I had a fairly lengthy conversation with Mr.Quillam 4 days ago and he was very cheery. He had a blowout that morning with the auditor for not getting his arse to the mill last week. Viewing and verifying that the equipment contained in the audit is the final step before submitting. I did hear [rumour only] that the auditor was sending a CPA to Melba to get it done.

Regarding the mill, Pierre was confident that the issues that were in question regarding permitting and building code violations would be resolved soon. They were fortunate to get the assistance from the head Fire Marshall for the state of Idaho to sort things out. There was 2 different opinions on what was required as the City of Melba and the county gave SFMI different requirements. The Fire Marshall oversees both [also happens to be a friend of sfmi's ops. manager Bill Earlle] and volunteered to straighten things out.

From report I saw on another board [ihub] from someone who had talked to Pierre on Friday that the permitting had been resolved and the code challenges would be taken care of early this week and the equipment to be put back in place. Pierre had indicated to me that it would be 3 weeks once this was resolved to get in production and he was still hoping for this month.

They are also and have been for awhile in discussions with gov't regarding the start of extraction of ore from the mines on the mtn. There is a fair bit of already existing ore in some of the shafts that is easily accesible. One shaft has quite a lot of oar, but contains silt and water, which would have to be removed first. Even pumping water requires permits so they are trying to get this done now [permitting] so they are ready to proceed when the snow leaves.

cheers