Apr 20 2018
First Mining Gold Corp. (“First Mining” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce the successful completion of the geotechnical drilling program to investigate the lake bed sediments and bedrock along the proposed alignment of the dykes (coffer dam) at its Springpole Gold Project. The preliminary results are encouraging and indicate:
- Thicknesses of soft lake bed sediments are much thinner than anticipated and are absent in some areas. This means that dredging and removal of the lake bed sediments beneath the footprint of the dykes may not be necessary.
- Overburden mainly comprise granular materials with one small area encountering an overconsolidated clay deposit.
- Packer tests undertaken within the underlying bedrock gave inflow rates of less than 1.5 x 10-5 m/s.
Jeff Swinoga, First Mining Gold’s President and CEO, stated: “We are very pleased that the preliminary findings show the bedrock beneath the proposed dykes will provide a competent foundation. We see this as a significant step forward in advancing our Springpole Project since this confirms that the dykes can be constructed in the area that was proposed in Springpole’s preliminary economic assessment published last year. We have also engaged Tetra Tech to complete the next step which is to finalize the design work on the dyke structures”.
The pre-feasibility level geotechnical drilling program has been completed over the 800 metre (approximately) long footprint of the dykes which are required to dewater the north bay of Springpole Lake (Figure 1). Supervised by staff of Tetra Tech Canada Inc. (Tetra Tech), eleven holes were drilled totaling 171.6 metres of rock, 17.5 metres of overburden, and 55.7 metres of water. Water depth over the planned dykes ranged from 1.6 to 11.7 metres, averaging 5 metres deep. Packer testing was undertaken in all boreholes to measure the bedrock hydraulic conductivity, which showed low to very low values generally ranging between 1.5 × 10-5 m/s and 1.6 × 10-7 m/s. Tetra Tech will use this data to design and develop a construction cost estimate for the dykes as part of the prefeasibility level study.
Source: https://www.firstmininggold.com/news/releases/index.php?content_id=331