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Jerritt roasters shut down
By ADELLA HARDING - Mining Quarterly Editor
Published: Tuesday, June 2, 2009 12:35 PM CDT
ELKO— Jerritt Canyon’s roaster circuit is silent again at the direction ofthe Nevada Division of Environmental Protection, but no one has beenlaid off and owner Yukon-Nevada Gold Corp. expects to restart thecircuit once new mercury-mission controls are installed.
NDEPissued the directive after Yukon-Nevada subsidiary Queenstake ResourcesUSA notified the state agency the company would miss the May 30deadline for installing the new equipment because ductwork is still onorder.
“We will continue to operate out here, and as soon as wecan get it up and running, we will,” Yukon-Nevada Chief OperatingOfficer Graham Dickson said this morning from the mill 50 miles northof Elko.
NDEP authorized Queenstake back on March 25 to restartthe mill, but the agreement hinged on the company installing the newcontrols by May 30, and Dickson said they had expected to meet thedeadline until the first supplier for the ductwork went out of business.
Queenstakestopped the roaster circuits at 11 p.m. May 30, and NDEP spokeswomanJill Lufrano said the agency had staff on site to witness the shut down.
“They just basically missed the deadline. We will work with them anyway we can,” she said today.
NDEP’schief of the Nevada Bureau of Air Pollution Control, Greg Remer, statedin a letter to Dickson dated May 28 that Queenstake must submit arevised startup and operating plan once the emission controls areinstalled.
Blane Wilson, COO of the contractor that operates themill at Jerritt Canyon, Golden Eagle International, said today he isnow at a full staff of 82 at the mill, and no one has been laid off asa result of the shutdown.
They are continuing to work on gold recovery, mill improvements and fluid management.
Accordingto Yukon-Nevada’s announcement, milling and gold recovery operationscan continue to ensure company cash flow. The roaster circuit can’toperate to process ore, however.
Dickson said one fabricatedfiberglass ductwork unit for the calomel-based mercury control systemshould arrive by mid-June and the other before the end of the month forthe two roasters.
Queenstake restarted the mill in late March,poured its first bar of gold from the restart on April 16 and has beenprocessing gold ore from stockpiles since then. The mill was stillramping up to full production from the roughly 800,000 tons of ore onhand.
NDEP had investigated mercury emissions at Jerritt Canyonfor a year before issuing an order to Queenstake in March of 2008 toinstall new state-of-the-art emission control equipment by year’s end.Queenstake, however, stopped mining and milling in August of last year,laying off 400 people and citing financial difficulties.
Themill stayed shut down while new mercury controls were in the designphase, and Queenstake worked with NDEP to meet environmental complianceissues.
Lufrano said in April that the new system will reducemercury air emissions to an estimated 175 pounds per year from the1,700 pounds reported in 2007.
Dickson said today he is spendingmore time at Jerritt Canyon and at the company’s project in the Yukonnow that he is chief operating officer, and he remains optimisticmining can start again later this year.
“We were looking at equipment yesterday,” he said.
Robert Baldock replaced Dickson as president and CEO.