Acadian gets environmental go-ahead for gold mine

Nova Scotia’s Minister of the Environment has granted the environmental assessment approval Acadian Mining (ADA-T) needs to advance its Blueberry Hill mine.

The mine is about 90 km northeast of Halifax on Acadian’s 100%-owned Tangier gold property. The EA allows Acadian to operate a 400-tonne per day underground operation and processing facility.

The Blueberry Hill mine has more than 5 km of underground development and a modern ramp.

Acadian still requires Industrial Approval — its final permit — before starting operations.

“Given the extensive underground development already in place, the project can be brought into production very quickly,” Will Felderhof, Acadian’s president and chief executive, said in a prepared statement.

“The focus now will be to further boost resources, for which we view the potential as high, given the favourable results to date, the large property size, the large number of gold-bearing veins, the shallow depths of historic mining and the limited drilling undertaken on the property thus far.”

Tangier has indicated resources of 134,000 tonnes grading 9.67 grams gold per tonne for contained gold of 42,000 oz. and 271,000 tonnes grading 12.08 grams gold for contained gold of 105,000 oz. in the inferred category, all of which occur at shallow depths of 230 metres or less.

The bulk of these resources are to the east of the Copper Lake fault and are accessible through the existing underground development, including the existing ramp to a vertical depth of 145 metres and about 5,000 metres of underground development.

Surface drill results, including an interval of 1.4 metres grading 26.57 grams gold at a vertical depth of 40 metres, confirm the continuation of gold mineralization west of the Copper Lake fault, a structure that forms the western limit to the underground development. This area will be a priority target in 2010.

The Tangier gold property is on a tightly folded, domal, anticlinal structure that hosts about 70 gold-bearing quartz veins over a width of roughly 200 metres. The anticline has been traced for about 7.3 km on the property.

The gold-bearing veins are consistent over strike lengths of more than 2.5 km as well as down dip. Earlier exploration efforts focused primarily on three veins in the Blueberry Hill area, the Marker, Whin and Twin Veins, and various veins in the Strawberry hill area, 3.2 km to the east. Minimal exploration was conducted in the intervening 2 km.

Acadian has five advanced gold projects, all of which have National Instrument 43-101 compliant resources.

In addition the company owns the Scotia mine, a zinc-lead mine at Gays River in Nova Scotia, which is on care and maintenance.

It also holds a 29.18% interest in Royal Roads (RRO-V), which is exploring in Newfoundland and Labrador and focusing on the historic Buchans Camp.

At presstime Acadian was trading at 7.5¢ per share. Over the last 52 weeks Acadian has traded in a window of 1.5¢-13¢ per share.

The company has 491.7 million shares outstanding.