A Framework for Success: Mining infrastructure investment is costly but crucial.

• Author: White, Rindi
• Position: MINING

Mining has been going on for a long time, from flint pebbles extracted in France and Britain about 10,000 years ago to Egyptian copper mines roughly 5,000 years ago. The Encyclopedia Britannica pegs the oldest mine in the world to be a 40,000-year-old ochre mine in Swaziland.

But no matter what substance is being mined, all mines rely on infrastructure to provide access to the mineral deposit and ways to get it out of the ground.

Today's mines are much more advanced than those early ochre, flint, and copper mines. From roads wide enough to accommodate heavy duty equipment to remote vehicle operations, mines today are operate on the cutting edge of technology.

Workers Vital

A mine might be able to operate without roads or power, but it couldn't operate without people. And although some Alaska mines are close to existing communities, all need to have onsite facilities to accommodate the needs of employees, from bathrooms and break areas to camps serving hundreds of people.

Fort Knox, a gold mine operated by Kinross, employs about 730 people. It's a surface mine, one of very few cold-weather, sub-arctic heap leach mines operating in the world. It's located 26 miles from Fairbanks, so workers can commute to the mine.

Contrast that with Coeur Alaska's Kensington Mine, about 45 miles north-northwest of Juneau on the Lynn Canal, which employs about 400 people year-round but houses about 250 people at a time at the camp throughout the year. Fort Knox utilizes existing infrastructure--namely area roads--to transport its workers to the mine each day, while those who work at the Kensington mine arrive there via a twice-daily boat service.

Mark Kiessling, Kensington Mine's general manager, says Coeur Mining uses the Juneau highway system to bus employees to a leased port facility at Yankee Cove, then a contracted boat transportation service takes workers to the mine. Many of the administrative employees work four days on, three days off, he says, and many commute via the boat daily. But most workers spend their two-week shift at the mine.

The 255-bed camp also offers an onsite medical clinic and gym facility, as well as a helipad and helicopter support. Summer means exploration, and the contracted helicopter service assists with drilling and exploration activities.

Healy, about 100 miles from Fairbanks, is a town whose infrastructure exists almost exclusively because of mining--coal seams visible to those passing through the Healy valley were documented by 1908, but it was another ten years before a railway came through that could transport the coal to market, often to supply the railroad with a reliable source of coal for its steam engines.

Healy River Coal Company opened a mine in...