Company seeks to open large metallic mine in northern Maine.

A Canadian company is seeking to rezone nearly 200 acres in northern Maine to open the state’s first new commercial, metallic mine in decades.

Wolfden Mt. Chase LLC says that Pickett Mountain — located just north of Patten — has the country’s largest undeveloped reserves of a type of ore containing high-grade zinc, copper, lead, silver and gold. The company has filed an application with the Land Use Planning Commission to rezone 197.5 acres in order to build an underground mine as well as associated buildings and infrastructure at the site near the border of Penobscot and Aroostook counties.

The application will be the first test of new mining regulations enacted by the Legislature in 2017 following years of heated debate largely focused on this particular site. Wolfden Resources, the parent company of Wolfden Mt. Chase LLC, purchased the nearly 6,900 acres around Pickett Mountain several months later and began conducting test drilling to gauge the quality of the underlying mineral deposits.

Source: Portland Press Herald