Flooding seals fate of Potacan mine

Unstoppable flooding has drowned the future of the Potacan potash mine near Sussex, N.B.

Water that is believed to have originated in a vast underground reservoir began to seep into the mine in June. Cement and bitumen were injected into the cavities opened up by the water (potash, like salt, dissolves in water) to act as a seal, but these efforts proved unsuccessful; what was a 5,000-cu.-metre mine cavity has grown 30-fold.

“There is no technical solution to the [flooding] problem,” says Jochen Witt, president of Postash Company of Canada. “It was an act of nature . . . and we have done absolutely everything we could to avert this outcome.” With no way to stop the water flow, the mine’s European owners, Enterprise Minire et Chimique of France and Kali und Salz of Germany, have pulled their financial support, and the mine is being forced to close. Each company owns a half interest in the operation.

Potacan is now putting in place a transition plan for the closure.

The Potacan mine began production in 1985, using room-and-pillar methods to extract potash (potassium chloride, used mostly in fertilizer production). It eventually employed about 500 people.

Before the water began seeping in, the Potacan mine was thought to have more than 25 years of mine life remaining.