Madeleine faces environmental charges

Toronto-based Madeleine Mines (TSE) and company President J. Patrick Sheridan were recently charged with six counts of violating Ontario’s environment laws. The charges were laid February 14 following an investigation into Madeleine’s Lac des Iles palladium-platinum project by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment in Thunder Bay, Ont.

While the company says it has made a special effort to preserve the local environment during construction of the 3,000 ton-per-daymill, Environment Ministry officials claim Madeleine has done so without obtaining the necessary permits.

“That is the basis of the Crown’s contention,” said Mike Bird, an investigator in the Environment Ministry’s enforcement branch. His department was called in to conduct an investigation last October.

Bird says Madeleine and Sheridan are charged with two counts of establishingor extending a sewage system without approval and two counts of constructing equipment or facilities from which a contaminant may be discharged. When Madeleine representatives appear in provincial court in Thunder Bay, March 12, they must also answer charges that the company operated the equipment without approval.

Sheridan couldn’t be reached for comment on what plea his company will enter.

The Lac des Iles project is being closely watched by Madeleine’s U.S. shareholders because, if and when it is brought into production, the open pit mine would rank as only the third deposit in the world to be mined primarily for its platinum group metals.

Madeleine recently earned a 50% stake in the project from The Sheridan Platinum Group, a private company owned 90% by Boston Bay Mines (COATS) and 10% by Patrick Sheridan. Reserves of 22.6 million tons grading 0.19 oz. per ton platinum/palladium and 0.02 oz. gold in the Roby zone are sufficient to sustain a mining operation for 10 years.