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Western Potash Corp. announced on Tuesday that it has completed the purchase of a large parcel of surface lands, advancing the development of the plant site facility for its Milestone potash solution mining project in southern Saskatchewan.
The land acquisition program has now successfully secured over 2,550 acres at the Company’s preferred plant site location. Securing the plant site location is an important aspect of the Milestone feasibility process as the environmental and regulatory approval processes and project schedules are dependent on it.
The site is large enough to house all intended plant site facilities for the contemplated life of the mine.
The Company has completed water, soil, vegetation, and wildlife baseline studies over the site as part of its Environmental Approval process. The Company has also completed airborne geophysical surveys, satellite imagery acquisition, and geotechnical drilling as part of this process. Data from these studies was used to complete a detailed constraints assessment as part of the land acquisition process. The site was selected based on the following parameters:
• Proximity to the potash resource
• Motivated and engaging landownership
• Lack of surface streams
• Lack of subsurface aquifers
• Favorable surficial and hydro-geology characteristics
• Low geotechnical risk
• Proximity to road, rail and utility infrastructure
The plant site will support all maintenance, administration, processing, product storage, and load out facilities. The site will further be large enough to accommodate salt storage, brine cooling ponds, and all utility infrastructure. The site is of sufficient size to allow for increased potash production beyond the anticipated mining rate of 2.5 million tonnes of KCl product per year.
Patricio Varas, CEO and President of the Company commented: “Securing the Milestone plant site represents another key achievement in the ongoing development of this world class potash project. We now have ownership of enough surface lands to accommodate an efficient plant design, one capable of future expansion to higher production rates. This purchase brings Western Potash a significant step closer to making Milestone one of the largest, most accessible, greenfield, independently owned potash deposits, being developed in the world today.”
The 100% owned Milestone property is located 30 kilometers southeast of Regina, and southeast of Mosaic’s Belle Plaine Mine, one of the largest producing potash solution mines in the world.
Technical Report Filed on SEDAR
Further to the Company’s news release dated April 26, 2011, the Company confirms that the related NI 43-101 Technical Report titled “Updated Technical Report Concerning Mineral Resource Estimates Subsurface Mineral Lease KLSA 008 Saskatchewan” was filed on SEDAR on June 10, 2011. In addition to covering the increased resource estimate, the Report sets out that the Milestone project now comprises 87,530 acres (including road allowances) of Crown mineral lands by means of Subsurface Mineral Lease KLSA 008, which was granted to the Company on May 18, 2010. This Lease incorporates the lands formerly held by the Company under Permits KP 408 and KP 409. Lease KLSA 008 was granted to the Company by the Saskatchewan Department of Energy and Resources on May 18, 2010. The lease has a term of 21years from the date of issue and is renewable for additional terms of 21 years provided that the Company fully complies with the terms of the Lease.
About Western Potash
Western Potash Corp. is a potash asset development company engaged in the evaluation, exploration and development of properties in Western Canada. The Company intends to define and develop a world-class potash deposit in an ecologically sustainable, economically efficient and socially responsible manner.
The in-house qualified persons for the purposes of NI 43-101 guidelines are J. Patricio Varas, P. Geo and Dean Pekeski, P. Geo, both of whom have reviewed and approved the contents of this news release.
For the complete press release click here.
