Plan of Restoration - RICHARD AND SONS

The Project


The Project is located at Stibnite in Valley County approximately 92 miles by air and 144 miles by road northeast of Boise, Idaho, 44 air miles northeast of Cascade, Idaho, and 10 air miles east of Yellow Pine, Idaho

Plan of Restoration

Midas Gold and its team of professionals and experts have spent the last five years studying the Stibnite Gold Project site – searching for minerals, considering our options as to how to most safely redevelop the site, learning about the state of the environment and working closely with residents and businesses in Valley County.
The ecosystem at the Stibnite Gold Project site is in need of healing; our plan is as much about restoring the site as it is about mining it. Redevelopment will allow us to raise enough capital so we can properly take care of the environment. Fish haven’t been able to swim past the historic Yellow Pine pit since 1938, almost no top soil can be found in the area today due to extensive erosion and high amounts of sediment are running into the waterways, degrading water quality and fish habitat. Our plan will address these impacts – and we’ve designed the project so a lot of the restoration work will occur early on.
After exploring the Stibnite Gold Project site, we believe there are over six and a half million ounces of gold at the site and over 180 million pounds of antimony. Currently, there is no antimony being mined in the U.S. and the Stibnite Gold Project site is the nation’s largest known resource. Antimony is an important strategic mineral for the United States defense, aerospace and energy industries and we are currently dependent on countries like China, Bolivia and Russia for our supplies.
If redeveloped in accordance with the PFS, the Stibnite Gold Project will create more than 1,000 well-paying jobs for Idahoans and add considerably to the regional, state and national economies. Direct, indirect and induced federal taxes are estimated at more than $500 million and state and local taxes are estimated at more than $200 million over the construction and operating life of the mine. During that same period of time, wages at the site are predicted to be two times the local and state average. Employment opportunities will continue during restoration and ongoing monitoring of conditions at the site once it closes.
We care deeply about Valley County and the people who call it home, including our own employees. Over the last five years, we have spent a lot of time getting to know our community and learning what is most important to you. Your input helped shape our plans and guide our designs. Your questions drove us to create something better than we could have done on our own and many of your ideas and suggestions have been incorporated into our plans.
We hope that you will take the time to read and consider our Plan of Restoration and Operations, and provide us with your feedback. When our Plan of Restoration and Operations is made available by regulators, we hope you will take the time to read it and provide us with your feedback. As always, we will consider and weigh all comments carefully and look to implement those that benefit the environmental, technical and economic characteristics of the project. We are committed to designing a project that takes care of the environment, is safe for our employees and the community, and that will have a positive long-term impact on Valley County and Idaho.
The Stibnite Gold Project area sits atop the Idaho Batholith, one of the signature features of Idaho’s unique geology. The Idaho Batholith is nearly 14,000 square miles of granite, tracing its roots back to the collision of the oceanic plate and the North American plate around 100 million years ago in the the age of dinosaurs. Continental drift pushed the denser oceanic plate under the North American plate, where immense heat, pressure and superheated water caused the oceanic plate rocks to melt, rise and then slowly cool, creating the vast expanse of crystalline granite underneath most of central Idaho.
Some 50 million years later, an enormous volcanic complex (as big as the Yellowstone Park volcanic complex) erupted through the granite and left behind volcanic ash, lavas and crystalline rocks. The volcanic activity pumped hot fluids into the cracks and pores of the Idaho Batholith – very much like what we see happening in the famous geothermal pools and geysers of Yellowstone Park today. These hot fluids contained gold, silver, antimony and sulfur which, as the waters cooled, left behind minerals like pyrite (containing gold), stibnite (containing antimony) and scheelite (containing tungsten). The partnership of the Idaho Batholith cooling and interacting with volcanic forces, and mineral-rich fluids, created a geologic region that has that has captured the attention and imagination of geologists and prospectors for more than a 100 years.
From our exploration of the Stibnite Gold Project area, it is clear that geologic processes over tens of millions of years created an incredibly mineral-rich resource in Idaho. We are furthering our knowledge of Idaho’s geologic history and this vast mineral resource through collaborative efforts among our geologists, the Idaho Geological Survey, the United States Geologic Survey and academic institutions such as Boise State University, the University of Idaho and the University of Nevada.