Construction of the 87-km road from Cominco’s Red Dog mine site in Alaska to the mine’s port site on the Chukchi Sea has started. The road is expected to be open in February.
Once open, equipment can be trucked to the mine site where work will begin immediately on the tailing and fresh water dams. Initial stripping of the rich zinc-lead orebody and the extensive earthwork required at the mill site will also begin.
“When construction is at its peak, there will be more than 300 people working on this project in Alaska alone,” says Cominco Alaska’s vice-president and general manager Ralph Hargrave in Cominco’s in-house publication, Orbit.
“In addition to these people, there are major contracts which have been awarded for the mine and port facilities that are employing people in several countries around the world.”
The entire Red Dog project, destined to be the largest zinc mine in the world, will take about 30 months to complete with first concentrates scheduled to be shipped in 1990. Cominco’s Trail smelter complex is being modified to handle the Red Dog concentrates.
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