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Gold/Mining/Energy : Maxam Gold Corp. OBB:MXAM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Richard Mazzarella who wrote (6091)	10/14/1998 10:55:00 AM
From: Tim Hall	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 11603

Richard, True enough that they won't have drilling and blasting costs. However, from that point on I suspect that the material handling costs will be higher. With standard mining, once the ore is blasted, all of it can be crushed and processed with just one waste product at the end. This can be tailings in a tailings pond or a pile of leached ore which is just left in place and the surface reclaimed. Either way, there is not much handling involved. Where Maxam has selected to screen off everything over 20 mesh or 48 mesh, all of this material will have to be separated and hauled to a dump. In addition, the leached ore will also have to be disposed of. This material I suspect will have to be washed and filtered to remove all of the leachate, and then this material can be remixed with water for traditional tailings disposal or hauled to a dump in the form of a damp filter cake. In view of the fact that Maxam will not need a aquifer protection permit, I assumed that they won't have a tailings pond. After thinking about the present theory that the pm's are contained in the material which is -20 mesh I have another idea. As material in alluvial deposits moves farther from the source, the smaller it gets in size. However, in a desert environment, where normal erosion can come slowly or very quickly as in a 100 year, 500 year, 1000 year or larger flood event, larger chunks of the host rock can move down stream. There can also be tremendous mixing ie desert storms can very localized and wash in material which is barren. Maybe the inability for these companies to get consistent assays is because sometimes the pms are in the minus 20 mesh and other times, the pm's are in larger sizes. Just a thought. Tim