The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Bring governmental, environmental expertise to the team North of 60 Mining News – June 12, 2020
Golden Predator is studying the potential of recovering some of the estimated 248,000 oz of gold on the heap leach pad as a way to quickly restart operations at the Brewery Creek Mine.
Golden Predator Mining Corp. June 9 announced that it has added two professionals involved with the previous iteration of the Brewery Creek Mine to help the company restart production at this gold operation about 55 kilometers (35 miles) east of Dawson City Yukon.
"To fast track the past-producing Brewery Creek Mine we have made a concerted effort to assemble a team with strong knowledge of the project," said Golden Predator Mining CEO Janet Lee-Sheriff.
Former Yukon Deputy Minister of Environment Edward Huebert is joining Golden Predator as director of government relations and environmental affairs.
While in Yukon's environment department, Huebert was responsible for the temporary closure and reclamation of the Brewery Creek Mine and implemented innovative solutions at the site in collaboration with industry and the Tr'ondek Hwech'in First Nation.
Following his stint with the Yukon government, Huebert served as senior environmental affairs manager with DeBeers Canada where he oversaw the Snap Lake mine and permitting of the Gahcho Kué diamond mines in Northwest Territories.
Huebert also has served as the executive vice president of the Mining Association of Manitoba; director of marketing with Manitoba Energy and Mines; and recently managed Essential Resource Strategies, a boutique consulting firm.
Joe Harrington, who oversaw the award-winning reclamation and closure of Brewery Creek, will contribute essential environmental skills and project knowledge to Golden Predator as geochemical and environmental technical advisor to the company.
Harrington serves as president of MineWater LLC, which develops strategies for addressing heavy metal contamination at mine sites across the U.S. Formerly he served as the vice president of business and strategic development with Alexco Resource Corp .; as CEO and Founder of Green World Science; and is the patent inventor of the heavy metal immobilization treatment technology.
Prior to his role at Alexco, Harrington was the vice president of the mining and metals business for ARCADIS, an engineering and management consulting company, where he was instrumental in the implementation of innovative solutions for the reclamation of the Brewery Creek Mine from 1999 through 2004. He has continued to provide advice and technical support to the project and Golden Predator in the years that followed.
"Joe Harrington has been extremely successful in numerous reclamation and remediation projects across North America and has specific experience with the Brewery Creek project, a recipient of awards for its successful reclamation programs," said Lee-Sheriff.
Huebert and Harrington join Jim Hesketh and Mike Maslowski in the development and potential operation at Brewery Creek.
"Golden Predator is being very strategic and working aggressively at a time when gold prices are high to bring value to shareholders and benefits to Yukon communities from jobs, business opportunities and resource revenue following a challenging time due to the COVID-19 slowdowns," the Golden Predator CEO added.
Toward this objective, Kappes Cassiday is currently conducting a study to determine the feasibility of reprocessing the run-of-mine material on the heap leach pad to extract additional gold.
Viceroy Resource Corp., the previous Brewery Creek Mine operator, produced 280,000 ounces of gold from 1996 to 2002. This operation used heap leaping – a method of gold recovery that involves stacking ore in a lined facility and using cyanide to separate the gold from the rock – to produce gold mined from seven near-surface deposits on the property.
It is estimated that roughly 248,000 oz of gold remain in about 9.5 million metric tons of material Viceroy stacked on the pad.
The heap leach reprocessing feasibility study will include an updated inventory of the mineralized material remaining on the pad, followed by detailed analysis of all the key parameters involved in reconstructing or adding necessary infrastructure. The added infrastructure is expected to include a crushing plant, an adsorption-desorption-recovery plant to increase gold recovery, and assay lab.
This study will estimate all costs, production levels and economic returns for remediating and reprocessing the heap leach pad as a means of fast-tracking re-development of the site. Golden Predator plans to follow-up the heap leach reprocessing with the processing of oxide ore from already permitted areas of the property, followed by three additional phases of expansion.
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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