I'll west pro-town board meeting of Monday, February 9th, 2026, for harder.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
and to the republic for which it stands,
one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
All right.
Number three is act on minutes of the January 12th, 2026 board meeting is printed.
I have a good period.
There's no problem.
I'll make a motion to accept the minutes I was printed.
I'll second that.
All in favor say aye.
Aye.
Motion to carry.
Move the minutes.
Okay.
Act on January treasury reports.
I'll second there.
All in favor say aye.
Aye.
Mr.
it.
There's a couple things on here that are comfortable in the Meter.
I want to talk to them about that
really true value because I know about everything on there but I don't understand what they
got anyway questions on yeah next thing we got an update from green
okay can you hear me okay do we want to dim the lights here a little bit so people
can see the board a little better
all right well looks good all right so thank you for allowing me to come in
and talk to the town board as you will recall I was here with a couple other folks from green
light metals about a year ago to this day to give you kind of an introduction to green light
metals and talk about the drilling that at that time we were planning out at the bend site in
the Schwamigan national force so today I'm going to recap a little bit of the information we
presented last year just to kind of bring everybody back up to speed and then talk about the results
from our drill program last summer and what the plans are coming up for this year for additional
drilling out at the bend site I always tell folks from the public that just because we're drilling
doesn't mean that we're going to be developing a mine out there in a year or two years it's
going to take us time to drill out this site and see if it's economically viable and as we're
doing that we're going to be doing other work in the state so we're years away from ever from
being at the point where we would actually start the permitting process with the DNR and the federal
government on an actual mine out there so that gives us a lot of time between now and then to
engage with public town boards we met with the county board we've done some open houses where
we invite the public in to present what we're doing what we know give people an opportunity to ask us
questions about what the process looks like what a mine looks like whatever's on your mind we want
to hear that stuff because we're then able to take that into account with regards to the activities
that are taking place out there so to recap why are we exploring for these types of metals so at
bend it's a known copper resource it also has good economic grades of we're very reliant on
foreign sources for many many critical metals so copper is a critical metal at the at the US
federal government stage we get most of our copper from foreign sources and you also hear about
rare earth elements rare earth elements are primarily coming from China these days so all of these
metals are critical for our economy just the basic economy health care infrastructure the electric
grid etc and when we start looking at other needs that we are going to face as a society electric
vehicles use a lot of copper if we're talking about data centers and building out the electric
grid for that aspect of the economy that's going to grow we need more copper recycling is good we
want to recycle it so again it's very fundamental to clean energy technologies AI defense needs are
further increasing and that's driving the need for all of this exploration that is taking place
around the country what we refer to as wisconsin's panoke and volcanic belt is the fluids in the
materials that settled out on the ocean floor that provides these critical metals such as
copper zinc gold silver and potentially to lurium we may have mentioned that last year most people
haven't heard of to lurium so we as a country and as a state and as a society as a community we
need to be looking at the exploration and the development of these metals we need to do it in
a way that's economic and we need to do it in a way that's environmentally protective and sustainable
and so sustainable development of these minerals is what our guidance principle is about whether
it's at wisconsin current projects that we're looking at are for and they're shown on this map
here and we refer to those as lobo and lobo east which is located over here in the southeastern
part of onaida county we have another gold copper resource it's on private land private
minerals that we lease that's referred to as reef and that is located east of wasa and then the
one local here in taylor county is what's referred to as bend and as many of you know there was
historic drilling at bend we are accumulating that data where we've got access to that data and
we're building off of the exploration work that was historically done at this deposit I mentioned
sustainable operations our commitment to all communities is to provide critical metals necessary
for low carbon green energy securing the u.s. supply chain and bolstering the resiliency of
local state and the national economy we're going to do that by focusing on enduring benefits that
flow to the local communities that extend beyond one mineral deposit so if system fostering business
entrepreneurship so any mine is going to have to have a lot of services that are provided to that
operation and we want those to come from the local economy so we will develop programs to foster
business entrepreneurship that can provide those services to the to the economy it's all a
beef to 85 percent would come from the local area so northern wisconsin this area around medford
and west burrow and that's if we get to the point where we actually develop a mine we don't know if
we're there yet we want to produce critical metals that are consistent with wisconsin's labor
environmental stewardship and public transparency so we we want input from diverse local communities
whether it's the business community or if it's an environmental community that has concerns about
the project we want to hear from everybody so that we can take that into account on how we actually
design a project when we get to that point our policy is to have an open door the project is
located in this area right here in green this little yellow area that you see there about 600
700 acres that's the area that we're targeting for doing the exploration drilling activity
I mentioned that we completed one drill program this past summer and to do that this is the forest
right here we developed a little trail system that went in and accessed these little gray areas
which were the drill pads that we cleared the ground and set the set the drill equipment up on
all of this activity that we did last summer all this drilling activity was fully permitted
by the wisconsin and the geologists that were doing the work welcomed them into the site and
took whatever questions that they they wanted to ask so that program was completed in about 12
weeks or it was planned for 12 weeks we completed it in about 10 weeks there was over 7,000 feet of
permitted drilling the the project completed about 60 700 feet of drilling was at three sites
and six holes that were drilled we were permitted for eight we only drilled six of them
we had a authorization to disturb up to about 0.64 acres as part of that activity the total
disturbance was about 0.3 acres here's a couple photos of the drilling operation so coming off
of the forest road we put down drill mats these are heavy duty industrial mats that heavy equipment
can drive over to prevent running and stuff like that of the forest surface this is the actual drill
rig so the crews are out there drilling they're going 24 hours a day so there's a couple crews
they trade off and that drilling operation goes 24 hours a day it's not that big of a rig it's like
a half half size semi-trailer with a the drilling equipment in there and it drills at an angle most
water wells you're drilling vertically so you'll see the drill tower sticking straight up here if
you went out to the site you would see the drill tower right here and it's going down at an angle
and you'll see why we do that in a moment this is a picture of the geologists logging the
exploration core so as that exploration core comes out of the core barrel it's broken up
it's put into these boxes and then the geologists take it back to the core facility we have to
band in the bore holes which means got to stick a rod down to the bottom and pump cement down
to the bottom of the hole and fill it up from the bottom as we're pulling that drill rod out
uh in the steel casing then eventually comes out and then we have to reclaim the entire site so
we have to re-grate it put topsoil back on and then re-vegetate it all of those activities are bonded
so and before we do any drilling we have to pose financial assurance to the DNR
and that financial assurance stays in place for at least a year until the DNR certifies that
site's fully reclaimed and stabilized
so with this drill program i mentioned we do the assays on the core and here we've got
a picture of this very colorful looking rock and what you see in there is these little veins of
where the copper mineralization is so here's a picture of the cut core that gets sent out to the
lab for assay and we did get very positive results out of this drilling this last summer
so we were testing other areas of the potential deposit that hadn't been explored before and we
were finding very good mineralization in these previously unexplored areas
so significant copper rich mass of sulfide mineralization in three uh holes three through five
we identified a mineralized trend that was extending to the east of the main deposit area so that
main deposit area was the area that had previously been explored so what that saying is we're extending
the known extent of mineralization that's very that's what we want to see when we're holes
and all of this colored stuff is different strata of rock i mentioned that this was a volcanic
system so it's different types of volcanic sediments that had been built up on the ocean
floor and then this whole thing was turned on its side due to things like plate tectonic type
stuff okay and what we're interested in here is this kind of reddish purplish zone right there
that's the area where we see the really good concentration only is where the mineralization
is so that's what we're targeting with the drilling
throughout the duration of the drill program last summer it was visited by lots of people
so a lot of people were interested in it and here you see some of the environmental group
that's formed called Friends of the Yellow River and they were on site numerous times
and then local government tribal people also showed up and anytime someone showed up the drill crew
the geologists that were out there they would welcome them into the drilling operation
show them how the equipment worked how things were being performed and show them the core and
answer whatever questions they had here this picture on the right is when the dnr was on site
and this picture on the left is a group of local Native Americans that came to the site
under the banner of a protest and we said why don't you come on in and we'll show you what we're
doing and we spent about four hours with them just taking questions showing them around it was
very cordial conversation focus on reclamation activity so once we get done with the drilling
we have to reclaim the site so that photo I showed you earlier with the drill mats that were laid
down this is what the area looked like immediately after we removed the drill mats and regraded
the area prior to seeding and revegitation so this again this is an actual drill site
you see a pipe that's still sticking up in the ground and that pipe we didn't fully abandon
that hole because we came back and we slide instrumentation down that hole
exploration activities so based on the positive results the company was able to raise about
11 million dollars in additional cash people that invested in the company and that's what
we're using now to fund the next stage of exploration at this particular deposit
to the site to do additional drilling on this blue little square box and that'll be starting
the equipment will probably be coming in later this week so in order to do that we had to go
back to the DNR and get more drill permits and we had to go back to the Forest Service and get
an additional authorization to do additional drilling all of that stuff just came in as of
today we got the final authorization from the US Forest Service we got the DNR permits about
two weeks ago and so the equipment to do the additional drilling on this block will be going
to the site this week and anticipate that those drill rigs will be up and running maybe this
weekend or sometime early part next week we hope to get the drilling on this block done before the
frost starts coming out of the ground now we also have these other areas this area
outlined in green and this area up in here and this area up in here where we also want to do
some additional drilling in order to do that we have to get the same series of permits from the
DNR but with the Forest Service and the federal government we have to get a different type of
permit and that's because the minerals we're drilling into and those in these three areas
are federal minerals the minerals underneath the ground here are private they're with
suline and we lease those so because we're going to be drilling into federal minerals we have to go
through a different permitting process we expect that that process will be completed
i'm going to say april and we'll be back out there probably in may to drill these three areas
yes can you just with your finger i can't see where the river is on there in relation
yes it doesn't show up real well here but it's i probably have to take my lens
it's basically going up through and around like this
so i think this area right here is actually on the other side of the river
it would be on the north side west side of the river yeah yep
let's perm up before you can enter those
so that's that's kind of where we're at we're still drilling once we get done with this
other activities that the company's looking at is to do some airborne geophysics in areas
around this area so we can look at additional drill programs in the future so we're still in
the early stages what we would likely do it's not a guarantee but what we would likely do is
once we finish this drilling and we get all the data in and we're able to put it into databases
and port and see it we could also provide it in hard copy format for you if people would prefer that
but it'll have a lot of technical data it'll have a lot of geologic models in there and all
that type of stuff but if you're into rocks and that type of stuff you'll find it interesting
is it okay if i ask a few more questions yeah go ahead so full disclosure i worked
before service for 35 years sure i've written biological evaluations for previous drilling
uh-huh on the line i worked here as a wildlife biologist from about 1990 to 2011 so yeah sure
we're all familiar with the site yeah it's in the drilling rigs i don't know what that's all about
um how are you looking to access the the area that's going to be on that north side of the
yellow river is there status roads is there any new road building how is that going to happen
well i always say that we're not building roads because people think when we're when you're
building roads you're actually bringing gravel in and stuff yep so what what we're doing with any
of these things will be coming off the the uh the road right right about here yep and all
all we're really doing is taking out a few trees as you know under the approval of the
forest service on a tree we cut down we take that out and we're we're building kind of an initial
trail into these areas where we can set up the drill rig are you gonna map that the whole way
like the drill river uh if we're doing this would be done in the summer so we would be matting that
yes yep yep which is pretty routine for a lot of projects now if you went back 30 years a lot of
people weren't doing that but yeah it's just the way yeah yeah yeah
the water level in the yellow river i know you guys take water from the yellow river to the drilling
what kind what is there in the permit that maintains a minimum flow in the yellow river to protect
you know mussels and whatever other flight life there is well there's actually a fair amount of
i don't know if there's a limitation on flow that we have to comply with but we are looking
at the flow in the river last summer there was pretty decent flow through the river
so when we took the water out we weren't affecting the water level or anything like that it's actually
a pretty small volume of water that we're actually using for the drill programs but we will be looking
at those issues i know some folks have a concern this winter that there could be very little flow
in the river because of how cold it's been the thickness of the ice my experience
actually live on a river is that even with those thick ice sheets that you see on the river and
you can get some pretty thick ice there there's still flow underneath that ice so there's no
minimum flow though that's mentioned in terms of you can take water out as long as there's this
not that i know about i'd have to look at the fine print in the permit but i don't believe
that's in there but if we think it's going to be challenging to get water out of here or we think
it's going to have any harm we can go to other sources of water there's a reservoir a little
further down stream or we could come into town and just go to a local uh fire hydrant or contact
fire department and get water that way which i've seen done so we will be looking at that and
rest assured we're not you know we don't want to do anything that's that is going to upset people
or cause any type of harm and if we think that there's going to be a concern there then we'll
go to a different water source for that and then it's really i don't think it's really a concern
but if there were to be a malign what kind of protections are there going to be for indian farm
it's a really significant cultural resource i'm sure that you know the tribes have talked to you
about it yeah so what we see here and that that farm is is yeah and what we see here is if we
develop a mine there it might be about a hundred acres in disturbance that we would need to mine
that what we would like to do is uh process the ore from this type of a deposit at a regional
mill facility so instead of wherever we find mineralization that we want to mine instead of
putting a mill there which means you have to put a tailings facility there which increases the footprint
of the operation all we do here is mine and we take that ore and we transport it to a railhead
and then that gets shipped to a mill that's constructed along a rail line so it's not out in the middle
of the national forest and i've worked on projects that have done that and the footprint for an
underground development then is pretty small it's about maybe a hundred acres and so environmentally
you know that's on the plus side in terms of less disturbance but wouldn't that mean a lot less
jobs too for the area if you're shipping off most of this well we're looking at it um from
we're not we wouldn't be shipping it out of state so we would keep that mill operation in state now
we haven't identified where that mill would go but it would be in one of the counties in this area
so in aggregate you would have the same labor force for the for the operation it would just be spread
out a little bit one of the beauties of doing that is if you get a regional mill set up you can
then process or from multiple mines at one centralized location and so you're not putting those mills
and tailings facilities at every mine site makes it much more controllable
and you have a question?
some roads that you're talking about i know what most of the roads are
because i walked around and they're at once with a little log landing road that's up above there
yeah that was a very well put in road before
one just on the south side of the river what's that one just the south side of the river
it would be on the north side of the river oh on the north side yeah that was actually a pretty
good log landing there they had a lot of logs in there um and then it was a gravel log in there
so one of the things that we'll have to look at and why you negotiate a local agreement is
because before we even get to permitting we're going to be doing engineering studies on
different ways different alternatives to develop this and that's required it's not
required by the state but it is required by the financial exchanges and we start out with what's
called a preliminary engineering assessment and that's a high level examination of how would you
develop the mine what kind of production rate what types of transportation improvements might
be needed for it all that what kind of power every facet of the project is evaluated as well as the
economics the tax payments to state government local government employment taxes all that type
stuff so it's a very exhaustive analysis of the operation and we look at various alternatives
and it provides us kind of a snapshot of how this project would need to be engineered
you don't stop there and that's not what you then take into permitting you then take
the results of that study and you do a more refined and higher level of engineering analysis on that
in a study that's called a pre-feasibility study and it's a very exhaustive study which looks at
all of the capital expenditures operating expenditures labor force what you're going to
pay the labor force all of that type of stuff all the transportation requirements everything
soup to nuts and when we're going through those studies we want to be coming in and talking to
you and other local units of government because i think your input is going to be important and
we want to factor that in but we go through those engineering evaluations to get to a point where
we believe we have a mind plan that can be permitted and part of those studies which we do before
we ever get into the permitting process is to look at all the environmental regulations at
state level local level federal level and design the project to meet all those environmental requirements
for how the projects constructed how it's operated and then how it's closed and how it has to be
monitored after it closes so it's a very exhaustive study companies wouldn't be in talking to the
local community at this stage and and factoring that stuff in at an early stage before they got
to the permitting process and what hall happened after they got into the permitting process
we don't think that's a good way of doing business so we want to do a lot of our homework before we
get to that point we'll be out there as i said probably next week drilling and if you want to stop
out you know where it's at geologists will be out there they'll be more than willing to take
questions from you and if anything comes up you know how to contact me
yeah eric eric will be out there yeah he's kind of running the whole thing
all right thank you for your time
thank you
scott clueg with our congressman he was used to work at channel 27 he was the hunker there
oh really for congress oh wow he's the last republican to serve madison oh wow that was probably up
from uh terms because i believe in term limits and my own choosing and he did he ran for four
otherwise he could have had that seat a hell of a lot longer
okay
oh yeah
Let's get in there.
It's like really wrapped.
It's like folded through it.
It's just those lights are creating crazy lens flares.