Jun 19 2019
Endeavour Silver Corp. has announced that it has obtained the final tailings permit for the Terronera silver-gold mine project situated in Jalisco state, Mexico.
The company has received the ETJ permit, or “Authorization to Change Soil Use on Forest Land,” from the Mexican Ministry of Environment, SEMARNAT. This permit offers Endeavour Silver the ownership of storing tailings from the planned Terronera high-grade, underground, silver-gold mine in a safe, filtered dry stack tailings facility closer to the proposed plant location.
It is considered that filtered dry stack tailings denote the best practice in the mining industry since the tailings are strained to recycle the water back to the plant before accumulating them behind a storage dam. Although dry stack tailings facilities are very expensive to construct and operate when compared to typical wet tailings facilities, they are “greener,” safer, and constitute the future of tailings storage.
Since the Terronera mine project is completely allowed, Endeavour Silver intends to finish a final enhanced prefeasibility study in the third quarter of this year and to organize appropriate funding to construct its next core asset.
After an estimated 18-month construction period, the Terronera mine is anticipated to generate silver equivalents of more than 5 million oz (at a silver:gold ratio of 80:1) over a minimum 12-year mine life, at an all-in sustaining cost per ounce of silver generated in the lowest quartile of industry peers.