Golden Phoenix Hires AMEC for Design of Dry Stack Tails Impoundment at Mineral Ridge Gold Mine
Wednesday December 5, 12:01 am ET
SPARKS, Nev., Dec. 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Golden Phoenix Minerals, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: GPXM - News) has contracted with international engineering firm, AMEC, to design a dry stack tails impoundment to support a planned gold and silver milling operation for its Mineral Ridge mine, currently under study by Golden Phoenix's Technical Services Group (TSG).
AMEC's Earth and Environmental Division, with an office in Reno, Nevada, will design and engineer the removal of current heap material for reprocess through a grinding circuit and eventual restacking on the existing heap leach liner system. The dry stack tails disposal method is expected to play a key role in the use of existing infrastructure and reclamation bonding dollars at the mine, located in Esmeralda County, Nevada. The design work is scheduled for completion in spring of 2008.
Preliminary third party assay results of past auger drilling samples taken at fifty-foot intervals from the 38-acre leach pad indicate that the mineralized material has the potential volume to provide a 2-million ton supplemental and economic feed source for the conventional mill circuit currently in design. Assays are continuing, and once all the sample results are in, further infill drilling of the pad is slated to be performed for resource definition purposes.
AMEC is a worldwide engineering and project management company with numerous successful dry stack tailings projects to their credit.
Wayne Colwell, Manager of the Technical Services Group, stated, "Our preliminary plan is to convert the existing leach pad, which represents a reclamation obligation, into a dry stack storage facility by first reprocessing the mineralized material through a conventional mill, extracting a majority of its contained gold and silver, and returning it to the pad as dry tailings. Further study of the pad is underway to better quantify the gold and silver recovery potential."
Please visit the Golden Phoenix website at golden-phoenix.com
Golden Phoenix Minerals, Inc. is a Nevada-based mining company committed to deliver value to its shareholders by acquiring, developing and mining superior precious and strategic metal deposits in North America using competitive business practices balanced by principles of ethical stewardship. Golden Phoenix owns the Mineral Ridge gold and silver property near Silver Peak, Nevada, the Northern Champion molybdenum mine in Ontario, Canada, and is manager/operator and majority owner of the Ashdown Project LLC gold and molybdenum property held jointly by Golden Phoenix Minerals, Inc. and Win-Eldrich Mines, Ltd. of Toronto, Canada through its US subsidiary, Win-Eldrich Gold, Inc.
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