The company is also seeking approval to store tailings in open pits that are no longer being used. The company says this would lower the ecological footprint since right now it removes water from tailings and stores the dry tailings at a tailings storage facility and then stores waste rock at a waste rock storage facility. "Storing tailings and waste rock in exhausted pits would reduce freshwater use and re-use spaces instead of impacting new ones," the company proposal says.