SMI plans to excavate the massive deposits by digging a hole, or open-pit in the language of the mining industry, in an area measuring 2.5 kilometers wide and 3 km long down to a depth of 800 meters, or an area equivalent to the size of 17,000 basketball courts and as deep as a 160-storey building .
The Philippines’ tallest building as of 2012 is the 73-floor Gramercy Residences at Century City in Makati City while Mindanao’s tallest for now is the 20-floor Marco Polo Hotel in Davao City.
The depth of the Tampakan pit will be eight times the height of Davao’s Marco Polo.
The Tampakan prect site, which includes the open-pit area and other support infrastructure like the waste rock storage facility, tailings pond, and fresh water dam, among others, will sit on some 10,000 hectares (ha) of land altogether.
According to the company’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), out of the total project site, 40 percent or 3,750 hectares are rainforest vegetation.
While there is no declared watershed in the Tampakan project site (mining is banned in watersheds), the remaining rainforests are believed to be the source of water for rivers that feed agricultural farms and ponds downstream.
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