The mining operations would use conventional open pit mining methods and equipment. The proposed Pebble mine would be a conventional drill, blast, truck, and shovel operation with an average mining rate of 70 M tons per year and an overall strip ratio of 0.12 tons of waste per ton of mineralized material.
The open pit would be developed in stages, with each stage expanding the area and deepening the previous stage. The final dimensions of the open pit would be 6,800 ft long and 5,600 ft wide, with depths to 1,950 ft.
Mine Plan
Mining would occur in two phases – preproduction and production.
The mine operation would commence during the last year of the preproduction phase and extend for 20 years during the production phase.
The preproduction phase would consist of dewatering the pit area and mining of non-economic materials overlying the mineralized material from the initial stage of the open pit. Dewatering would begin one year before the start of preproduction mining. 33 million tons of material would be mined during this phase.
The production phase encompasses the period during which economic-grade mineralized material would be fed to the process plant to produce concentrates for shipment and sale. The production phase is planned to last for 20 years. Mineralized material would be mined and be fed through the process plant at a rate of 180,000 tons/day. The open pit would be mined in a sequence of increasingly larg ........