Mine Design, Operations and Closure Conference Schedule
Monday, May 8, 2023
Field Trip: Graymont's Indian Creek Limestone Plant and Ash Grove Cement's Montana City Plant
Guides: Paul Liner and Doug Kuenzli
- 8:30 am to 4:00 pm (Bus will depart from the front parking lot at Fairmont Hot Springs. Please check in at the conference registration desk before boarding the bus. Hard hats, close-toed shoes, and safety vests will be required for all visitors at the mine site. Hard hats and vests will be available, if needed.)
- Breakfast and lunch will be provided.
- $160/person.
Graymont
The Graymont tour will consist of a site-specific training followed by a Graymont overview presentation. Attendees will be divided in half with one group taking a bus tour of the quarry and the other group touring the plant process and control room. Switch and repeat.
Ash Grove Cement
The Montana City Plant manufactures Portland Cement using a "wet" hydraulic cement process. The site located in Jefferson County, consists of approximately 2,200 acres that includes 841 acres within the mine operating permit boundary; 463 acres of which are permitted for disturbance. The main plan site which includes the production plant, raw material and fuel stockpiles, and shipping facilities consist of approximately 45 acres.
Operations occur in two distinct areas of the site. The Clark Gulch Quarry, the primary source of limestone, is located west of the community of Montana City. Raw materials extracted from the Clark Gulch Quarry using drilling and blasting techniques are campaign hauled to the plant site using over-the road haul trucks where material is introduced into the plant process or stockpiled for later use. A limited amount of raw material, mainly silica, is retrieved from the plant side quarry via scrapping and digging techniques.
The limestone, clay, and silica, along with fumed ASARCO slag, as a source of iron, is fed through the primary and/or secondary crusher and subsequently milled with water to form a slurry intermediate product. The slurry is pyro processed in the coal and petroleum coke-fired rotary kiln to form cement clinker and then finished milled with gypsum or limestone to produce Portland Cement.
The plant has a storage capacity of approximately 60,000 tons of finished cement product which feeds the truck and railcar loadouts areas. The Montana city plant produces 350,000 tons of cement annually which is distributed throughout Montana, Western North Dakota, Eastern Washington, and Canada. The Montana City plant has produced Portland Cement in the Montana City community for 60 years while employing 80 full-time employees.
Corn Hole Tournament
Join us for the 3rd Annual Conference Corn Hole Tournament, sponsored by Water & Environmental Technologies.
- Register online or the day of the event beginning at 6:00 pm.
- Draw for teams at 6:30 pm and start throwing at 7:00 pm.
- 2 free drink tickets per person and light snacks will be provided.
- Spectators are WELCOME!
- Prizes:
- 1st - $80 cash plus swag
- 2nd - $50 cash plus swag
- 3rd - $30 cash plus swag
Tuesday, May 9, 2023
8:00 am Welcome Breakfast
8:20 am Breakfast Keynote: Modern Mining Reform: Claim Staking or Claim Taking?
Joshua Cook, Crowley Fleck PLLP
9:00 am Conference Dedication to the Memory of Ray TeSoro
Mike Burnside, USDA Forest Service (retired)
Extreme Events Session
9:15 am Reclamation Resilience in the Face of Wildfires
Mike Glenn, Montana DEQ
9:45 am Zortman/Landusky: Swift Gulch
Drew Herrera, PE, HydroGeoLogic, Inc.
10:15 am Flood of ‘22 - Impacts and Lessons Learned
Curt Jacobs & David Udey, Sibanye-Stillwater
10:45 am Break
Rare Earth Session
11:15 am New Investigations of the REE-Nb Carbonatite Deposits of Southern Ravalli County, Montana, USA
Sarah Risedorf & Chris Gammons, PhD, Montana Tech
11:45 am Rare Earth Elements and Critical Materials in the Berkeley Pit
Paul Ziemkiewicz, PhD, Water Research Institute, West Virginia University
12:15 pm Lunch
1:00 pm Nutrient Regulation in Montana
Vicki Marquis, Crowley Fleck
1:30 pm Stillwater Mining Co. and the Good Neighbor Agreement: A Model for Stakeholder Engagement in TSFs
Jim Kuipers, Kuipers & Associates
2:00 pm An Argument for Long-Term Care and Maintenance at Reclaimed Mine Sites
Peter Werner, PE, USDA-Forest Service
2:30 pm Break
3:00 pm Building Information Modelling in Mining and Repository Engineering
Ilja Prinz, CDM Smith
3:30 pm Sustainable Mining Panel: Mining is critical to supply raw materials and resources to support important industries and all types of infrastructure, including green infrastructure. As demand for mined minerals continues to rise, debate on mining impacts to the environment and communities continues to grow. Now more than ever, miners need to focus on balancing mining operations with holistic environmental and social responsibility. Terms such as “Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)” and “Sustainability” are tossed around and politicized, but what do those terms mean and how can miners capitalize on these concepts to create social and financial value? This panel discusses topics such as ESG, sustainability, practical approaches and strategies, and appropriate metrics for reporting from the perspective of a mine, an attorney, a consultant, and an investor.
- Moderator: Callan Driscoll, PhD, PE, Bridge House Advisors
- Jeana Ratcliff, Black Butte Mine, Sandfire Resources America, Inc.
- Selena Sauer, Crowley Fleck Attorneys, PLLP
- Callan Driscoll, Bridge House Advisors
- William Pleasant, Bridge House Advisors
- Olivia Hipkins, CFA, Odyssey Capital Ventures – virtual participation
5:00 pm Social hosted by Tetra Tech
Attendees enjoying a beautiful evening while networking at the social hosted by Tetra Tech.
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Wednesday, May 10, 2023
Revegetation Session
8:30 am Coversoil Attributes and Influence on Vegetation Cover on Reclaimed Areas of The Continental Mine
John Beaver, WESTECH Environmental Services, Inc.
9:00 am Use of Herbicides and Seed Mix Design in a Successful Revegetation Strategy
John Whittingham, Basic Biological Services LLC
9:30 am Strategies for Increasing Seeded Species Establishment on Mine Lands
Matt Rinella, USDA
10:00 am Break
Exploration/Geology Session
10:30 am Lead Mining and Reclamation in Missouri: Past, Present, and Future
Gary L. Hazen, PE, PG, RG & Maxwell S. Hire, PG, CDM Smith, Inc.
11:00 am Ruby Graphite Project – Rebirth of a Legacy Mine
Greg Bell, Ruby Graphite Project
11:30 am Ole’s Gold: The Legend of Bear Gulch
Tad Dale, Small Miner
Noon Lunch
1:00 pm Re-evaluating a Historic Mining District: The Philipsburg Silver Mining District, MT
Celine Beaucamp, Montana Tech
Reclamation/Remediation Session
1:30 pm Troy Mine and Mill Reclamation - virtual presentation
Lance Boylan, Hecla Mining Co.
2:00 pm Update on the Parrot Tailings Project
Josh Vincent, Water & Environmental Technologies
2:30 pm Break
3:00 pm Early Restoration of Fish Passage at Stibnite via a River Diversion Tunnel and Fishway
Gene Bosley, PE, Perpetua Resources
3:30 pm Slag Recycling at the Former ASARCO Smelter in East Helena
Mark Rhodes, Hydrometrics, Inc.
4:00 pm Status of Tailings Reprocessing at the Golden Sunlight Mine
Rich Dyer, Barrick-Golden Sunlight Mine
4:30 pm Successful Reclamation Techniques at the Spring Creek Mine
Gabe Johnson, PE, Navajo Transitional Energy Company
5:00 pm Social hosted by Pioneer Technical Services
Attendees helping themselves to an amazing spread of food at the social hosted by Pioneer Technical Services.
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Thursday, May 11, 2023
Water Session
8:30 am Aerial and Bathymetric Survey Data Fusion
Brandt Winkelman Fairweather IT LLC
9:00 am Lake Koocanusa Selenium Standards – A Bi-national Collaboration
Lauren Sweeney, MS, Montana DEQ
9:30 am Achieving Alternative Compliance at Mining Sites: An Adaptive Management Strategy for a Changing World – A Case Study
Nicholas J. Tucci, Haley & Aldrich, Inc.
10:00 am Break
Research Session
10:30 am Innovative Tailings Disposal; Solidification and Stabilization with Fly Ash
Paul Eger, Talon Nickel
11:00 am Re-imagining Contaminant Removal: A Novel Approach to Removing and Recovering Water Contaminants Utilizing a Continuous Flow Metal Recovery Process
Jerry Downey, PhD, & Teagan Leitzke, Montana Tech
11:30 am Solar Radiance as a Latent Heat Source in the Enhanced Evaporation Process
Bob Ballantyne, RWI Enhanced Evaporation
Noon Cost-Effective Techniques for 3D Mapping and Modelling of Underground Mines
Brandon Badeker, BLM
12:30 pm Lunch