Published on July 7, 2020
Midas Gold is currently working with the Valley County Planning and Zoning Commission to obtain a conditional use permit for the Stibnite Gold Project Logistics Facility.
The logistics facility would be located on Warm Lake Road a little more than 8 miles away from the City of Cascade. This facility would support proposed operations at Stibnite. Locating it here would allow us to substantially reduce traffic on the road to and from Stibnite, locate jobs closer to Cascade and employ dozens of Idahoans and increase the local tax base.
One of the most important results of locating the logistics facility where proposed is to bring jobs closer to our communities. An assay lab, warehouse, logistics staff and administrative department at the logistics facility will bring approximately 30 jobs close to Cascade. These roles will largely be Monday-Friday and provide more flexibility to workers compared to the two-week on-off positions proposed for at Stibnite.
One of our key goals was to reduce traffic to Stibnite, to both improve public and worker safety, and to reduce our environmental impact. Placing a warehouse at this location will help us combine and consolidate loads, so we can reduce the overall number of trips we need to make to get supplies and equipment up to Stibnite. Less traffic will reduce the risk of accidents, reduce dust on the roads, reduce sediment runoff and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles vs not having the logistics facility here. We have also committed to transporting goods to site Monday through Friday, during business hours, so we do not need to be on the road during peak recreational and weekend travel times. We estimate that we’ll make approximately 34 roundtrips during the weekdays, a third of which will be made using light vehicles like you see us driving today.
The logistics facility will also offer approximately 300 parking spaces for our employees during their shifts up at site. Approximately 90 percent of employees will be bussed from the logistics facility to site and back, further reducing traffic further enhancing the benefits noted above.
The logistics facility will be set on a 25-acre parcel of land owned by Midas Gold. In addition to the warehouse, we will have a building for our administrative offices and lab. Lab techs will be able to work here, instead of traveling to site, to study the mineral composition of rocks from the Stibnite Mining District. In total, we believe around 26-30 employees would work at the logistics facility. As always, our goal is to hire Idahoans from the local community first to fill these positions.
The logistics facility would also include a storage facility for core samples from the site and a small, temporary waste storage facility to safely store materials that were used in the lab before shipping them offsite for appropriate disposal.
Our team has worked hard to make sure our logistics facility can blend into the area as much as possible. From the initial design phase to today, and in line with our Dark Skies Commitment, we’ve cut the number of lights on the site down by half in order to reduce light pollution. We have also made sure all light is directed downward and illuminating only what we need when we need it – not pointing up into our beautiful night skies.
The logistics storage facility will be reviewed by the Valley County Planning and Zoning Commission during their regularly scheduled meeting on July 9. We hope commissioners will be able to see the benefits this facility will bring to our project but, most importantly, the local community. Construction would only occur in parallel with the Stibnite Gold Project.
