Canadian Mining company aims Bovill feldspar and quartz mine

Sep. 14, 2010 - Barring any permitting or funding problems, Canadian mining company i-minerals Inc., is hoping to break ground on a feldspar and quartz mine on 20 to 40 acres of state land outside Bovill next spring.
Though Latah County leaders have no jurisdiction on the state-owned land, representatives for i-minerals gave commissioners Tom Stroschein and Jennifer Barrett and Latah County Commissioner candidate Dave McGraw a tour of the site Monday afternoon.
Stroschein said he would be happy to support the Moose Creek-area project as long as i-minerals continued to communicate openly with the county.
"We sure could use an economic boost around here," Stroschein said.
To extract, refine and ship the materials, which are used in glass, tile, paint and insulation, among other things, the company will need to hire 70 people, 40 in the Bovill area and 30 in Lewiston near where the product will be shipped, said A. Lamar Long, company exploration manager.
Latah County will receive some sales taxes on the project and property taxes for the separate refining center structure three miles from the mine on 12 acres near the former Simplot clay pit.
The state will not only receive money from the mineral leases they signed with i-minerals, but also will receive a 3 percent royalty from the company's gross sales, or between $500,000 and $600,000 annually, Long said. If the company decides to mine the clay in the area, which it is considering, the state could receive around $1 million a year from royalties.
The company has been leasing the mineral rights of 4,649 acres from the Idaho Department of Lands since 2004 and is now completing a feasibility study for the project. Next, i-minerals will have to finance the $25 million project from stocks or other revenue sources. Before the company breaks ground, it will work on multiple permits from the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality and go through the National Environmental Policy Act process, which i-minerals hopes to do within the first quarter of 2011. This means it will have to hold a couple public hearings first, Long said.
Roger Kauffman, president and chief executive of i-minerals Inc., said he would like to organize community meetings in Deary, Bovill and Helmer, in addition to formal public hearings.
Should i-minerals get financing and the thumbs-up from the necessary agencies, it would build a 2.87-mile haul road north of State Highway 3 from the mine to the refining center, where the materials will be extracted from rock blasted at the mine. The materials will then be carted to the Port of Lewiston.
Long said he hopes to see the company producing and selling materials by 2012.
The i-minerals company is attracted to the Bovill area mine, Long said, because it could be one of the only feldspar-quartz mines in the west. Should i-minerals locate in Idaho, it will be able to sell materials to western markets at a cheaper price than their competitors, Long said.
The minerals at the Bovill-area site are also very "clean," which means the minerals are relatively unsaturated with other metals. That makes the refining process easier.
Part of the process will be to take the tailings, or unwanted deposits, Simplot left in the Blue Lagoon area and refine the sand, then deposit soil where the deposits are now. The company plans to cause minimal damage or change to the entire area, Kauffman said.
"We won't leave a scar," he said. "It'll tie into the existing topography so you don't even know we're there."