VRX Silica Limited announced that the company has successfully completed the construction and testing of its production water bore at its Arrowsmith North Silica Sand Project (Arrowsmith North). As part of the application for a 5C Licence to Take Water a test production bore and two monitoring bores, a deep and a shallow, have been drilled and constructed on the Arrowsmith North miscellaneous licence L70/199 by Western Drilling. The bores have been constructed to specifications exceeding the Minimal Construction Requirements for Water Bores in Australia and as specified by the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation.

The test production bore is screened in the confined Yarragadee Formation Unit A aquifer with the screens installed between 320m and 392m depth. The 250mm FRP casing has been cement grouted from 0 - 300m to prevent ingress of water from other parts of the Yarragadee Formation or the superficial aquifer. The deep monitoring bore has a similar construction to the test production bore with the grouting and screening over similar intervals.

The shallow monitoring bore is screened from 18m to 30m in the superficial aquifer. The test production bore was test pumped to determine hydraulic parameters and specific yields for use in the H3 Hydrogeological Assessment computer model. The test pumping was undertaken to AS2368-1990 by Western Irrigation using their mobile test pumping equipment.

Initial multi-rate testing was carried out to determine a constant rate test rate. The highest rate of 32L/s yielded a maximum drawdown of 6.12m.