North of 60 Mining News - The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in First Nation has submitted letters to the Yukon Water Board and the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board in support of the timely renewal of the water and quartz mining licenses needed for mining at Golden Predator Mining Corp.'s Brewery Creek gold mine in the Yukon.

A road-accessible project about 35 miles (55 kilometers) east of Dawson City, Brewery Creek is the home to a mine that produced roughly 280,000 ounces of gold over seven years of mining that began in 1996. This operation used seasonal heap leaching – a method of gold recovery that involves stacking ore in a lined facility and using cyanide to separate the gold from the rock – to recover gold mined from a series of seven open pits spanning the property.

Earlier this year, Golden Predator submitted applications to renew the water use and quartz mining licenses for Brewery Creek, which would otherwise expire at the end of this year.

The Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in First Nation, which has previously indicated its support of Golden Predator's plans to re-establish a mine at Brewery Creek, is backing the company's efforts to refresh the licenses.

A feasibility study currently underway is detailing plans for a phased resumption of mining at Brewery Creek.

As currently envisioned, the initial phase of the renewed operation would involve the reprocessing material on the heap leach pad, which hosts roughly 248,000 oz of unrecovered gold, and newly mined oxide ore from areas of the Brewery Creek property already permitted for mining. A second expansion phase of the operation is expected to include mining gold mineralization identified outside of the area that falls under the permits from Viceroy-era mining.

According to a calculation completed in August, Brewery Creek hosts 22.2 million metric tons of indicated leachable resource averaging 1.11 grams per metric ton (789,000 ounces) gold, plus 16.8 million metric tons of inferred leachable resource at 0.92 g/t (497,000 oz) gold.

A 32-hole drill program completed last fall focused primarily on expanding and upgrading these resources ahead of the feasibility study.

Brewery Creek also hosts 30.6 million metric tons of inferred sulfide resource at 0.84 g/t (828,000 oz) gold, which will be considered for mining in later phases of Brewery Creek operations.

Golden Predator says it will consider further license amendments in the future for any activities not covered by the current permits, which will be determined after the completion of the feasibility study.

Author Bio

Shane Lasley, Publisher

Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.

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