LuckyLuke, your post has a lot of good detail about noise and...

LuckyLuke,

your post has a lot of good detail about noise and dust, and I don't think those are of particular concren. But your post does not address how Talga hopes to avoid infringing upon natura2000 protections to the Torne river if it scales up 5-fold, 10-fold, or 100-fold from its present size. I think that is what Resource is trying to get at. And it is a fair concern.

The torne river flow rate is around 375m3/s. The current proposal of the vittangi 19.5k anode/yr, source: https://www.smhi.se/polopoly_fs/1.137562!/Hydrologi_80.pdf

if someone has the vittangi environmental permit application saved they can see what kind of water usage 100ktpa ore will take. And from there we can extrapolate what things would look like at 10 million ktpa would require, if we assume the same kind of system is employed. That may or may not be a fair assumption.

My memory of the document, which I read but I did not save (sadly), noted that efforts would be made to clean the water based on heavy metals, turbidity (allowed to settle), pH, and salt/ion concentrations which may become enriched as the non-graphite "waste" material is separated from the graphite at the on-site concentrator. Which would eventually be backfilled into the hole. I also do not recall the chemistry of the ore separation at the concentrator. I also remember being quite impressed that because the pit would be below the water table, a fair amount of water would seep into the pit per day and would have to be continuously pumped out.

The Talga DFS, which is easy to find, states that any and all waste water removed from the site will be treated to exceed environmental standards. By the reasoning of the DFS, any increase in water usage at scale can be offset by water treatment at scale, so as to not unduly burden the Torne river.

So the DFS does not think Resource's concern is daunting/troubling. But the environmental permit application would have more details which may assauge him.