EASTERN OREGON
MINING ASSOCIATION
OCTOBER 2022
Volume 397
OCTOBER 7th, 2022 MEETING AT ELK CREEK ENTERPRISES
We will have a meeting OCTOBER 7th, 2022 at the Elk Creek Enterprises saw shop located at 890 Elm Street in Baker City. The Board Meeting will begin at 6:00 PM with the general meeting following at 6:30 PM. As usual we will give away a 1 oz. silver medallion at the end of the meeting.
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
If you haven’t checked to see if BLM has recorded your fees or small miner waiver, you need to do this. BLM’s website may show that a copy of your assessment work was received before September 1, but the waiver is not filed. This means BLM may be notifying you that your claim(s) are null and void.
It seems wrong that the private property rights established by lawfully filing a mining claim will be terminated without the opportunity to correct a minor paperwork defect. If the BLM mailroom clerk negligently loses your waiver, or your waiver is lost in the paper shuffle at the BLM, your rights are extinguished. The only notice BLM sends you is that your claims are lost without any chance to correct the defect. This needs to be changed. Even sending your paperwork by certified mail doesn’t protect you when the BLM says some of your paperwork arrived with the proper fee, but they cannot locate the waiver. Very rarely, but sometimes, BLM has been able to locate the lost waiver in a misplaced file, after a miner complains. It should be easy to provide the BLM with a duplicate copy of the waiver you sent to them without losing your property rights. Or at least, a grace period of 30 days should be allowed to correct a defect after being notified by the BLM that they have failed to be able to locate your paperwork. Refiling your mining claim, at considerable expense, should not be the only option available.
NEW HYDROGEN POWERED MINE HAUL TRUCKS-Michelle Lewis
The 2 megawatt (MW) hydrogen-battery hybrid truck generates more power than its diesel predecessor and is capable of carrying a 290-tonne (320-ton) payload.
The truck includes a 1.2 MWh battery pack, as the haul truck system uses multiple fuel cells, which deliver up to 800kW of power.
It’s designed to operate in everyday mining conditions at its Mogalakwena PGMs mine in northeast South Africa. The mine is the world’s largest open-pit platinum group metals mine. Anglo American intends to replace a fleet of 40 trucks there that use around a million liters of diesel annually.
The truck is part of Anglo American’s nuGen Zero Emission Haulage Solution (ZEHS), a green hydrogen system at the mine site. The system will draw power from a solar farm to supply a hydrogen electrolyzer to split water, which will then provide the trucks with green hydrogen fuel.
The ZEHS project is expected to be fully up and running by 2026. It’s the first step in making eight of the company’s mines carbon neutral by 2030. The global mining company has set a target of getting all of its operations to net zero by 2040.
FROM WASTE TO REVENUE-Jenessa Duncombe
Currently, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is funding more than 30 projects to source rare earth elements from coal mining and its waste. Coal ash, refuse rock, young lignite coal, sludge, and acid mine drainage are treasure troves of rare earth elements, but the technology needed to extract the valuable materials has yet to hit the commercial market.
Forty hard-rock mines in the United States produce 17–27 billion gallons of polluted water annually.
Acid mine drainage forms from the outflow of water from subsurface mines. Sulfur-bearing minerals in the rock turn water flowing by it acidic. In turn, the acidic water leaches heavy metals (including rare earths) from the rock. The highly corrosive water threatens aquatic life and water supplies.
But converting the waste into revenue has become a priority of DOE and NETL. In a report to the U.S. Congress in 2017, the groups said that two coal and coal ash areas in the United States could supply millions of tonnes of rare earth elements, which is well above the domestic demand of 100,000 tonnes annually.
In recent years, China has produced and supplied an average of 90% of global rare earth elements, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. In 2019, the country threatened to curb supply during trade tensions with the Trump administration.
NEXT BIG BATTERY MATERIAL SQUEEZE IS OLD BATTERIES-Bloomburg News
A global rush into battery recycling is good news for automakers worried about future raw material supplies. But the wave of new factories poses a big risk for the recycling industry itself: There’s nowhere near enough scrap yet to feed them all.
Big-name auto giants, specialist recycling firms, and even miner Glencore Plc are all pouring money into transforming waste into the commodities needed to fuel the electric-vehicle revolution. As a result, global battery-recycling capacity will surge nearly 10 times from 2021 to 2025 and is expected to surpass available scrap supply this year, according to consultancy Circular Energy Storage.
Shortages are likely to persist well into the next decade while the industry waits for early models of EVs to hit junk yards in big numbers, and by 2025 there may be three times more recycling factory space than scrap to run the plants. Of course, the old batteries will eventually start rolling in, but recycling companies will have to survive until then.
Recycling capacity versus supply of battery scrap
Some are already talking about supplementing their plants with freshly mined material — a counterintuitive solution given that recycling is intended to be a crucial and environmentally friendly answer to limited mined production of metals like lithium and cobalt. Automakers have been racing to lock in future supplies amid concerns about raw-material shortages that have sent prices spiking in recent months.
For automakers in Europe, there’s an urgent need to build the plants ahead of regulations that will force them to use more recycled materials in their batteries from 2030 onwards. Independent recyclers also need to move quickly, and recovering the raw materials contained in the batteries could still prove lucrative for those who can lock in sufficient supplies. But the result is that the burgeoning industry is collectively building plants far too quickly. “Nobody is really looking at each other, and they seem to think there will be a lot of scrap and end-of-life batteries,” Hans Eric Melin, the founder of Circular Energy Storage, said by phone. “But if you look at the level of capacity that’s coming online, it’s huge in relation to what we need.”
There are two main types of recycling feed — old, used-up batteries, and waste material from battery factories. But most EVs being driven now will remain on the road for years and, even when the cars are scrapped, batteries are often sold on for re-use. Battery makers are also cutting waste at their plants, leaving even less material for recyclers.
In 2025, 78% of the available scrap supply will be coming from manufacturing waste, while end-of-life batteries will account for 22%, according to new research by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. It won’t be until the mid-to-late 2030s that the industry reaches an inflection point where volumes of used batteries available to recyclers start to surge, the consultancy predicts.
COALITION COMMENTS ON ESA EXPERIMENTAL POPULATIONS-AEMA
AEMA joined a coalition of public lands user groups to submit comments to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s proposed rule concerning experimental populations of species under the Endangered Species Act. The proposed rule removes language that generally restricts the introduction of experimental populations to only the species’ “historical range” and would allow for the introduction of species outside of historical ranges for conservation purposes.
The coalition emphasized that the proposed rule is unnecessary and lacks adequate guidelines for how, where, and when FWS may introduce nonessential experimental populations into areas outside the species’ historical range, and it fails to assess potential impacts to small entities, private landowners, and the environment pursuant to the Regulatory Flexibility Act and National Environmental Policy Act.
FOREST SERVICE AND UNREASONABLE RECLAMATION BONDS-Jan Alexander
EOMA is opposed to unreasonable reclamation bonds. Baker County is also opposed to unreasonable reclamation bond amounts. The Natural Resource Plan for the county states the following: It is the policy of Baker County that mineral development and production are not subject to unreasonable stipulations, Best Management Practices, mitigation measures or reclamation bonds.
Recently, the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, Whitman Unit, has informed miners that they do not trust miners who propose removing equipment at the end of the season. Miners are being told, that if they do not pay thousands of additional dollars to cover equipment removal, when the miners have stated in writing that all equipment will be removed, that their Plans will not be approved.
This policy is actually nothing more than blackmail of the miner (post an unreasonable bond or you won’t get your Plan approved). The Forest Service states in the publication, Anatomy of a Mine from Prospect to Production concerning bonding “Care will be taken that the regulations are not unreasonably used to restrict the statutory right that the miner has to prospect for, and develop minerals in public lands open to entry”. Requiring miners to increase their reclamation bonds by thousands of dollars, money that could have gone into the mining operation, for no reason, meets the unreasonable standard.
This level of distrust of miners is sad. All the Forest Service minerals personnel need to do is get out of the office in the fall, and verify that equipment has been removed. If it hasn’t been removed, the miner would be put in non-compliance and a bond to cover the equipment would have to be in place before more mining takes place. This is called “administration”. Only miners who tell the Forest Service they will remove equipment, then fail to do this, would be subjected to the higher bond amounts.
RESEARCHERS PUSH FOR USING METALS TO TREAT INFECTION-Mining.com
Researchers at the University of Bern, the University of Queensland and other institutions demonstrated that 21 highly-active metal compounds containing cobalt, nickel, rhodium, palladium, silver, europium, iridium, platinum, molybdenum and gold can be used to treat fungal infections.
In a paper published in the journal JACS Au, the scientists explain that, globally, more than 1 billion people contract a fungal infection and that although they are harmless to most, over 1.5 million patients die each year as a result of such infections.
According to the group led by Angelo Frei, despite more and more fungal strains becoming resistant to one or more of the available drugs, the development of new drugs has come to a virtual standstill in recent years. This lack of interest is what inspired him and his colleagues to look into using metals to breathe new life into the search for treatments.
“The opinion that metals are fundamentally harmful to us is widespread. However, this is only partially true. The decisive factor is which metal is used and in which form,” Frei said in a media statement. “Many of the metal compounds [tested] demonstrated a good activity against all fungal strains and were up to 30,000 times more active against fungi than against human cells.”
The researcher said that out of the 21 compounds, the 11 most active ones were tested in a model organism, the larvae of the wax moth. Only one of the metal compounds showed signs of toxicity, while the others were well tolerated by the larvae. In a subsequent step, some metal compounds were tested in an infection model, and one compound effectively reduced the fungal infection in larvae.
“Our hope is that our work will improve the reputation of metals in medical applications and motivate other research groups to further explore this large but relatively unexplored field,” Frei said. “If we exploit the full potential of the periodic table, we may be able to prevent a future where we don’t have any effective antibiotics and active agents to prevent and treat fungal infections.”
SUPPORT CANDIDATES THAT SUPPORT NATURAL RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT
The upcoming election is of great importance for the mining industry in Oregon. For example, Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality still requires small-scale miners to have a Water Pollution Control Permit (WPCF) for processing, but has refused to issue any new permits since 2017. Oregon agencies have discouraged natural resource development no matter how the environment is improved, or protected. The Democratic led legislature. and governorship, has allowed Oregon agencies to charge outrageous fees, impose unreasonable regulations, and delay permitting for all sorts of activities in Oregon.
Please do what you can to help elect people who will support mining, and restore a balanced approach to solving problems.
EOMA ADVERTISING AND SALE LISTINGS
40 ACRE PLACER CLAIM IN SW OREGON
It’s on the Southfork of Canyon Creek, a tributary of Josephine creek on the Illinois river Real bad 4x4 high clearance road for 7 miles to trailhead, another ¾ mile moderate walk up to downstream end of claim. Stream runs through claim end to end approximately 2000 ft. $6,500. Call 541-787-0046 for more details and directions.
NINE UNPATENTED PLACER CLAIMS FOR SALE
These claims are in the Greenhorn Mining District, adjacent to the Parkerville and the Bonanza patented properties. Geiser Bowl- 60 acres, PW #1- 80 acres, PW #6 -100 acres, Black Beauty- 100 acres, Blue Mt Channel #3-100 acres, Carranza-80 acres, Dottie Two-80 acres, Mart Jones-60 acres, Wizzer-80-acres.
Contact LaRayn Rose for list prices, and of course, any reasonable offer will be considered especially for multiple claim purchases. (503) 317-6914
FOR SALE
Two metal detectors for sale: Gold Bug II detector, Fisher Double Box detector, $1,000 for both.
Call Chuck at 541-310-8510.
PUMPS FOR SALE
Two water pumps with belt driven clutch system (heavy duty) driven by a 2-cylinder Wisconsin gas engine for $250.
Also, a 5" intake 7" discharge Fairbanks and Morse high pressure pump. Driven by a 30 HP 3 phase electric motor for $450. Call Ken Anderson at 541-523-2521 or 541-519- 9497
WANTED
I would like to rent/lease/lease with option to buy property that may be productive for metal detecting and mining. Especially areas with tailings like the Powder River near Sumpter, or other local areas. Thanks, Johnny West. Email: jwestboise@gmail.com
PLACER CLAIM WANTED
I’m looking for a placer or lode claim in NE Oregon. Looking for a pick and shovel or small equipment deposits. The placer claim doesn’t have to have much water, but a little would be nice. Pay cash or gold up to $5,000. Call Sam at 541-787-0046.
WANTED-SMALL HARDROCK MILL
I need a jaw crusher or small hammer mill. Please call Pete at 541-910-9712 if you have one you want to sell.
WANTED-GOLD
Gold Specimens and Gold nuggets, mostly from Oregon mines. Fair prices paid. Also selling Gold nugget jewelry, specimens, nuggets and more. For an interesting and informative experience explore www.northernnevadagold.com . Call Robert 775-455-6470.
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ACTION MINING SERVICES, INC.
AMS is selling assay supplies, screens, chemicals and labware! Call for a quote and mention this ad for 10% off! Assay supplies, concentrators, impact mills, technical books (for the beginner to the advanced mill man), & more! Call for our free catalog or visit us online! Check out our website for information on Wave tables.
Want to pick up an order in Plains Montana? We have moved to Plains, Montana…. please call 406.826.9330 to place the order. This way our staff can have it pulled and ready for pick up. Otherwise, we can always ship your order! sales@actionmining.com • www.actionmining.com
AMERICAN EXPLORATION & MINING
EOMA is a member of American Exploration & Mining Association, and many of our members are also individual members. AEMA members reside in 44 states, 7 Canadian provinces and 11 countries and are actively involved in prospecting, exploring, mining, and reclamation closure activities across North America & the world. This association keeps miners up on what is happening in the mining industry. To stay up to date on mining issues, you can become a member of AEMA by going to their website at https://www.miningamerica.org/
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