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Home / Washington Business - February 2006 / Member Profile: Looking for Gold |
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Member Profile: Looking for Gold |
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Written On: February 2006 |
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Written By: by Ron Dalby |
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The only light that exists 1,200 feet beneath the surface of the earth is that which you bring yourself.
This is darkness so complete, so overwhelming, that few have ever experienced it and no words can really describe it. But gold lurks in that darkness, in tiny specs too small to be seen by the naked eye, even with light, and it’s this invisible gold that provides some of the best-paying jobs in northeastern Washington’s Ferry County.
According to Bob Taylor, vice president and general manager of the Kinross K-2 mine and the mill just outside of Republic, Kinross is "...probably the largest employer in town, one of the few with a full benefits package. And, we pay the best wages in town."
Last July, Taylor said Kinross employed 108 people in Republic. An average salary for a Kinross employee is about $54,000 a year plus benefits worth about 30 to 40 percent of the salary. The average annual wage in Ferry County is only $17,000 a year and benefits such as health care are relatively rare.
Kinross, though, expects a lot from its employees. Most employees in the mine and the mill work 12-hour shifts, four days on and four days off. The miners extract some 900 tons of ore a day from the mine, and the mill workers essentially grind it into dust, then extract the gold from the dust.
But, as of this writing, a lot of Kinross employees were sidelined, waiting out the ponderously slow process of obtaining the necessary permits for another mine.
K-2, the mine that was active last summer and through the fall has played out; all of the economically recoverable gold has been extracted. Now Kinross awaits approval for its planned Buckhorn Project. "Buckhorn is our future," Buckhorn project manager Clyde Gillespie said. "We’re very excited about it."
This is the second go-round at trying to get approval to mine the Buckhorn gold deposit. The first proposal by a previous owner was for an open-pit mine that would literally take the top off of the mountain. It would have involved huge piles of tailings and the construction of an onsite mill. That plan was rejected.
Kinross has instead proposed an underground mine that will have very little surface impact and a site that can be easily brought back to natural conditions after the seven-to-eight-year useful life of the mine. And Kinross already owns a mill a few miles away in Republic.
According to Gillespie, "The biggest possible complaint is ore truck traffic from the new mine to the mill." However, much of the route is the same as the route traveled by the trucks from the K-2 mine.
If all goes well, Kinross hopes to begin work on the new mine on July 21. Gillespie says it will take six months to construct the mine and 10 months to develop it. He figures the first ore will reach the mill in the first quarter of 2007.
Gillespie also notes that the area around the Buckhorn Mine offers huge potential for additional gold discoveries, and, with a little luck, the seven-to-eight-year life of the Buckhorn mine might be extended.
Gillespie also said, "We want to keep our fine, productive workforce intact. It’s very important to get Buckhorn approved."
Environmental Groups Don't Want a Mine
According to a January 9, 2006 article in The Seattle Times, the rising price of gold is spurring demand to open sites like Buckhorn for development. Environmental groups, however, still hope to stop Buckhorn development, just as they stopped the earlier plan to create an open-pit mine at the site. It does not matter to them that Kinross has offered a much more environmentally sound proposal.
"We take environmental management very seriously," Gillespie said. "It's second only to safety."
That care for the environment can be easily seen at the tailings pond just outside the mill. In a process that relies on cyanide to extract the gold, the water discharged from the mill is chemically treated to destroy the cyanide prior to entering the impoundment. Ducks and geese will actually land in the tailings pond behind the mill, but they rarely stay long. The water is pure enough to provide suitable habitat for the waterfowl.
This pure water comes from a mill that can crush 75 tons of ore an hour into dust.
"Our long-term average is about 30,000 tons of ore a month," said Barney Darnton, chief metallurgist.
The ore, which often arrives at the mill as boulders, must be ground down to a fine dust of 50-micron particles — that's 50 millionths of a meter. Needless to say, the mill can be a noisy place as huge steel crushers take the rock through several stages to grind it finer than flour.
Once the ore is ground to dust, it is mixed into a slurry by adding water. Then cyanide is added to remove the gold from the slurry. After 48 to 72 hours in the cyanide solution, the muck is passed over carbon made from coconuts which breaks down the gold-cyanide molecule. Net result is the production of about 400 ounces of gold a day. The residual cyanide is then chemically destroyed.
"Our permit is for 40 parts-per-million cyanide," in the water released to the tailing pond, Darnton said. "We take it down to one."
A normal shift at the mill is four people, according to Darnton. At changeover time, though, for a brief period there may be only two people working. The small crew is due to computerization. Literally a single person sitting at a table in the mill building can control virtually the entire operation of the facility.
Safety
In recent weeks there has been a lot of news about mines, most of it from West Virginia and most of it bad. Kinross takes care not to make such headlines.
"Safety of my people is my primary concern," Taylor said. When interviewed on July 27, Taylor proudly noted that Kinross had gone 486 days without a lost-time accident.
Even visitors to the mine are part of the safety record. Before anyone goes down into the earth there's an extensive briefing on various dos and don'ts as well as instructions on what to do in case of various emergencies. Each visitor is also equipped with a hard hat and an emergency breathing apparatus.
More importantly, each visitor is taught how to use the emergency breathing apparatus.
Lauren Roberts, operations manager at the mine site, said, "We're very proud of our safety program. We're proud of our guys coming to work, then leaving in the same condition they came."
He also speaks highly of Kinross's involvement in the local community. The company sponsors scouting programs, Little League baseball teams and recently ponied up $40,000 to support school activities that were threatened by budget cuts.
The mine is a 2.5 mile tunnel in concentric circles leading 1,200 feet down into the earth. Along the way, branches of the main tunnel lead into areas where gold ore was extracted or is still being extracted. And traffic is fairly heavy in the one-lane tunnel.
Diesel-powered ore haulers carry fill down into the mine to back fill tunnels that are no longer used. Then they move to the side of the current digging and are loaded up gold-bearing ore to haul to the surface, 21 to 22 tons at a time.
As you watch the ore trucks pass and as you observe your surroundings through the beam in your headlamp, you quickly realize that everything in this subterranean world is grey. Bright-yellow Caterpillar® tractors are grey. The once-green port-a-potty is grey. Even the men working down here appear grey. All of this is from the dirt that is part of this environment. The men go can clean up after their shifts, but much of the equipment remains underground for long periods of time.
The Routine
Safety is the order of the day for everyone involved. Every miner and visitor going into the mine must place a tag on a board near the entrance noting his trip underground. That tag remains in place until the miner returns to the surface. High-risk activities such as blasting cannot take place until there are no tags on the underground section of the board.
Every man underground has his safety equipment with him at all times and every man is sober and well-rested before beginning his shift. Kinross management will brook no lapses in its safety program.
Every person who works for this company appreciates the interest shown in his/her well-being. And all of them are here because they want to be here, even while waiting to return to work at the new mine if the state can ever get through the permitting process.
All of these men could go to work tomorrow at mines in other parts of North America — the industry is booming right now because of the high price of metals on the world market.
Roberts said it best: "They live here because they want to live here. This is an awesome place to live if you love outdoor activities.
"And there’s also the sense of community. People pull together here. Your neighbors care about you."
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