Libby Exploration Project Endangers Environment
This proposal to mine into the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness and create a potential future superfund site endangers our public lands, threatens species, water quality, and local communities. In 2021 Tribes and Conservation Groups Filed Legal Action against the same mining company for violations of Montana’s Bad Actor Law. The potential impacts of this project include:
- Bad for Wildlife
- Would create an industrial environment resulting in disturbances from blasting, mining equipment, truck traffic, and lighting; fragment habitat; and increasing levels of human-caused wildlife mortality, impacting ESA protected species including grizzly bear, Canada lynx and wolverine.
- Reduced hunting, fishing, and recreation opportunities
- Compounding Effects
- Mining activities are additive to the impacts of logging, Highway 2, railroads, small mining, and construction of dams and roads
- Increased mining traffic on limited infrastructure
- Loss of Clean Water – Water Quality – Water Pollution
- Negative impacts to bull , redband rainbow, and westslope cutthroat trout, western pearlshell mussel, sturgeon, and semi-aquatic species.
- Creation of toxic dust and stream sedimentation
- Increased chemical pollutants entering streams and groundwater
- Increased dewatering of streams and water table from fractured bedrock from blasting and pumping mine water.
- Soil Contamination
- Acid mine waste causes chemical contamination of the soil
- Development of manufactured technosols, soils built of mine spoils, leaving a lasting effect on the natural sciences of soil health
- Bad for Community
- Area residents will be forced to live with the mine’s legacy of pollution
- Boom and bust industry leaves communities with unsustainable infrastructure and economic challenges for future years.
- Hecla has a reputation for unsafe mining practices with multiple injuries and fatalities from their mines.
- Bad for Wilderness
- Project is at the edge of the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness, requiring miles of high-voltage electric transmission line, impoundment pond construction to store tons of mining waste, an onsite wastewater treatment plant, and surface impacts including the paving of roads and clearing of trees.
You can learn more about the Libby Exploration project by visiting the United States Forest Service project page here: https://cara.fs2c.usda.gov/Public//CommentInput?Project=62833
Add to the public comments during the limited comment period
Comments are due by 2/19/2025 (11:59:59 Eastern Standard Time)
Scan the following QR code to add a comment via your mobile device:
Please submit written comments to Chad Benson, Forest Supervisor by one of the following methods:
• Electronically at: https://cara.fs2c.usda.gov/Public//CommentInput?Project=62833. On the right-hand side, click “Get Connected” then “Comment on Project.” The subject line must contain “Libby Exploration Project”.
• Hand deliver or mail hard-copy comments to the following address:
Kootenai National Forest ATTN: Chad Benson
31374 US Highway 2
Libby, MT 59923-3022.
The office business hours for submitting hand-delivered comments are 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m, Monday through Friday, excluding holidays.
Fax comments to (406) 283-7709.
Please include your name, postal address, title of the project “Libby Exploration Project”, email address, telephone number, any organization you may be representing, and signature. Individual members of an entity must submit their own individual comments in order to have eligibility to object as an individual.
Public land is taxpayer’s land. Make your voice heard to the Forest Service during the limited comment period.
