Preparations for the reopening of the Mt. Polley mine continue as Imperial Metals confirm that they are looking at 220 workers being back on the job early next month.
Steve Robertson, Vice President of Corporate Affairs, says the 30 day time period they projected to get things back up and running is not very long considering the scope of work that is in front of them.
“The mill was put to bed-so to say, not fully suspended. So the ball mills, for instance, were not put up on blocks or anything like that. We continued to turn the mills anticipating that we would be getting back going fairly soon.”
“The reconfiguration is going to be required is going to take a little bit of time, as you can appreciate there’s going to have to be some new piping that’s going to be laid.”
Robertson says a lot of the original piping that was in place had been taken apart due to some temporary measures that were required during the shutdown period from the August 4th breach last year.
He says the response of First Nations has always been one of caution.
“So we can understand their hesitance to endorse the reassignment of the permit but at the same time we’re continuing to work very closely with them and they’ve been a very important part of the success that we had with the shutdown and also a big part of the success with the restart.”
“They continue to be good allies and good neighbors.”
Robertson says they have started to recall crews and adds that there is a good workforce out there now working to get things prepared.
Mt. Polley was approved for a partial restart by the provincial government on July 9th.