Sasquatch Resources, a Vancouver-based mining company, is considering processing as much as 300,000 tons of waste rock for leftover minerals from the old Blue Grouse mining site, located on the south side of Cowichan Lake, approximately five kilometres northwest of Honeymoon Bay.
Blue Grouse was the site of copper, gold and silver mining activity mostly from around 1900 to 1920, with five claims totalling 531 hectares.
Pete Smith, CEO of Sasquatch Resources, said that during the time the mining took place, there was very little in the way of reclamation done post-mining.
“As a result, a bunch of the waste rock, which is ore extracted but deemed too low grade for further processing, was simply cast aside and left behind,” he said.
“There could be as much as 300,000 tons of waste rock piled in various spots throughout the site. While the discarded waste was not considered to have high enough grades for copper and silver back then, contemporarily, that may not at all be the case.”
Sasquatch carried out a sampling program to test the waste rock to determine if it was economically feasible to process it using modern techniques to extract leftover minerals, and Smith said the results, which were released last November, indicate that there is great promise in the waste rock at Blue Grouse.
He said that the mining that took place at Blue Grouse more than a century ago had cut-off grades in the four to eight per cent range for copper, meaning everything deemed less than that was discarded.
But today, anything in the one-per cent range for copper is considered as highly interesting and possibly economic, depending on a number of factors that include volume and processing methods, but grades in two areas of Blue Grouse averaged at two and four percent copper respectively in the sampling program.
Sasquatch is also working to begin processing large quantities of waste rock on land owned by Mosaic on Mount Sicker, located west of Crofton, that is also left over from mining operations that occurred on the mountain, mainly from 1895 to 1905, for valuable minerals.
Sasquatch has completed studies that indicate the waste rock and tailings associated with the old mining operations on Mount Sicker have decently high grades of remaining gold, silver, copper and zinc.
Smith said the company is looking to begin processing work at the Mount Sicker site before moving onto the waste rock at Blue Grouse, and the Mount Sicker project is still in the permitting stage.
He said the permitting personnel have been very helpful and, like Sasquatch, they're trying to help the company move forward while also trying to ensure all the proper protections that would otherwise apply to any mining operation are in place, even for projects like the ones planned for Mount Sicker and Blue Grouse which are far smaller and reclamation-focused.
“Our plan is to get started at Mount Sicker and then, depending on early results there, look to repeat the process at Blue Grouse,” Smith said. “We feel that once we've demonstrated the process to be environmentally beneficial and economically viable, it'll give everyone, including permitters, community members, affected First Nations and so on, a great deal of additional comfort about our plans at Blue Grouse.”
Smith emphasized that what Sasquatch plans to do at both the Mount Sicker and Blue Grouse sites is essentially reclamation work and the company would not be engaging in any new mining.
“Our plan is to clean up the waste rock, which is itself potentially a hazard given that it's rock sitting at the surface that contains sulphides, and then also address any old physical hazards left behind from past mining activity, like properly closing mine shafts and adits (mining tunnels), and that kind of work.”
