LONDON (Alliance News) - Aureus Mining Inc Tuesday said it has suspended its plant operations at the New Liberty gold mine in Liberia after problems with a circuit and heavy rainfall caused a "small overflow" from its tailings facility, but said mining operations are continuing as normal.
Aureus now needs to work with authorities to get the operation back up and running, and the company stressed no human settlements have been affected so far.
"The detoxification circuit has not been operating to original design specifications resulting in higher concentrations of weak acid dissociated cyanide in the process effluent. The company had therefore been operating with process water in a closed circuit [with] zero discharge from the tailings storage facility," said Aureus.
"Recent heavy rainfall inadvertently resulted in a small overflow of effluent from the tailings storage facility onto the wetlands area (within the mining lease area). Aureus is conducting remediation work to rectify the issues in the detoxification circuit and to manage future water discharge from the tailings storage facility in order for operations to recommence in the near future," the company added.
Aureus said initial investigations indicate there there has been "no adverse impact" on any human settlement as the discharge was only within the mining lease area, over 5.0 kilometres way from the nearest settlement. Despite that, further investigations are continuing and the operations were suspended on Saturday.
Aureus is now working with the Environmental Protection Agency of Liberia and other authorities to mitigate against any environmental related risks.
Importantly, operations will not restart until authorities have approved the remediation work and rectified the issue.
"During this temporary suspension of processing operations, the company is taking the opportunity to effect a mill reline, undertake other preventative engineering maintenance and repairs (all of which were previously scheduled) as well as modifications to the detox circuit proposed by the expert consultants. Furthermore mining operations are continuing at New Liberty in order to build up ore stockpiles and undertake waste stripping," said Aureus.
By Joshua Warner; joshuawarner@alliancenews.com; @JoshAlliance
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