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<br />-73- <br />several occasions to look at the issue, and have written a letter, I think <br />that came in with some of the other material, and unfortunately it had a <br />number in it that was relating more to water rights than it was to real <br />seepage into the pit, and I'll go into that a little bit by way .of explanation <br />so you'll have some sense of where we were coming from. We were trying to <br />determine, based on all the different possibilities of water available for <br />operating that mine and for augmentation and for keeping the Ritm Seco whole, <br />what would be the worst-case in terms of losses of water from the Rito Seco? <br />Now, we went through a worst-case exercise using the worst gradient, the worst <br />permeability numbers, etc., and the worst possible number we came up with <br />without a slurry wall was 125 gallons a minute. Now the reason that's <br />important to us is because a part of what we are trying to do is if we had to <br />make up water to the Rito Se co, where would the water come from and would it <br />be of sufficient quality to satisfy the demands of the stream. k'.eep the <br />stream whole, not only in terms of quality but in terms of quantiity. For that <br />• reason we went through that worst-case exercise. We have since pone back and <br />revisited those calculations based on a slurry wall and it's implications, and <br />our analysis indicates that the wall won't be down. That relates to what we <br />understand and what we believe as it relates to the Rito Se co ands its <br />implication on the pit. The deep ground water, as I've testifiedi previously, <br />we believe is somewhat of an isolated little aquifer, it may very well have <br />been involved at same point in the geologic past, with the formation of this <br />ore. It's of a distinctly dissimilar quality from not only the water in the <br />Rito Seco, but the water in the rest of the aquifers out in the valley. We <br />believe that it's cut off on the east and the west, we also believe that its <br />recharge area to the north is very, very small and limited. Now, in order to <br />attempt to define this, we have gone in and done testing on the system and in <br />fact we have been able to show by a flow test, that when you do flow this <br />small system, that in fact the head falls off very, very rapidly as does the <br />flow. And this is totally consistent with the water quality information, it's <br />totally consistent with structural geology information that we have assembled <br />over some 600 holes. <br />• With that, do you have any questions? Thank you. <br />