Nevada Sunrise secures water rights in Clayton Valley

22nd March 2016 By: Henry Lazenby - Creamer Media Deputy Editor: North America

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Lithium explorer Nevada Sunrise Gold has secured water rights in Nevada’s Clayton Valley, by executing a definitive purchase agreement with an arms-length vendor.

The pre-existing certified water rights would allow the company to extract 1 770 acres/feet of water use for mining and milling a year.

In December 2015, Nevada Sunrise received a written appraisal from an independent appraiser certified in the state of Nevada. According to the report, the Clayton Valley basin was "overappropriated", with the Albemarle Silver Peak lithium mine being the largest consumer of water in the area.

The report further stated that the Nevada Division of Water Resources would carefully review any new application for water use in the basin, adding that it was uncertain if any new applications would be granted.

In consideration for an option to buy the permit, Nevada Sunrise has agreed to pay the vendors a combination of cash, common shares and common share purchase warrants. Nevada Sunrise had paid to the vendor a total of $125 000 in cash to secure its option to buy the water rights, and would issue the first tranche of 200 000 common shares and 2.25-million common share purchase warrants due to the vendor upon acceptance of the definitive agreement by the TSX-V.

Nevada Sunrise held an expanding portfolio of lithium exploration projects in the Clayton Valley, which hosted known lithium brine deposits, including the Silver Peak lithium mine – North America’s only lithium producer.

The Western US state of Nevada was playing host to entrepreneurs and junior project developers staking land claims in a bid to get in on the hype created by Tesla Motors’ first $5-billion gigafactory under construction in the state.