EASTERN OREGON
MINING ASSOCIATION
JULY 2022
Volume 394
JULY 1st 2022 MEETING AT ELK CREEK ENTERPRISES
We will have a meeting JULY 1st, 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-Ken Alexander
The Powder Mining Projects EIS is again available for public comment. This happened before, in March, 2018. Many EOMA members submitted comments on the 2018 EIS, requesting the document be corrected to address errors in how their Plans of Operation were described. Members have reported that they had no response from the Forest Service to indicate the document would be corrected to reflect what was actually proposed in each of these 22 Plans. We will soon find out when we get copies of the EIS if the Forest Service listened to the miners’ prior concerns.
Once President Biden was sworn into office, he stopped the EIS from going forward. As you know, most mining EISs are written on large scale mining projects, not small-scale testing/mining projects like those included in the Powder Mining Projects EIS. It was simply overkill from the beginning. Miners waiting over ten years for simple exploration or small-scale mining is too long.
The new EIS got reviewed by the Portland Forest Service office, then it went to the Washington D.C. Office, and then back to Portland. Now it is out for a 45-day public review/comment period.
We will keep you informed as this process moves forward. At any rate, since we have such a short mining season, it is looking like mining under this EIS will be delayed until 2023.
POWDER MINING PROJECTS EIS-A FEW PROBLEMS-Jan Alexander
I just did a quick read-through of the EIS, and It is interesting, in 2018, when the EIS was first published, the document did not state that “Some Plans (Native Spirit) do not have ponds clearly identified on their Plans and have potential discharges due to not specifying the location”.
I was with Charley Stewart on the Native Spirit when he identified the location of his ponds for the Forest Service. The location is over 150 feet from the creek and behind a huge mound of old tailings, and the location is clearly on the Operating Plan map and in the Plan of Operation. If the Forest Service really couldn’t remember what was in the POO, or didn’t want to look at the Operating Plan map to see the location of the settling ponds, it seems they had many years to pick up the phone and ask Charley where his ponds would be located.
I am afraid that there may be other errors in this document. Every miner with a Plan of Operation analyzed under this EIS needs to read carefully what the document says about their operation and whether the Forest Service has determined that there will be a discharge. There are several operations listed in the EIS where the Forest Service has made this determination. For these operations, the miner will not have the Plan approved until a DEQ discharge permit is authorized by that agency. Discharge permits from DEQ are spendy. The alternative, and the one I recommend, is to modify the location of a settling pond or hillside mining site to an area where the Forest Service determines there is no risk of sediment delivery to a waterway.
I have contacted the Forest Service to find out what the procedure would be.
MINERS JUBILEE JULY 15,16, & 17, 2022-Jan Alexander
EOMA will set up in the Baker City Park across from the museum for this three-day event. All the rest of the mining booths will be set up along this road. Anyone is welcome to set up a tent or table with mining related items for sale-equipment, rocks, jewelry, etc. Set-up will be on Thursday at 1:00 PM when the street will be closed.
A full three-day event is being planned, with music, bronc and bull riding, vendors throughout the park. More important for miners, there will be an opportunity to talk about mining, and talk about the reclamation we do. There will be panning for the kids, and this year I will set up a panning station for adults wanting to practice for the championships. The kids will pan for gold and gem stones, the adults will pan for lead “nuggets” similar to what they use for the panning contests. On Saturday afternoon, we will have the Oregon State Panning Championships.
Many thanks to Keith Magnuson for providing the metal detector for our raffle. Tickets will be $1 each, 12 tickets for $10, or 25 for $20. Winners do not need to be present to win, but pick-up must be in Baker City. If you remember, bring some address labels with you, so you won’t have to make out a bunch of tickets!
PLP GRAND RAFFLE DRAWING!!-PLP
Public Lands for the People’s (PLP) 2022 GRAND RAFFLE will be July 14th from Noon to 7pm. Come join PLP for the raffle drawing and meet the new owners of the Mining Journal, Josh and Sherrie Lynn Reinke as well! The address is 139 Joerschke Dr. in Grass Valley CA. There will be food, fun and of course, the Grand Raffle drawing, LAST DAY TO ORDER TICKETS BY PHONE: JULY 11th! You can call our toll-free number (844) 757-1990 to order tickets. A book of 12 tickets is only $10. Supporting PLP’s Grand Raffle helps us continue to fight for your rights.
PRESIDENT BIDEN FUNDS MINING- Gabrielle Coppola
President Joe Biden has taken lots of heat for stoking inflation with government spending. It’s not stopping him from keeping the spigot open to fund a domestic electric vehicle supply chain.
The latest sum of support was tucked into the Ukraine aid bill that Biden signed into law late last month — another $500 million to expand funds available under the Defense Production Act to obtain critical battery minerals like nickel, cobalt, lithium and graphite. That adds to the $750 million fund that mining companies could access when the president invoked the Defense Production Act in March. The Ukraine bill also lifted the cap on the size of grants and expanded eligible projects to include the UK and Australia, as well as the US and Canada.
All this builds on $7 billion in federal funding that was part of the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed last year. Those grants — which companies are now jostling for — target areas including battery manufacturing, recycling and materials processing. Biden’s use of the Defense Production Act, a Cold War-era power that President Trump also invoked to combat shortages at the outset of the pandemic, is focused further upstream, on mining and recycling. There’s some overlap, but that’s OK, because it still doesn’t come close to matching what China has invested in this space, said Ben Steinberg, a lobbyist who represents mining companies at Washington-based Venn Strategies. “The funding is going to be heavily oversubscribed, and they won’t be able to nearly fund everyone or what they deem good projects,” Steinberg said. “This adds a little cushion to it.”
One of the companies seeking funds under the Defense Production Act, as well as the infrastructure bill, is Indiana-based American Resources, which has developed a way to process recycled battery materials that’s cleaner and safer than what’s currently done in China, according to Chief Executive Officer Mark Jensen. This approach, which stems from work done by scientists at several universities and Eli Lilly, borrows concepts from the pharmaceutical industry to isolate and purify certain elements to turn them into production-ready cathode material. Cathodes and anodes are the two components of a battery that store lithium ions. “What the administration’s capital will provide is just faster growth,” he told me. “It’ll help us work with more collaborative partners faster.”
GEOLOGISTS DISCOVER BACTERIA THAT TURNS TRACES OF GOLD INTO NUGGETS- University of Adelaide
Geologists have discovered bacteria on a patch of earth in regional Queensland that takes natural traces of gold and turns them into nuggets. Special ‘nugget-producing’ bacteria may hold the key to more efficient processing of gold ore, mine tailings and recycled electronics, as well as aid in exploration for new deposits, University of Adelaide research has shown.
For more than 10 years, University of Adelaide researchers have been investigating the role of microorganisms in gold transformation. In the Earth’s surface, gold can be dissolved, dispersed and reconcentrated into nuggets. This epic ‘journey’ is called the biogeochemical cycle of gold.
Now they have shown for the first time, just how long this biogeochemical cycle takes and they hope to make to it even faster in the future. “Primary gold is produced under high pressures and temperatures deep below the Earth’s surface and is mined, nowadays, from very large primary deposits, such as at the Super pit in Kalgoorlie,” says Dr Frank Reith, Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the University of Adelaide’s School of Biological Sciences, and Visiting Fellow at CSIRO Land and Water at Waite.
“In the natural environment, primary gold makes its way into soils, sediments and waterways through biogeochemical weathering and eventually ends up in the ocean. On the way bacteria can dissolve and re-concentrate gold – this process removes most of the silver and forms gold nuggets. “We’ve known that this process takes place, but for the first time we’ve been able to show that this transformation takes place in just years to decades – that’s a blink of an eye in terms of geological time. “These results have surprised us, and lead the way for many interesting applications such as optimizing the processes for gold extraction from ore and re-processing old tailings or recycled electronics, which isn’t currently economically viable.”
Working with John and Johno Parsons (Prophet Gold Mine, Queensland), Professor Gordon Southam (University of Queensland) and Dr Geert Cornelis (formerly of the CSIRO), Dr Reith and postdoctoral researcher Dr Jeremiah Shuster analyzed numerous gold grains collected from West Coast Creek using high-resolution electron-microscopy.
Published in the journal Chemical Geology, they showed that five ‘episodes’ of gold biogeochemical cycling had occurred on each gold grain. Each episode was estimated to take between 3.5 and 11.7 years – a total of under 18 to almost 60 years to form the secondary gold.
“Understanding this gold biogeochemical cycle could help mineral exploration by finding undiscovered gold deposits or developing innovative processing techniques,” says Dr Shuster, University of Adelaide. “If we can make this process faster, then the potential for re-processing tailings and improving ore-processing would be game-changing. Initial attempts to speed up these reactions are looking promising.”
PLATINUM CAN HELP CLEAN WASTEWATER-University of Southern California
Researchers at the University of Southern California have found that platinum is a key ingredient to help clean even the most stubborn toxins from wastewater. As wastewater treatment for potable reuse becomes a more viable and popular option to address water shortages, the scientists began thinking about how to address the presence of aldehydes, which are chemicals that stubbornly persist through treatment and that are toxic to humans.
In a paper published in the Journal of Environmental Science & Technology, the researchers introduce the idea of using platinum to clean the toxins in water in the same way the metal is used in catalytic converters to clean up air pollutants in car exhaust. In their view, the precious metal can be employed to speed up oxidation to transform once-toxic aldehydes into harmless carboxylic acids. “When wastewater is recycled, the resulting water is very pure, but not 100% pure,” Dan McCurry, one of the study’s co-authors, said in a media statement. “There’s still a tiny amount of organic carbon detectable and these carbon atoms could be attached to molecules that are very toxic or completely innocent. This has perplexed people for years, particularly because the carbon is able to make it through so many treatment layers and barriers.”
According to McCurry, a study conducted at UC Berkeley, revealed that one-third to one-half of these molecules are present in the form of aldehydes. Aldehydes are chemical compounds characterized by a carbon atom that shares a double bond with an oxygen atom, a single bond with a hydrogen atom, and a single bond with another atom or group of atoms. They are also generally toxic to humans, meaning that their long-term consumption could result in a variety of chronic and life-threatening illnesses such as cancer.
Until now, however, catalytic oxidation of organic pollutants in water without electrochemistry, the addition of electron-accepting oxidant chemicals, or photochemistry, had not been sustainably demonstrated.
Enter platinum, one of the few oxidants that is non-toxic and can utilize the oxygen in water to catalyze a reaction abiotically, that is without the use of microbes. McCurry explained that there are about eight milligrams per litre of dissolved oxygen in water. While O2 is a potent oxidant from a thermodynamic perspective, the reaction is slow. With platinum, the process speeds up.. After a year of trial and error, the idea of using platinum in water treatment to oxidize contaminants emerged.
The price of platinum, McCurry acknowledged, is expensive, but he also noted that the cost, like for a car’s catalytic converter, is relative. “Your car probably has between one and 10 grams of platinum in it. The amount isn’t trivial. If it’s cheap enough to put in a Honda Civic, it’s probably cheap enough to put in a water treatment plant,” he said.
EOMA ADVERTISING AND SALE LISTINGS
EOMA SILVER MEDALLIONS FOR SALE
EOMA still has silver medallions available. They are currently selling for $50.00 apiece plus $10.00 shipping, handling, and insurance. (Prices are subject to change).
You can order your medallion from the EOMA website and pay by pay-pal. Or, you can send $50 plus $10.00 shipping and handling to EOMA, Medallions, PO Box 932, Baker City, OR 97814, or call 541-310-8510. Also, you can buy them at our EOMA meetings.
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-20 ACRE MINING CLAIM ON THE NORTH FORK BURNT RIVER
This claim is located immediately downstream from Antlers Guard Station. There is an approved Plan of Operation in place with the Forest Service., which can be transferred to the new claim owner.
From Highway 7, it is just a short drive on the graveled county road to the claim. If interested, e-mail me at MinelabGeek@hotmail.com.
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
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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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/
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
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