SPIRIT LAKE, IDAHO, July 11, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- City Desk -- Mining/Minerals/Finance:
U.S. and International News Editors
Broadcast Directors - Business Writers…
Frank Wall, president & CEO, Trans Telluric Corporation™, announced today filing a civil action in Montana Nineteenth District Court against Mines Management, Inc., Newhi, Inc., and Montanore Minerals Corporation. Wall alleges that Defendants --Mines Management and Montanore Minerals have repeatedly overshot their legal bounds in process of sanctions sought for an approved Plan of Operations (POO) by federal and state authorities for hard-rock mining permits on historic, pristine Libby Creek in Lincoln County, NW Montana. Wall asserts, "I believe that Mines Management is going to 'foul up the water' and in the State of Montana."
Wall, "I'm not against resource--metal mining and good paying, long-term jobs for Montana residents which is desperately needed in Lincoln County. I'm just against a bunch of outsider, financial people who mislead local citizens with empty promises and soak their stockholders for millions." Wall added, "Show 'em the light; maybe they'll feel the heat." -- Wall also expressed his concern, "Due to a potential conflict of interests where a former Noranda employee, now an employee of the Forest Service (FS) has been key in the FS decision-making chain, and I am concerned about the agencies overseeing expensive government and private permit operations under an expired KNF/DEQ Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), and I feel the EIS (environmental impact statement) process really should start all over again. Why? --This is because the Forest Service and MT DEQ (and MMI/MMC) ALL, were acting without legal authority on the Montanore project for over a year which says volumes about any future accountability."
According to Frank Wall, a High Volume of water discharge, and consequently, Wall believes, Mines Management & Montanore Minerals are NOT being "proper stewards of the forest habitat."
· Wall asserts and claims, "Can a leopard change its spots?" - Noranda & MMI were repeatedly cited for "nitrates in Libby Creek."
· According to Wall, Noranda's geologist Lynn Hagarty is now the Forest Service Coordinator for KNF, DEQ & MMI, on the very same Montanore project, and respectfully, Wall feels could have made decisions in the chain-of-command influencing the outcome of the pressed, permitting EIS/NEPA process underway.
· For the record, the KNF & DEQ's 2005 MOU #105010 on Montanore EIS expired Dec. 31, 2010, and much later was renewed Jan. 24, 2012, documents of which Wall has received.
· Wall, a minority MGN (MMI) shareholder asserts, "Mines Management is 'milking' its stockholders" and the Securities and Exchange Commission has been notified of alleged improprieties by Wall.
· Most of all, like the "leopard's spots," according to Mr. Wall, "Mines Management I believe has endangered and could irrevocably harm the Bull Trout in Libby Creek and downstream waters."
The three following agency directives or citations which Wall received, were sent to Defendants MMI, et al. or their counsel on the dates noted:
· Regional Forester Abigail Kimbell on Sept. 29, 2006 said, "MMI still needs to obtain new FS approval."
· KNF Supervisor Bradford Aug. 7, 2007 said, "MMC [MMI] must obtain Forest Service approval … prior to dewatering and continuing excavation, drilling, and development work at the Libby Creek adit."
· Two years later, August 21, 2009, the same Paul Bradford issued via CM/RRR to MMI President and CEO Glenn Dobbs an ultimatum, "NOTICE OF NON-COMPLIANCE" afterwards, when MMI and MMC pumped unauthorized water beyond the 600 feet allowed to 7,200 feet in the adit, with intentions to go further under the wilderness boundary, also without agencies' permission.
· Wall noted, just recently MMI/MMC evidently had to shut its pumps down after flooding Libby Creek with ground and surface water for over five years...
· And according to Frank Wall, the Montana DEQ had directed to the defendants, "No mining..." What is MMC/MMI's drilling-and-blasting into hard-rock in the adit but mining?
Trans Telluric Corporation (TTC), formerly ECO Star Energy Systems, based in Athol, Idaho, was pressed to postpone client's POO of USDA Kootenai National Forest Service (KNF) and Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) joint issuance of an exploration license to perform targeted drilling: FS/DEQ permit is for exploration of strategic minerals in the Kootenai National Forest on senior mining claims held by Libby Creek Ventures™ (LCV) since 1984, formerly the Big John Mining Company & Rodan, Inc. (BJR). The great controversy, also in Lincoln County 19th District Court, case #DV-07-248 has been ongoing since the fall of 2007, and multiple appeals by Plaintiffs MMI, MMC & Newhi in Montana Supreme Court after Wall's co-defendants received a favorable ruling March 12, 2013, from Judge Wheelis in Lincoln County District Court.
The latest Supreme Court appeal by Mines Management, Montanore Minerals and Newhi is case is #DA 14-0112 (http://supremecourtdocket.mt.gov/search/case?case=16811). According to Plaintiff Frank Wall, Montanore Minerals Corporation, along with pumping huge volumes of water for no apparent reason--approaching a decade, its parent company, MMI is flooding the courts wasting considerable stockholder resources, and is apparently not willing to be reasonable with Wall and associates on the contested issues.
Prior to MMI's 2007 lawsuit against Wall, et al., LCV and Mr. Wall were performing progressive feasibility studies as to a prospectus for private placement to key investors. Wall and associate Phil Hinson, business development CPA in Atlanta were seeking 9.5 million USD to launch the LCV Mine project off to a clean start with a good management and operational team: Wall asserts, "Our 2007 business plan involved primary targets and was expected to approach 55,000 feet of 'diamond-core exploration drilling' in the near term, after FS/DEQ approvals, of two-to-five years. -- MMI has stalled our business expectancies with all these unneeded court challenges."
Wall has concluded, "Mines Management's legal gamesmanship, including a new lawsuit in federal court, has curtailed all of Hinson and Wall's mining initiative, even to the present time." --Subject and senior lode mining claims are adjacent to the congressionally designated Cabinet Mountains' Wilderness reserve in geophysical "target rich" areas conclusively focused for further exploration, and mining: LCV has met with major mining companies having a robust interest in the LCV "premier mining claims." --A new company Optima, recently "bought into the fray" supporting claim holder *Arnold Bakie, LCV manager, now an Optima director.
Wall's former clients LCV, and Bakie, did have a 20-year MINING LEASE with Noranda Minerals Corporation, which was terminated--the adit sealed/abandoned--relinquished to BJR (noted above) by Noranda on July 27, 2002 after 13 years when Noranda "pulled up stakes" in Montana leaving MMI and mining investors in a lurch. In effect, Noranda terminated the lease with LCV that they needed to drive the adit. Incumbent to this Mining Lease was the "Grant of Easement" granted to Noranda by BJR for the adit. The "Old Montanore Adit," presently the LCV (Bakie) adit, which was then reverted back BJR, LCV's predecessor-in-interest.
The proposed Montanore copper/silver project and Revett's Rock Creek Silver (Ag/Cu) project, respectively adjoining LCV to the west, have garnered long-standing investors' interest as they have presumably huge world-class, 'stratabound' ore deposits... and adjacent to the subject, primary claims of Arnold Bakie and Optima. However, Wall reiterates, "Defendants MMI, MMC and Newhi are not 'proper stewards of the forest!'" --What is needed Wall says, "is an experienced mining company with sufficient financial resources and having a modest nine-figure liquidity to launch these mining operations." -- MMI (NYSE:MGN) (TSX:MGT) does not have at present even one tenth of what is required, probably because of contest delays --with Wall and Bakie over Bakie's Libby Creek Adit/decline™, a 14,000 foot 'blind tunnel' built by Noranda Minerals with joint-venture partner (now defendant) MMI in 1989.
As was stated to the DEQ legal staff by an MMI attorney Rick Orizotti, prior to any attendant litigation ongoing now for 7 years, "Noranda has no rights to the [Operating Permit No. 00150], because it no longer holds title to the claims [that constitutes] the Montanore project." -- Wall asserts, "This includes the LCV Adit™ and the Grant of Easement to the $60 million USD adit now owned by Mr. Bakie which MMI seeks to possess." This same MMI attorney later claimed, MMI now has these rights, as does his clients MMI, MMC and Newhi, but the courts ruled in Arnold Bakie's favor and have said otherwise.
Wall also represented, prior to being sued by Mines Management in 2007, Co-Defendant and widow twice-over, Bakie's mother-in-law, matriarch Mrs. Louise Voves (89) of Spirit Lake, Idaho, progeny of pioneer miners, who in the early 1980s, located well over 1,000 mining claims (or 33 square miles or sections) with brother Ralph Bakie (deceased)…. Voves has said, "Noranda's (MMI)… is analogous to 1901 Montana, Amalgamated Copper, the Minnie Healy Mine case," a famous law study, and our ongoing saga is like unto "the boy David against the Philistine giant, Goliath."
Photos and background information are available on request to interested parties. -- News links follow:
· See - "Libby Creek - Montana DEQ permission for drilling" - 10 May 2007:
http://www.mineweb.com:8080/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page674?oid=21002&sn=Detail
· See - "Libby Creek - Minor Revision of Montana DEQ permission for drilling" - 21 May 2007:
http://www.mineweb.com:8080/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page674?oid=21179&sn=Detail
(* "Brian Schweitzer" in 2013 ... Google search for related copy)
Copyright © 2014, by Frank Wall
All Rights Reserved - UCC, et al.
(permission to publish granted)
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