It will be commercial mining. The govt call it that way and issued a Mining Permit to cover everything from mining to final reclamation of the land. Small mines permit does not require too much scrutinizing.
The survey that you mentioned was preliminary and was used to help identify opportunities, good areas that could be mined at profit I.e. the ones that were not mined in 1800 because of lack of water and capital and are easy to access and permit. Next the company planned a commercial placer mining op on a piece of land that returned excellent gold and platinum grades. The low hanging fruit offering the best return :)
Let me introduce you to a calculation slightly different than yours. Based on assays and test pits in the proposed pit area mining of a mere 30,000 tonnes they could produce up to 6.5 million dollars in precious metals. Well if your estimation is good I.e. they would mine it in one month and they would spend only $50,000 then the return would be fantastic I.e over $6 mill by spending $0.05 mill!
How about that?
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