Welcome back to your weekly mining news recap. At the end of the week we’ll catch you up on the mining news from CIM Magazine and elsewhere that you may have missed. In this week’s headlines: RNC Minerals finds a gold mother lode in Australia, New Gold has a new CEO, and how cooperation and technology work to make oil sands operations cleaner and more efficient.

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To start the week off, Black & Veatch senior water resource planner Jon M. Dinges discussed regulatory trends in water discharge, and how mining companies can get a head start on updating water management plans in order to comply with new regulations. Dinges also explains the concept of numeric nutrient criteria, and gives an example of how a Florida phosphate mine reduced its groundwater use by 20 million gallons.

McEwen Mining’s Black Fox complex lived up to its namesake on Monday, when an actual fox came to visit the site and take a tour of the mine’s core shed, Mining Magazine reported. Though the fox was likely more of a “cross” fox than a pure black one, one of the employees captured a pretty good photo of it. Check it out if you are interested in some mining-related cuteness.

RNC Minerals made the discovery of a lifetime when it yielded 9,250 ounces of gold in a single blast from its Beta Hunt mine in Western Australia, CBC reported. The high-grade discovery produced two massive gold nuggets which could possibly be the largest ever discovered. The largest, at 95 kilograms, contains about 2,440 ounces of gold and is worth over $4 million. RNC’s share prices have doubled since the announcement, with the company considering their options for the future of the mine.

In a conference call on Tuesday, Tahoe Resources outlined the steps it would be taking in order to cooperate with the Xinca consultation the Guatemalan court ordered them to complete before reopening Escobal mine. Tahoe will have to participate in a four-step consultation process, in addition to health, disaster analysis, and archaeological studies as well. While CEO Jim Voorhees called the court decision “disappointing,” he said that now Escobal has an actual path forward to having its suspension lifted.  

New Gold has a new president and CEO in Renaud Adams, replacing Raymond Threlkeld, who was appointed to the position back in May, the company announced in a press release on Tuesday. As the former president and CEO of Richmont Mines, Adams has over 25 years of experience in the mining industry. Threlkeld has resigned from his seat on New Gold’s board of directors and Adams has been appointed in his place.

Belo Sun’s Volta Grande mine, which has faced several legal setbacks in getting approval for construction, will now have its licences reviewed by a federal environmental agency, a Brazilian court ruled. In April 2017, Volta Grande’s construction licence was suspended for not having undertaken sufficient consultation with local Indigenous peoples, which Belo Sun insists was already completed.

In a push towards decentralization, Barrick Gold announced that it is eliminating the role of Chief Innovation Officer and that it would be parting ways with Michelle Ash, who held the position for two years. In her time as CIO, Ash drove productivity, optimized research and development, and looked into alternative business models. Ash will stay with the company until the end of the year.

A big feature from our August issue is now online. Oil Sands companies have come together as a group to share technology and strategies in order to reduce carbon emissions and make operations more efficient. In addition to progress made by COSIA (Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance), the collaborative effort from the oil patch’s biggest producers, a number smaller technology and engineering firms are making important contributions in the region.