No I am not going to put you in contact with my Staff, At least I acknowledge my slip ups, As I said I am certainly pro-mining having been in the Industry for 40 years, 10 of which were on evaluating Placers. What concerns me about this Project is its potential to do substantial harm to the Mining Industries reputation, thru creating an Environmental incident and possibly disaster. From what I have read I believe that this Project is Marginal at best so why take the risk ?
Working on a pipe line, controlling water inflows thru hard rock and cleaning small inflows of mine water to drinking water standards is relatively simple, Memtech were doing it 20 years ago. Mining underwater, without severely polluting the water table (I bet all those houses and church's around the deposit get their drinking water from bores) is only possible at great expense, ground water moves so unless you contain it, any pollution will eventually end up in the Lake ~ containing it will be a very expensive exercise ! not containing it will cause an outcry !!, collecting and cleaning it would create a significant cost ~ $500+/ML or 50c/t, you can do the sums yourself
De-watering even a medium sized Alluvial deposit sitting at or below the water table to recover a relatively low value mineral is border line economic (Assume you recover 200ppm NdPr/t ie ~ $8/metal value as Carbonate $2-3 ? if your lucky. That equates to a gold grade of ~ 1/1000th oz or ~ 1/16gm/m3.... The lowest grade I have ever heard of being successfully mined was twice that and they only needed a cheap gravity circuit, incidentally they did not do any environmental remediation and the site is now a disgrace). And before you say "Basket Price" read my earlier post re By Product.
Incidentally, your comment "
where they're mining 100-200m's below the water table
"; would usually indicate a hard rock underground mine, Mt Gibson pit is most certainly hard rock and as such can not be compared in any way to an Alluvial operation.
Don't forget to tell us how you got on with the Lemon bath,
(20min delay)