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Having spent my entire professional life exploring for and developing ore deposits throughout the world, I am fascinated by your May 26 article titled, "Silica probe receives a green light," describing the USFS permitting of two exploratory drill holes on Green Mountain near the south end of Lake Pend Oreille.

The only motivation I can think of for investors (Pend Oreille Silica) to risk money drilling for silica on Green Mountain is the hope of providing feed to the proposed PacWest Silicon smelter.

The most abundant element in the surface crust of the Earth is oxygen at 46.6 percent, and the second most abundant is silicon at 27.7 percent. The most common chemical compound found in the Earth's crust is silicon dioxide, known as quartz, at 42.8 percent. Quartz is found ubiquitously throughout the world and, without a doubt will be encountered in both these proposed drill holes as well as any other exploratory holes that may be drilled in our mountains. There is little doubt that any amount of quartz encountered here could ever be profitably mined, milled and transported to the proposed smelter.

From the beginning, I have been puzzled why PacWest Silicon wants to build a silicon smelter near Newport. Is it the availability of cheap power, cheap transportation to bring high quality silica ores (most likely selectively concentrated beach sand) to the smelter, and/or perhaps Washington has a less rigorous permitting process than does Canada?

Under no circumstances, however, is it being constructed in the hopes that deposits of high quality silica can be found and developed in our neck of the woods. The western states are littered with abandoned remnants where enthusiatic miners built a mill before finding the ore to put in it. If PacWest Silicon is betting on processing silicon dioxide that is to be locally mined, this will be the first case I know of where a smelter failed at the outset for lack of concentrate to feed it.

FRED PARK

Sagle