"The Treasure State looks poised to permit its first new copper mine in decades. Sandfire says it will raise the environmental bar — a promise Montanans have heard before."

"WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, Montana ― In the late 1800s, a homesteader named Johnny Lee settled in a remote gulch along Sheep Creek, a tributary of the Smith River that zigzags west through the rolling Little Belt Mountains of central Montana. For two decades, Lee toiled on a nearby hillside where a small amount of copper had been found, hoping to uncover a large underground deposit of the valuable ore.

Lee didn’t realize he was working along a fault; the copper there had been carried away from a rich vein a third of a mile to the east. "

Chris D’Angelo reports for HuffPost July 5, 2019. [2]