Paul Emery, on tonight’s KVMR Evening News, interviewed Idaho-Maryland Mine Company President and CEO David Watkinson.

Watkinson indicated that the April 8th deadline set by the city of Grass Valley would be no problem and that he plans to contact the city in January to take the next steps in satisfying their requirements. Presumably this will include funding for the revised draft environmental impact report (DEIR).

Watkinson offered this explanation for the long delay up until now:

“We’ve certainly slowed down work in the last year based primarily on economic conditions. We’ve certainly found it difficult to raise capital in the recession here just like every other company has had, so even though the price of gold has been high, junior mining companies definitely have issues raising capital in a recession like this … ”

Despite Watkinson’s explanation, not all junior mining companies are having trouble raising capital, even in these recessionary times.

When Emery reminded Watkinson of the often-cited criticism that Emgold has never actually produced any gold in its 20 years of operation, Watkinson said “we have people in the company that have mined gold.”

“We’re a little bit different as a junior company because we would be considered an exploration and development company. So we’re looking at actually developing and becoming a mining company, and again there’s only a small percentage of juniors that kind of make that step to become a producing company. It typically takes 20 years for a project that is discovered as a grassroots discovery to get it explored and developed and into construction. And like I say a very very small percentage of projects make it through as a producing mine.”

It’s an odd defense for a company that has never mined gold in 20 years of operation to point out — in effect —  that the historic odds against their success are considerable!

The city should use the occasion of the April deadline to also require a revised economic viability analysis and report.

You can listen to the replay of this evening’s 10-minute interview here:

http://audio.kvmr.org/podhawk/index.php?id=639