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The miner said having an Independent Water Monitoring Program (IWMP), in addition to it being part of its environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals, will promote its accountability measures.
It will also "give the community access to independent information through conducting third-party data gathering and reporting" as it relates to Stibnite.
The IWMP is being conducted under of the Stibnite Advisory Council, which is made up of eight local surrounding communities. Perpetua said it was keen to participate because of its long-standing dedication to transparency and its recognition that such a programme can foster and deepen community trust.
"We have always been committed to sharing information about our project with the community," CEO Laurel Sayer said.
"We applaud the Stibnite Advisory Council for launching this initiative to conduct an independent programme at site which will allow community representatives to participate in water monitoring and to verify the conditions facing the abandoned Stibnite Mining District today and into the future."
"After community members expressed concerns over the potential impacts to water quality and a desire to see more data, we decided it was important to launch the Independent Water Monitoring Program," Riggins Stibnite Advisory Council member Bob Crump added. He noted that the council is planning to contract with the University of
The programme in its first year will test water temperature, pH levels, conductivity and elemental presence. All samples will be to a US EPA-certified lab; there are 18 different locations at the site that will have ground and surface water samples taken.
Perpetua Resources, meanwhile, will collect samples from the same locations, at the same time as the Stibnite Advisory Council, which will result in Idahoans seeing two comparative data sets.
The first samples in the programme are set to be collected this year.
The Stibnite gold project, meat the Salmon River in the central region of the state, is one of the highest-grade open-pit gold deposits in the US.
