hi plext - the only water i can see in the pictures (which are six months old) is the tailings facility for the leach residue and waste from flotation circuit - are you saying they will recycle this water and re-use?
all i've seen is the following statement from the july 2019 announcement when they first aquired hillgrove -
"Water is sourced locally and there is a reverse osmosis/microfiltration water treatment plant on site enabling treated site water to be discharged."
have a read below from sydney morning herald - the area around armidale is high altitude making hard to drill a bore for water
'Plan C is a problem': a town without ground water nears day zeroBy Harriet AlexanderOctober 23, 2019 — 12.00am
The northern tablelands town of Armidale is looking at the prospect of carting in water on 100 trucks every day if it cannot find ground water before its dam runs dry next year, or unless the drought breaks.The town, population 25,000, sits on top of the Great Dividing Range at an altitude of 980 metres - high above the level at which a bore would normally be drilled - but an ample supply of water from Malpas Dam meant this was never a problem until this drought.
Now the dam has just 400 days worth of water remaining, and mayor Simon Murray is making contingency plans for day zero."We have a plan A and B," Mr Murray said. "Plan A is trying to get people to reduce their water consumption. Plan B is drilling down for more ground water. Plan C is a problem."Towns such as Dubbo, Tamworth and Orange also face severe shortages, but they have alternative sources if their local rivers or dams run dry.
Burrendong Dam, which supplies Dubbo with drinking water, is expected to run dry in May, after which time the town will rely on bore water. Tamworth has recently secured state funding for a new weir in the Peel River, which is expected to stretch out the contents of their biggest dam for another year until June 2021, and a new pipeline that may give an additional 12 months reprieve. Orange has been funded to connect to the Sydney Harbour-sized Wyangala Dam - which at 25 per cent capacity is 20 times bigger than Orange's own dam when full.
Mr Murray said ground water had been discovered during explorations but not enough to supply the shire's towns. To supply the 30,000 residents of Armidale and Guyra with 120 litres of water per person per day would require 100 B-double trucks carting it daily. That was about half their usual rate of use. And it did not cover the requirements of the hospital and local businesses."Trucking water is going to be the only water solution. But where do you truck it from?," Mr Murray said.The New England Highway was populated by towns that barely had enough water to supply their residents.
But the road to the coast, where water was more plentiful, could not handle the heavy transport."I guess for Armidale we haven't had a drought like this for a long, long time and the biggest issue we've had is people believing that the Malpas Dam was going to be an unlimited supply of water. We're trying to get people to realise that we've got this limited amount and it's running out very quickly," Mr Murray said.Dubbo, which will move to stage four water restrictions in November, is investigating further savings including stormwater harvesting, drilling new bores and using treated effluent.
Acting Dubbo mayor Stephen Lawrence said their biggest water users were agriculture and industry, which included a large abattoir and several mines. Residents use 10 to 15 per cent of the water drawn from the dam."In the event of the river running dry we will have a situation where the town relies on groundwater, so there's no prospect of the town running out of water," Mr Lawrence said. "However you may have a situation with the interests of water security in agriculture, industry and towns collide."
Expand
