We could also provide it in hard copy format for you if people would prefer that.
But it will have a lot of technical data.
It will have a lot of 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.
Uh-huh.
On the mind, I worked here as a wildlife biologist from about 1990 to 2011.
Yeah, sure.
We're all familiar with the site that fits into 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 a status road?
Is there any new road building?
How is that going to happen?
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 will be coming off the road right about here.
Yep.
And all we're really doing is taking out a few trees, as you know,
under the approval of the Forest Service on a 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 going to map that the whole way, like the drill river?
Uh-huh.
Yep.
Uh-huh.
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.
The water level in the Yellow River, I know you guys take water from the Yellow River to do the drill rig.
What is there in the permit that maintains a minimum flow in the Yellow River to protect, you know,
mussels and whatever other flight 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 a 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 that there could be very little flow in the river because of how cold it's been, the thickness of the ice.
My experience, 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 kind of...
Not that I know about. 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 going to have any harm, we can go to other sources of water.
There's a reservoir a little further down stream 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 and rest assured we're not...
We don't want to do anything that is going to upset people or cause any type of harm.
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 it's really, I don't think, is really a concern.
But if there were to be a line, 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 farm is...
Is this the diagonal river?
Yeah, and 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 have 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 this?
Well, we're looking at it from...we wouldn't be shipping it out of state, so we would keep that mill operation in state.
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.
It makes it much more controllable.
Do you have any questions?
Some roads that you're talking about, I know most of them are roads that are out there,
and they're at once with a little log landing road that's up above there.
That was very well put in road before.
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 going to be doing engineering studies on different ways and different alternatives to develop this.
It's not required by the state, but it is required by the financial exchanges.
We start out with what's called a preliminary engineering assessment.
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.
It's a very exhaustive analysis of the operation, and we look at various alternatives,
and 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.
It's a very exhaustive study, which looks at all of the capital expenditures,
operating expenditures, labor force, what you're going to pay the labor force,
all of that type of stuff, all the transportation requirements, everything soup to nuts.
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 going to be important,
and we want to factor that in.
But we go through those engineering evaluations to get to a point where we believe
we have a mind 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 constructed, 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.