The company’s Barns iron ore deposit is situated within the Southern Basins Prescribed Wells Area (SBPWA), just west of Port Lincoln and is subject to a Water Allocation Plan (WAP).
The licence will allow Lincoln to extract up to 435 megalitres a year of groundwater for industrial purposes, at a sustainable rate, to facilitate the proposed iron-ore mine.
Lincoln said that the mining licence is applied to extract groundwater only from the Basement aquifer, and not the upper Bridgewater Formation aquifer.
The company is required to prepare a monitoring plan, obtain a mining lease within four years, and maintain detailed records of extraction.
Lincoln prepared a draft Mining Lease Proposal (MLP) for the first stage mining of the Barns deposit at Gum Flat in 2011 but has been awaiting groundwater licensing before the MLP can be submitted.
The company is planning to mine hematite mineralisation at the Barns deposit and export up to 250,000t per year direct shipping ore (DSO)over a four or five-year mine life.
