Bitterroot rare-earth mining plan prompts more citizen concern
Laura Lundquist
(Missoula Current) As the Trump administration continues to reduce federal oversight, a Canadian mining company has finally submitted an operations plan for a proposed rare-earth elements mine in the Bitterroot River headwaters.
On Friday, Bitterroot National Forest Ranger Dan Pliley announced that mining company US Critical Minerals had submitted a draft operations plan to the Forest Service for the Sheep Creek Project. Bitterroot Forest employees will now work with the company on the final proposal “prior to determining the appropriate level of analysis under the National Environmental (Policy) Act,” according to Friday’s announcement.
On Dec. 1, hundreds of Ravalli County residents attended a meeting in Hamilton to ask the county commissioners to send a letter to the Trump administration asking that the Sheep Creek mine not be added to the federal Fast-41 list. The commission voted unanimously to send the letter. Rep. Ryan Zinke and Sen. Tim Sheehy also requested that the mine be removed from the list
But those requests fell on deaf ears.
In the Friday announcement, Pliley also said the Sheep Creek Project is still on the fast-track list that the Trump administration developed under Section 41 of the FAST Act. According to the project’s timetable, the Forest Service will conduct an environmental assessment starting March 23 that will last a year, although the webpage notes that the timetable can vary widely based on when the application is completed.
Congress passed the FAST Act in 2015 to streamline the approval of transportation projects. In April, the Trump administration started using the Act to fast-track critical mineral production by limiting environmental review and reducing permitting requirements as part of his American Energy Dominance program.
Prior to that, Trump issued a February memo instructing all federal agencies to roll back almost five decades' of rules crafted and imposed under the National Environmental Policy Act. In June, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, followed that memo by rescinding seven agency-specific regulations. For the Forest Service, all NEPA regulations were rescinded except for a few dealing with agency-specific items such as grazing allotments and categorical exclusions. It’s uncertain how that will affect Pliley’s decision on which type of analysis he’ll conduct or whether he’ll use a categorical exclusion.
Community members who read the US Critical Minerals proposed plan on Friday noted that the plan details a much larger operation than what the company representatives outlined during the Dec. 1 meeting in Hamilton.
The proposed plan describes frequent trips to haul ore and waste off-site, with large side dump trucks moving as many as eight to 10 loads per day. Some of that waste could be radioactive or laced with arsenic, lead, and potentially asbestos. The operation would require a process-water system underground, with a contingency that if more water is needed, the company would take it from Sheep Creek or the West Fork of the Bitterroot. Finally, the plan lists explosives storage, fuel handling, and other operational details that do not match the “no chemicals” statements that representatives made during the meeting.
“In the meeting, (US Critical Minerals) described “expanded exploration” with minimal trucking, no water withdrawal from Sheep Creek, and a low-impact footprint,” said Philip Ramsey in an email. “The plan does not address how risks would be evaluated and managed. There is no discussion of protocols for how they will test for and handle potential contaminants associated with this deposit and this geology, including radioactive elements, arsenic, lead, and asbestos. There continues to be no community engagement from USCM.”
The 7-square-mile Sheep Creek Columbite Deposit Mine Site lies in the headwaters of the Bitterroot River, approximately 38 miles south of Darby and 20 miles southwest of Lost Trail Pass. Deposits of rare-earth metals were discovered in the area in 1953, and the site has been studied and sampled since the early 1960s.
“Rare earth elements,” are 17 elements dubbed “heavy metals” that have various electronic and magnetic properties that make them useful in an ever-expanding array of electronic components, magnetic materials, lasers, industrial processes and, particularly, rechargeable batteries used in electric vehicles.
After doing some initial exploration in 2022, U.S. Critical Materials Corp. announced in January 2023 that it had discovered “the highest-grade (rare-earth element) deposit in the United States” among its 223 mining claims near Sheep Creek.
In May 2023, the Bitterroot National Forest announced that U.S. Critical Materials and U.S. Critical Metals Corp. had sent a Notice of Intent that they would continue exploring for rare-earth elements on their Sheep Creek claim. Pliley said they didn’t need an operations plan then because exploration activities caused minimal disturbance. Exploration activities included continued sampling using hand tools, soil and stream sediment sampling, rock chip sampling, mapping and sampling of adits, ground geophysical surveys, and helicopter or drone-supported geophysical surveys.
Since then, various groups including Friends of the Bitterroot and the Bitterroot River Protection Association, have continually expressed concern about mining being allowed in the headwaters of the Bitterroot River. The Bitterroot River Protection Association conducted a base-line study of water quality in the upper West Fork of the Bitterroot River so they could document possible decline in water quality if the mine goes through.
Ramsey, lead scientist and general manager of the MPG Ranch near Florence, is well acquainted with mine hazards, having earned a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Montana after writing his dissertation on the relationship between mine-waste contamination and ecosystem function in the upper Clark Fork River Valley. During an August 2023 presentation, Ramsey said the mine could divert up to 285 million gallons of water a year from the Bitterroot River. The river already suffers from low flows even though it gets pulses of water from the Painted Rocks Reservoir.
“We’ve done so much work for this fishery. If the extra water that this mine will take out is not going to be flowing down the river anymore, this is a concern,” Ramsey said during an August 2023 presentation.
U.S. Critical Materials says it’s working with the Idaho National Laboratory to develop an electrochemical extraction and purification process to extract rare earth elements. They say the electrochemical membrane reactor could extract elements using only electricity, water and nitrogen. “No chemical reagents. No mercury. No legacy waste streams,” according to the company’s website.
U.S. Critical Metals Corp. was incorporated in July 2019 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, by Darren Collins, and U.S. Critical Materials Corp. was incorporated in Nevada on April 20, 2021.
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.