Toronto-listed Liberty Gold has significantly derisked the future mining operations of its Black Pine mine, in Idaho, by acquiring the title to two historical water rights, registered to the Black Pine mine well immediately adjacent to the potential site of a future heap leach pad.

The registered title to these water rights total one-million cubic metres a year.

Liberty has now secured, through a combination of purchase and long-term lease, an aggregate of four-million cubic metres a year of process water supply, sufficient for any future large-scale mining operation envisioned at Black Pine.

The company states that this final piece in its early-stage water acquisition strategy materially derisks the Black Pine project from a development perspective and also provides sufficient upside capacity in the event the deposit and current target areas continue to grow in scale.

Liberty has also secured access to two other wells in the basin close to potential mining and processing operations, allowing it to manage the aquifer for a long-term, sustainable water supply.

At mine closure, leased water rights will be returned to the owners, with the Black Pine mine well water rights available for future lease or sale to other potential users.

“In this part of the world, I don’t think it is possible to overemphasise the importance of securing water rights pursuant to the future permitting and operation of a mine. The team has worked diligently over the last two years to acquire water rights, secure land and mineral rights and advance power agreements, which have significantly derisked Black Pine’s future operations,” said president and CEO Jason Attew.

In other derisking activities, the company has received a positive initial system impact study from Idaho Power Distribution Company on the supply of up to 10 MW of electrical power along a 25-kV distribution line provided by Raft River Rural Electric Co-op that terminates at the Black Pine mine gate. Further studies are on-going to refine transmission bottlenecks, system design constraints and cost estimates.

In parallel with the water rights acquisition, the company has completed a property-scale ground gravity survey focused over the western margin of the basin along the eastern edge of the Black Pine deposit. The survey pin-pointed the location of basin-bounding faults that likely control sub-surface water storage and flow. The gravity survey also identified uplifted blocks of potentially mineralised basement rocks as a future target of exploration drilling. These data will support future hydrologic modelling of the aquifer and will also allow it to refine exploration and condemnation drilling in the area. Drilling has commenced to test the geophysical interpretations and explore for gold beyond the eastern margin of the drill-defined Black Pine gold system.

To facilitate the next stage of exploration activities, the company has submitted an application to the United States Forest Service (USFS) for a modification to its existing USFS plan of operations. This proposal would add peripheral drill sites to and expand the existing permit area, allowing the company to test surrounding high-priority step-out and reconnaissance targets.

Black Pine is located in the northern Great basin, immediately adjacent to the Utah/Idaho border. It is a Carlin-style gold system, similar in many ways to the prolific deposits located along Nevada’s Carlin trend. Like Nevada Gold Mines’ Long Canyon deposit, Black Pine represents a growing number of Carlin-style gold systems located off the main Carlin and Cortez trends in underexplored parts of the Great basin.

The historic Black Pine mine operated from 1992 to 1997, during a period of historically low gold prices, with 435 000 oz of gold produced from five composite, shallow pits, with an average head grade of 0.63 g/t.

A mineral resource estimate containing an indicated mineral resource of 1.72-million ounces of gold at an average grade of 0.51 g/t gold and totalling 105.08-million tonnes; and an inferred mineral resource of 370 000 oz of gold at an average grade of 0.37 g/t and totalling 31.21-million tonnes was released in July last year.