Noranda moves 5 rigs on to Lynne in rush to complete winter

Noranda Exploration, a unit of Noranda (TSE), has moved five rigs on to the Lynne property, about one hour’s drive from this tourist town, in an attempt to delineate the deposit before spring breakup. As Canada’s mining community gathers in Toronto for the annual Prospectors and Developers Association convention, Noranda will be compiling data from more than 100 holes completed at Lynne since last spring.

This month, Noranda has been racing against the calender to drill a final 50,000 ft. while the ground is still frozen. According to laws designed to protect Wisconsin’s wetlands, holes collared on marshy ground must be completed before the thaw.

But despite Noranda’s willingness to honor state regulations, “The Wisconsin Greens,” a local environmental group, would like to see Noranda out of Oneida County and out of the state. In a peaceful demonstration held at the site in February, at least 40 residents turned out to voice their concerns about the project’s potential impact on the environment.

It just so happens that the Rhinelander-Ladysmith greenstone belt, which hosts Lynne and a number of other base metal prospects, overlaps with a pristine forest landscape popular with outdoor enthusiasts. Some residents are particularly disturbed by the shallow Lynne deposit, which, if subject to a positive production decision, would be mined from an open pit.

But when the The Northern Miner visited Lynne on a balmy day in February, the demonstrators were nowhere to be seen as Midwest drillers pulled the last core barrel from hole 93. And while Noranda continued to probe 30-45 dip extensions of the deposit to the north, project manager Michael Donnelly indicated that the strike extent of the zinc-rich body had already been defined.

“We’ve seen the western limits of the deposit and we’re closing off the east side.” Assay results, he said, suggest the deposit extends over a maximum strike length of 1,000-1,200 ft. — the heart of an airborne geophysical anomaly discovered last year.

Meanwhile, core pulled from stepout holes about 2,500 ft. north of the discovery hole is mostly barren, he said. As a result, by the end of February the rigs were drilling several hundred feet closer to the discovery hole, where Noranda expected to find the downdip limits of the deposit at a vertical depth of 600-700 ft.

“We’re getting mixed holes at depth suggesting that this is not a huge deposit,” Donnelly told The Northern Miner, pointing to a large drill locality map. But Donnelly was cagey about specific results and reluctant to show longitudinal sections before issuing an official press release.

Oneida Cty., which is leasing the Lynne ground to Noranda in return for a 3% net smelter royalty and 5.31% net profits royalty, is entitled to see assays before they are released to the public. So far, Noranda has released results from only the first 27 holes.

Based on samples taken from the Lynne core, zinc, lead and copper recoveries at Lynne appear to be “above average,” Donnelly said, although he stressed that metallurgical testing is still in the early phases.

What limits the potential of the Lynne body is that the four main sulphide lenses, stacked one upon the other, tend to pinch out (taper off to the point of vanishing) dramatically at both ends. The thickest part of the deposit, intersected in hole 90-2, returned 379.7 ft. averaging 8.54% zinc.

Otherwise, Lynne appears to be a classic volcanogenic massive sulphide deposit, with the exception of two unique compositional features. First, the ore zones are hosted by carbonate-rich chemical sediments. Second, like many base metal deposits laid down during the Proterozoic, Lynne is lead-rich, grading up to 2.5% in some holes.

But geology is not the only factor that distinguishes Lynne from similar base metal plays in North America. As indicated by the recent demonstrations at the project, which, at this point, is no more than an exploration play, Lynne has drawn a lot of public attention.

Donnelly says much of his time is spent attending public hearings, speaking with local representatives, and reporting developments to the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Television camera crews have visited the site on at least three occasions.

“You have two extremes,” said Donnelly. Those that are pro-mining and those that are anti-mining and also very vocal, but the vast majority lie somewhere in the middle.”

By Ontario standards, Noranda’s project area looks like a good example of responsible exploration. While on site, The Northern Miner was impressed by the effort the company had made to leave as little evidence of its work as possible although most of the credit must be given to DNR, which set the standards in the first place. Drill pads had been covered over and reseeded, holes cemented from top to bottom, and cleared lumber cut and stacked in piles for the DNR’s use.

As an example of the watchful eye the DNR keeps on all the exploration projects under way along the 150-mile long greenstone belt, each drill collar at Lynne must be checked and approved by a DNR representative before work can begin. But after 19 years in the state, Noranda considers requirements like these to be routine.

In order to prepare for a possible production decision at Lynne, Donnelly has been noting developments as they unfold at Kennecott’s Flambeau copper project, about 50 miles west of Lynne. Kennecott, which recently received permission to open pit mine Flambeau at a rate of 1,300 tons per day, is the first to follow through with the extensive permitting procedures required by Wisconsin law.

Donnelly estimates similar procedures for Lynne would take at least 18 months and carry a hefty price tag. Data must be collected and analyzed on wetlands, fish and wildlife, endangered species, archaeological sites, ground and surface water, air quality . . . and the list goes on.

And, unlike Kennecott, which plans to ship its ore out-of-state for processing, Noranda will need to build its own on-site mill. If the mine plan is approved by the DNR, Noranda would be the first to operate a non-ferrous mill in Wisconsin since the 1970s.