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has affirmatively established that it has sufficient water for <br />its project. Granting an applicant a permit before the applicant <br />demonstrates its ability to engage in productive mining and <br />reclamation operations is a waste of both natural and <br />administrative resources. <br />Presently, Permit No. M-88-112 authorizes Bat :le <br />Mountain to strip mine and mill millions of tons of rock, but <br />Battle Mountain has no authority to leach or process ore until it <br />obtains adequate water rights and complies with the requirements <br />of the State Engineer and Water Court.2 That may never happen, <br />or it may take two years, as Battle Mountain states. (Battle <br />Mountain at 29.) In the meantime, the price of gold could drop <br />sufficiently for Battle Mountain to decide not to continue its <br />operations. San Luis is Ieft with strip mined hills slrrounding <br />its town and millions of tons of pulverized rock, but no one has <br />received any beneficial product. Even if the land is reclaimed <br />over the next 10 to 20 years, the fact remains that there would <br />have been no "orderly development o~ the state's natural <br />resources," only useless destruction.-- <br />2 Permit No. M-88-112 contains a stipulation which says <br />"[a]ctual leaching of processing of ore may not commence until <br />the operator obtains water rights and any required changes in <br />points of diversion or augmentation plan, etc." (Vol. 3, <br />pp. 579-80.) The stipulation does not prohibit the mining a <br />milling of rock to produce the ore for processing. <br />-9- <br />