CEO David Watkinson of the Idaho-Maryland Mine Company today told Mathew Renda of The Union that it will miss the deadline of September 10th set by the City of Grass Valley for it to make its initial deposit on the DEIR (draft environmental impact report).

The following sentence in the Union online article suggests that IMM itself declared the DEIR insufficient, when in fact it was the city that declared it to be insufficient:

” Idaho-Maryland Mining Corp. declared the DEIR insufficient and requested additional items be addressed, but the turbulence in the national economy prevented the company from funding the continued environmental review. “

(Note: This error has been corrected in the print edition, and we understand that it will also be corrected in the online version).

IMM will now have to submit a new application and start over from the beginning if it wishes to move forward with its project at any time in the future.

If IMM does re-apply eventually, the city council should require a new scoping analysis and a new economic viability report (done, unlike the first economic viability report, by someone who has experience evaluating the mining business).

Here’s the press release from CLAIM (Citizen’s Looking at the Impact of Mining) this evening describing this latest development:

CLAIM Press Release
September 5, 2012

The Emgold Mining Co. has announced that it will not meet the deadline of Sept 10 for submitting the necessary funds to the City of Grass Valley, as reported in The Union on Tuesday, Sept 4. This means the City will cancel the permit application for their flagship project, Idaho-Maryland Mine. On March 13, 2012, after granting previous extensions, the City had set a final time limit of 180 days in which to make the deposit.

The deposit was for independent consultants to begin preparation of a revised Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) on the proposed mine and ceramics factory. An estimated total of $3-4 million would be needed to finance and execute the DEIR, additional studies, another round of public hearings, and a Final Environmental Impact Report before obtaining a permit.

Emgold continues to have financial problems. The annual financial report for the 6 months  ending June 30, 2012 showed a loss of $492,314, or $0.01 per share, pushing the accumulated deficit to $50,675,463. Emgold has no sources of regular revenue. On June 30 they had only $4,178 of working capital. Even with the IMM project on hold, they still need $50,000 to $100,000 per month working capital to operate.

If a permit is eventually granted, the costs to de-water the old mine and build the mining and ceramics factory facilities would likely exceed $200 million.

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Citizens Looking At Impacts of Mining (CLAIM-GV) is a Grass Valley non-profit whose mission is toprotect the community’s natural environment, public health and safety, and economic sustainability relative to mine re-openings and/or developments. CLAIM-GV’s many volunteers focus on gathering the relevant information, analyzing it, and making it available to the public