The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
With a collective sense of foreboding, workers at Snow Lake's New Britannia Mine were called in for one-on-one meetings yesterday morning. Once there, supervisors relayed the news that everyone in the community had been expecting for the past week. Employees were told that the mine would close effective immediately and many of them were to be laid off that morning. "The total number of permanent employees affected is 94 Ð approximately half will be laid off immediately, with the remainder over the next two to three months," said New Britannia's General Manager Mike Kelly. Kelly says that the people who remain after yesterday will begin decommissioning the underground portion of the mine and that this will take approximately two months to complete. New Britannia was saved from closure in August of 2004 by evidence of a new mineralized area over and above known reserves. However, exploration drilling of that area failed to turn up the ore that it was expected to. It has been noted that that the drill program proved up only a fifth of the total ounces (of gold) needed to make the operation viable for Kinross, the mine's half owner and operator. Although this is devastating to the mine's employees and another blow to the already reeling community of Snow Lake, all is not completely negative. The General Manager says that the mine's operator and their 50 per cent partner, High River Gold, will evaluate the exploration potential of their area property holdings over the next few months in order to determine whether there are any significant targets that warrant further drilling. "The mill will remain intact until this exploration review is completed," said Kelly. "Approximately three employees will be retained indefinitely to oversee the reclamation activities, that would begin this summer, if the exploration review fails to generate targets. The reclamation process involves removal of the surface buildings and rehabilitation of the tailings impoundment," he added.
