates it will be fully functioning soon.  By the end of the summer a roof will be installed on the Anox system and SMC anticipates 90%-100% treatment of both nitrification and denitrification.

E.  EBR-004 Monitoring Site Relocation:  In August George Furniss from the DEQ recommended that the new site (EBR-004A) be located a couple hundred yards down river from the existing EBR-004.  The site was selected because it was directly below the groundwater influence zone, the site has been monitored since September.  The site will continue to be monitored for a year and at that point it will be determined if it is a suitable replacement for EBR-004. 

F.  Biological Monitoring

            1.  2006 Draft East Boulder Biological Monitoring Report:  The 2006 draft East Boulder biological monitoring report is anticipated by the end of the month.  And finalizing the report and meeting with the agencies by the end of May. 

            2.  Macroinvertebrate Reassessment Project:  Rithron started pulling all the data and beginning the assessment for the project.  A draft report will be out by the middle of May.  After the draft is released there will be a month for comment and then the final report will be issued two weeks after all comments are received. 

6.  Tailings and Waste Rock Project

A.  Progress report on pasted Atioings Pre-Feasibility Study: The DEQ has received the study and they are using it to look at other projects.  The DEQ thought the draft report was the best study they had seen on Paste and we will probably see it in the coming EIS. 

7.  Review of Traffic Reports Since Last Meeting: 

There were a few traffic exceedances in October/November, which were accounted for as a surge in contractors that were on site for tailings work.  The problem was addressed with management and there have no excedances since.  Overall, 2006 was a very successful year for traffic reduction, there were very few excedances.

8.  Other Community Concerns:   

Jerry expressed concern about the Didymo and raising awareness among the public. 

Action Item #2:  Sarah will send out updates on Didymo information from the EPA and an information CD.