Power Plant: Newmont site a beehive of activity

Elko Daily Free Press ^

[rellimpank]

By ADELLA HARDING - Staff Writer Tuesday, February 21, 2006 2:47 PM PST

Two large cranes reach into the sky at Newmont Mining Corp.’s TS Power Plant construction site near Dunphy Monday afternoon. The blue crane on the right came from Newmont’s Phoenix Project. DUNPHY — Newmont Mining Corp.’s TS Power Plant site northeast of Dunphy is a busy place, with foundation work under way for the boiler building and giant cranes towering over the workers

[rellimpank]

--positive news on the "energy" front--

[Michael.SF.]

This is a bi-product of allowing mining operations to continue to operate in an economical cost effective manner, while still respecting the environment**.

Two of the operations mentioned, Barrick Goldstrike and Newmont's Carlin operation, which share a common pit, will probably begin to wind down in 10-15 years, or so. This power plant will continue to operate long after that.

** The "ground water" the article refers to, is pumped to a water treatment facility built at Barrick's expense, to further clean potable water before discharging it to the river.

[JimSEA]

I worked for Carlin Gold/Newmont Gold some 20 years ago prior to and during their first expansion. They have always been a good neighbor to Carlin and Elko.

[Michael.SF.]

Barrack uses my equipment for dewatering and I also worked for a company that makes equipment used at the autoclaves at barrack, Twin Creeks and Battle Mountain. You may already know this but, if not you (and others) will find it amusing:

The water treatment plant that was built in 2000 (or so?) was built for to serve to functions:

1) remove a metallic compound (I forget which one) not because it was deemed harmful to humans (the groundwater is potable), but because it could potentially be harmful to the fish in the Elko River. Yes, the water was fit for humans to drink, but had to be better, for the fish. and

2) This is the killer, They were required to introduce the groundwater back into the Elko river at a temperature which had to be within a few degrees of the existing temperature. These means, warming it up or cooling it down depending on the time of year. All of this was so as not to "damage" the fish.

The project cost $16,000,000, as I recall.

[JimSEA]

Good grief! I have been out of Nevada for a number of years and retired for the past five, so I hadn't kept up on the regulatory environment. The last absurdity I heard about was the denial of mining permits for Magma inside of the old Ruth Pit in Ely.