And see it.
We could also provide it in hard
copy format for you.
People would prefer that.
But it'll have a lot of technical
data, it'll a lot 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 for the
Forest Service for 35 years.
Sure. I've written biological
evaluations for previous drilling on
the mine. I worked here as a
wildlife biologist from about 1990
to 2011.
So just full disclosure.
I'm well familiar with this site.
I've been to the drilling rigs.
I know what that's all about.
How are you looking to access
the area that's going to be
on that north side of the Yellow
River? Is there established roads?
Is there going to new road building?
How is that going to work?
Well, I always say that we're not
building roads because people think
when you're building roads,
you're actually bringing gravel in
and stuff.
So what we're doing with
any of these things, we'll be coming
off the
road right about here.
All we're really doing is taking
out a few trees, as you know, under
the approval of the Forest Service,
so any tree we cut down, we take
that out.
And 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?
This would be done in the summer,
so we would be matting that, yes.
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 it's just the
way.
Yeah
first time when I was,
whichever company it was at the
time.
The water level in the Yellow River,
I know you guys take water from the
Yellow river to the drilling, what
is there in the permit that
maintains a minimum flow
in the yellow river to protect
mussels and whatever other
aquatic 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 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
Remember that.
There could be very little flow
in the river because of how
cold it's been, the thickness of the
ice. My experience,
I 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 of.
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 gonna have
any harm, we can go to other sources
of water. There's a reservoir a
little further downstream,
or, we could come into town and just
go to a local
fire hydrant or contact
fire department and get water that
way, which I've seen done.
So, we will be looking at that.
Rest assured, we
don't want to do anything 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 drilling, I don't think, is
really a concern.
But if there were to be a mine,
what kind of protections are there
going to be for Indian farm?
It's a really significant cultural
resource.
I'm sure that the tribes have talked
to you about it.
Yeah, so what we see here,
and that's that farm is,
is
What we see here is, if
we develop a mine there, it might be
about 100 acres in disturbance
that we would need to mine that.
What we would like to do is...
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 got 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 100
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 it?
Well we're looking at it 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
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 ore 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.
Any other questions?
Some roads that you're talking
about, I know where most of them
roads are out there, because I
walked around and there was an old
log landing road that was up above
there. That was a
very well put in road before.
That was all around.
The one on just the south side of
the river.
It would be on the north side of the
rail. Oh, on the North side.
Yeah, that was actually a pretty
good log landing there.
They had a lot of logs in there.
And then it was grabable.
So one of the things that we'll have
to look at and why you negotiate
a local agreement
is before we even get
to permitting, we're gonna 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 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 of
stuff. So it's a very exhaustive
analysis of the operation.
And we look at various alternatives.
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 gonna
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 gonna be important and
we wanna factor that in.
But we go through those.
Engineering evaluations to
get to a point where we believe we
have a mine 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 project's instructed,
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.