PONY – In a town that has seen both the boom and bust of mining, the recent rumble of dump trucks and rock crushers set residents wondering.

On Monday afternoon, representatives from Steele Resources hoped to answer questions and set people’s minds at ease.

Steele Resources is a northern California-based mining company that has been working this summer at the old Atlantic and Pacific Mine a few miles up the canyon from town. The focus of this summer’s work is the surface waste at the old mine, said Scott Dockter, CEO with Steele Resources. However, the company is also exploring the area for future mining sites.

“We do see a future here,” Dockter said. “What that is we can’t say at this point.”

The most visible work Steele Resources has done thus far is the removal of the mining waste from what many locals refer to as the A & P Mine. Basically, Steele Resources is removing stockpiles of rock from the mine site to a location about a half a mile above Pony, where it is crushed into gravel and shipped to the Golden Sunlight Mine in Whitehall for processing.

The old mine waste has some exposed sulfides, which causes some environmental concerns because it can contaminate water supplies, Dockter said. However, the sulfides also signify the presence of precious metals, primarily gold.

The company is moving about 7,000 tons of rock off the site, he estimated. If the company can average at least .05 ounces of gold per ton or rock, it will cover the cost of the operation. On Tuesday morning gold was trading at about $1,800 an ounce.

All of the material Steele Resource is moving and crushing now is surface waste and is being conducted with a Small Miners Exclusion Statement from the Montana Department of Environmental Quality. The SMES allows Steele Resources to conduct the relatively small operation without permits or bonding, said Warren McCullough, bureau chief with the DEQ’s Environmental Management Bureau.

However, to conduct mining exploration activities, such as drilling or trenching, Steele Resources will be required to have exploration permits and be bonded, McCullough said.

At this point, Steele Resources has applied for the exploration permits on about 1,800 acres in the Pony area, but hasn’t provided any bonding, he said.

The A & P Mine site has seen some sort of mining activity dating back to the late 1800s, said John Koerth, abandoned mine program manager with the Montana DEQ.

The mine site was identified as in need of clean up by the DEQ more than 20 years ago, Koerth said.

“It’s been left in what you’d call a state of inadequate restoration,” he said.

Removing the surface material is a for-profit venture by Steele Resources that is addressing some reclamation needs at the old mine site, but it doesn’t involve any money or resources from the state, Koerth said.

“They’re also looking at it as an exploration target,” he said.

And though reclaiming the old mine sounds good, Tom Elpel of Pony is concerned about Steele Resources future mining operations.

“If it’s just cleaning up the waste rock that sounds great,” Elpel said. “I want to know what the bigger plan is because this sounds like more than just hauling a few loads of waste rock over to Whitehall.”

Dockter realizes that people may have some concerns and that was one reason the public meeting was held.

“We want people to understand who we are and what we’re doing,” he said.

The exploration work the company is conducting right now is preliminary, Dockter said. The company has either leased or purchased exploration rights to mining claims encompassing about 1,800 acres around Pony. Right now his geologists are using various non-invasive techniques to try and determine the mining potential of the area. The general idea is to start with a broad brush and try to narrow in on the most viable areas to mine.

“When you’re starting something you kind of want to get your arms around a big area,” Dockter said.

Historically, the area around Pony has produced some very high-grade ore, he said.

However, any future mining activities will be as low impact as possible and cause “minimal disturbance” to the environment and the community.

And any processing of ore will be done somewhere else, either at Golden Sunlight Mine or at some other facility, Dockter said.