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Gold fields may reopen in Atlanta
A plan to reopen the gold fields in Atlanta will kick off with a series of "scoping" hearings in mid-March in Elmore County, that will lead eventually to an environmental impact statement which will approve or reject the proposal.
The remote mountain community of Atlanta, today home to about 30 people, was once one of the largest cities in the state during the gold rush heydays of the 1860s, and gold was mined there until well into the 20th century.
But eventually, the easy to access gold petered out, and the mines closed, turning Atlanta into a near ghost town.
In 1985 Atlanta Gold, a wholly owned subsidiary of Twin Mining company, began exploration of the old gold fields and determined that more than a million ounces of gold, and three times that much silver, was still buried in the Atlanta area.
In 1996, Atlanta Gold proposed to reopen the gold fields using a sophisticated new technology that would have used biochemical processes to remove the sulfides in which the gold is found. But that was expensive, and when the bottom fell out of the gold market around that time, the plan was abandoned.
Atlanta Gold is now proposing to use the more traditional cyanide heap leach process to recover the gold, a process that Doug Glaspy, a metallurgical engineer and project manager of the plan for Atlanta Gold, says would be profitable if gold prices are in the $325-$350 per ounce range. Currently, gold is trading at around $400 an ounce.
The U.S. Forest Service is the lead agency in developing the Environmental Impact Statement on the plan, with the Army Corps of Engineers as a cooperating agency.
The EIS process begins with "scoping" hearings to develop issues of concern that will be addressed in the EIS. The first hearing will be held March 11 in Mountain Home from 4-7:30 p.m. at the golf course clubhouse. The second hearing will be held March 13 inAtlanta from noon to 2 p.m. at the Atlanta Christian Chapel. Both meetings will be an "open house" type of hearing. Information on the plan will be presented and written comments will be accepted at that time.
Besides environmental issues, the EIS will look at socio-economic impacts on area communities such as transportation and road access, and other issues raised during the scoping hearings, as well as school services provided for workers' children by the Mountain Home School District. Several years ago, with no students in the area, the Mountain Home School District closed the Atlanta school and gave the property to the Atlanta Historical Society.
A third-party contractor, Petra Tech Maxim Technologies, Inc., mutually agreed upon by Atlanta Gold and the forest service, will provide the technical analysis for the proposal.
If ultimately approved, Glaspy said Atlanta Gold hoped to begin operations in the spring of 2005 and would employ about 120 people, approximately 80 percent hired locally, who would work shifts of seven days on, seven days off at the site.
Glaspy said the decision to use the cyanide leaching system was due to economics, and the fact that it was a "tried and truce" technology that has been used for over 100 years in the industry.
Glaspy said the cyanide leaching system was safe and rapidly breaks down in the presence of sunlight and water. Atlanta Gold would be required to create extensive ponds and monitoring systems to ensure there would be no leakage into area streams or groundwater.
Glaspy said that water was probably the biggest issue facing Atlanta Gold. "We're building it as a zero-discharge facility," he said. "We intend to contain all water," involved in the mining process.
Two open-pit mines would be dug to recover the gold, totalling about 115 acres, which Glaspy described as "a small mine." Working in stages, the fill from the second pit would probably be used to fill the first pit, after work had been completed on the first pit.
Glaspy said each pit would follow the shear zone where the gold is located and would probably be dug to a depth of 400-450 feet, although that figure was tentative pending a final analysis currently underway of where the gold reserves were most likely to be found.
Including crushers, processing plants, ponds, leaching pads and various support buildings, the overall project would use up about 355 acres, Glaspy said, about one-third on private lands and the rest on forest service lands. Much of the land to be used is in the area of some of the old mining sites that had been abandoned.
The processing plant would produce a mixed gold/silver bullion on site that would be then sent elsewhere for final processing.
Glaspy said Atlanta Gold expects to be responsible for improving the road access into Atlanta in order to handle the heavy equipment that will be used. The main access will be down the Middle Fork to the North Fork, crossing over Edna Creek and coming out near Idaho City on Highway 21. He said improving the road to Mountain Home from Atlanta, over James Creek summit, was not viable. "It's literally impassable" and not financially feasible to improve that route to a point where heavy equipment could use it year-round.
Glaspy said a series of temporary buildings would be erected to house workers during each of the seven-day shifts and it was possible some of the workers would choose to live in Atlanta, while others would commute to the site for each shift.
"Atlanta is going to enjoy a resurgence," he said, as it has several times in the past. "There will be a boom time" of about six to eight years while the mining operations go on. After that, Atlanta Gold will have a lesser workforce on site for another two or three years while the company conducts clean-up and site refurbishing operations, "and it will die back down to the sleepy town it is now." Although one pit probably will be filled in, and significant planting of flora will be done, Glaspy said current regulations did not require that the site be completely restored to its original state.
Glaspy also said Atlanta Gold expected to develop a number of improved services in the Atlanta community, from improving the town's roads to its sewer and water systems.
Almost all costs for any infrastructure improvements required to maintain the mining operations would probably be borne by Atlanta Gold, he said.