State officials are preparing to release a $10 million reclamation bond for the Golden Sunlight Mine near Whitehall, while also increasing the company's overall bond from $54 million to $83 million.

Herb Rolfes, a permit supervisor with Department of Environmental Quality, said his agency is seeking public comment on the changes. But people will have to submit them more quickly than normal, due to the recent discovery of some conflicting statutes, he added.

"Normally, we try to give everybody a 30-day comment period, but there's some inconsistency between the law that one of our lawyers pointed out," Rolfes said. "Once we issue the proposed bond release, we have 30 days to issue the final bond amount. But if we give the public 30 days to comment, and they come in with something on the 30th day, it's impossible for us to address those comments and get the bond issued on that 30th day."

Instead, the deadline for comment is Sept. 19. Anyone with an interest that may be adversely affected by the final bond release may request a contested case hearing before the Board of Environmental Review within the comment period.

The Golden Sunlight gold mine was slated to shut down this fall, but the company instead decided to expand, which will add five years to the life of the gold mine. The company expects to remove 53 million tons of waste rock on top of the 375 million tons already extracted.

Eight million tons of ore would be removed, in addition to the 55 million tons already taken out since Golden Sunlight was first permitted in 1975. The expansion is expected to generate 8 million tons of tailings; the mine already has produced 57 million tons of tailings.

The mine's pit is 2,000 feet deep, covering 218 acres, and is about three-quarters of a mile wide at the top.

The company had to post an additional $6 million bond to move forward with the expansion. Mark Thompson, environmental superintendent for the Golden Sunlight, said they also posted an additional $3.8 million bond to cover esthetic work on the highwall.

Then, the state did a comprehensive review of the bond held for final reclamation work, and decided that between inflation and increased costs of fuel, materials and labor, the company's bond needed to increase overall from $54 million to $83 million.

"Everything has gone up in price since the last bond was calculated about eight years ago," Rolfes said. "A large part of the bond increase was for water treatment; that just about doubled from around $20 million to $44 million.

"We're also throwing in a long-term maintenance bond of about $2 million, so even when the full bond is released and everything is done ... we'll be getting interest on that money that can help pay for things like erosion or revegetation for the next 100 years."

Thompson said the company is comfortable with the bond increase, adding that they've already reclaimed 70 acres and anticipate another 112 acres will be recontoured and reseeded by the spring of 2009.

"That's on top of the 1,200 acres we did to get the $10 million bond released -- and let me tell you, it was a lot more than $10 million. But it looks really good," Thompson said.

Mining activities cover about 2,400 acres, with Golden Sunlight's permitted boundary around 5,500 acres.

The Jefferson County gold mine employs 140 people, and is owned by the international gold mining giant Barrick Corp.

For more information on the bond review calculation, to submit comments or to request a hearing on the bond recalculation, contact Rolfes at 444-3841 or by e-mail at hrolfes@mt.gov.

Reporter Eve Byron: 447-4076 or eve.byron@helenair.com