Emgold’s latest press release, appearing in today’s The Union as an op-ed by David Watkinson, announces their submittal of drafts of the “revised executive summary, introduction, and project description.”

As I reported on April 8th, this appears to be in partial fulfillment of the City of Grass Valley’s April 8th deadline.

The press release also promises that Emgold’s revised project description deals more extensively with air quality problems, deemed “unmitigable” in the first draft Environmental Impact Report.

Watkinson also claims that the revised project description addresses local residents’ concerns about damage to wells:

Residents in the vicinity of the mine have expressed concerns that their domestic wells may be impacted by mine dewatering. The mining corporation has included in the project provision of an Nevada Irrigation District trunk line along East Bennett Road and feeder lines on roads proximate to East Bennett Road, to have an alternative supply of potable water available to hook up to residences should they be impacted.

It will be interesting to find out if Emgold has something specific worked out with NID, including pipeline easements on private property.

According to the press release issued on April 8th by the City of Grass Valley Community Development Department, the City is currently reviewing the “completeness” of the material submitted by IMMC:

The City will be reviewing the completeness of the April 8, 2011 submittal by IMMC. The City will then determine if the proposed project revisions are adequately described and all sections of the application appropriately amended to incorporate these changes. The intent of this review is to verify the completeness of the information. Once the application materials are viewed as complete, the City will request a proposal from a consultant team to update the previously prepared Draft EIR. Prior to preparing a revised Draft EIR, the City would need to execute an updated reimbursement agreement with IMMC to ensure all consultant and EIR processing costs are borne by IMMC. It is the intent of City staff to present an update of the IMMC application and the potential processing steps to the City Council at one of their regular meetings in May 2011.

There’s little more we can say about the new documents until we get a first-hand look at them, which we expect to be able to do soon.

Today’s op-ed by Watkinson is a word-for-word duplicate of Emgold’s most recent press-release, with paragraphs reformatted in The Union‘s usual minimalist eye-pleasing style.

Notice also that this particular op-ed, at over 1400 words in both the online and print editions, exceeds the normal 750-word limit imposed on most guest op-eds.

Curiously also, the commenting function on all Union articles is disabled today. Since the maximum comment period on all articles is two days, we can hope that the comment function is restored before the comment period elapses on this particular op-ed.