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Sudbury Basin

Rodriguez would renew fight for resource revenues – by Ben Leeson (Sudbury Star – August 7, 2014)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

Some may call it an old idea. John Rodriguez calls it unfinished business.

The former Greater Sudbury mayor, who’s running again in the municipal election in October, said he’ll take up the fight once more to tackle the municipality’s $700-million infrastructure deficit by seeking “a fair share” of resource revenues.

Rodriguez made the announcement in front of the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines in Sudbury on Wednesday.

“It’s a question of justice, of fairness,” Rodriguez said. While the province receives royalties from the ores mined in Greater Sudbury – to the tune of $50 million in 2007, based on figures supplied by Rodriguez – the city does not.

Greater Sudbury does get 7.5 cents per tonne for gravel under the Aggregate Resources Act, while the province gets 13 cents.

“But for ores, we don’t get a penny,” Rodriguez said. “We have these major roads in the city – Lasalle Boulevard, Falconbridge Road, Cote Boulevard, (Municipal) Road 15, (Highway) 69 North — that are used as major routes for transporting ores from the mines to the smelters and refineries, yet we bear the cost of repairing these roads. You can set your clock by it, or your calendar. Every four or five years, we have to resurface the roads, but we don’t receive any royalties to help us offset the cost of repairing these roads.

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Fifty years on, Big Nickel shines brightly -by Ryan Byrne (Sudbury Star – July 23, 2014)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

Arguably Sudbury’s most iconic image, the Big Nickel, celebrated its 50th birthday Tuesday, drawing hundreds of people to the monument to welcome in its golden anniversary.

The event kicked off at noon with a full day of live music, activities for all ages, and celebrations of what it means to be a Sudburian.

At 1 p.m. Mayor Marianne Matichuk decreed July 22nd to henceforth be Big Nickel Day. People young and old celebrated with face painting, gold panning, live music from local artists including Chicks with Picks and Larry Berrio and more, with the event wrapping up with a fireworks display late last night.

The Blue Saints Drum and Bugle Corps performed at the start of the event, in honour of their group, which performed at the unveiling of the nickel 50 years ago.

“Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Big Nickel was really important to us, it’s a big milestone and we’re the keepers of this iconic landmark in Sudbury,” said Dynamic Earth senior manager Julie Moskalyk. “We’re pretty proud to be able to celebrate the Big Nickel like this with the entire community.”

“Fifty years ago, the Sudbury region was a pretty black, barren rock area so the Big Nickel was one of the first ways that Sudbury started to draw tourists,” Moskalyk said. “Today it’s one of the top 10 roadside attractions and it’s a part of a significant tourism draw to the Greater Sudbury region.”

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Sudbury Basin largely unexplored: geologist – by Jonathan Migneault (Sudbury Northern Life – July 16, 2014)

http://www.northernlife.ca/

But Sudbury’s mining outlook positive with new projects on horizon

Despite occupying one of the most mineral-rich areas of the world, large swaths of the Sudbury Basin have remained unexplored.

Dan Farrow, the Sudbury District geologist with the Ontario Geological Survey, said Vale and Glencore hold a large number of patented mineral claims, for tracts of land in the Sudbury Basin only they can explore.

Because both companies have a number of productive mines in the region, they haven’t yet bothered to explore many of those regions. The patented claims – which lease mineral rights to the companies in question – are in an area geologists refer to as the eruptive.

Researchers estimate a meteor made impact more than 2 billion years ago with what is now the Sudbury Basin. The impact left a crater 200 kilometres in diameter, and brought molten magma beneath the Earth’s crust to surface.

The prevailing theory, said Farrow, is that the magma was rich in minerals, such as nickel and copper. When it hardened, it formed the mineral deposits that have defined the Sudbury Basin.

Sudbury’s mining giants Inco and Falconbridge – and later Vale and Glencore, respectively – jumped on rich contact deposits of solid ore. “That’s what Inco and Falconbridge mined for years because it was so easy,” Farrow said.

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Sudbury icon turning 50 – by John Lappa (Sudbury Star – June 27, 2014)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

One man’s vision and tenacity to create an iconic landmark was revealed at a book launch at Dynamic Earth in Sudbury on Thursday.

Ted Szilva and his son, Jim, launched their book, The Big Nickel: The Untold Story, at the same location where the Big Nickel was erected and eventually shown to the public 50 years ago on July 22, 1964.

Ted Szilva’s dream to create the Big Nickel attraction was opposed by a number of people and groups, including the old City of Sudbury. “It was a constant fight with the city at the time,” Szilva recalled. “The bureaucrats were against it 100%.”

Then Sudbury Mayor Joe Fabbro, The Sudbury Star and the television station “backed me, so I overcame those obstacles day by day.” Szilva said he overcame his detractors because of his spirituality.

“I consider myself a spiritual man and I prayed on every obstacle that came about. I prayed on it and everything worked out,” Szilva said. Szilva said he came up with the idea of the Big Nickel as part of a centennial project for the city. His idea was rejected, but he continued on his own.

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New technologies enable miners to go deeper in northern Ontario – by Angela Harmantas (GBR Reports – May 22, 2014)

http://gbreports.com/industry.php?i=2

Overcoming the challenges associated with ultra-deep mining in northern Ontario.

TORONOTO, CANADA – Ontario is known for its long history in hard rock, underground metal extraction. Home to world-class gold and base metal deposits located deep underneath the earth’s surface, decades of mining means that those metals that are easily reached are now gone. Rather than shuttering their mines, companies in northern Ontario are working at depths of between 2 km and 3 km underground to extract high-grade material from previously inaccessible deposits.

Deep mining presents huge technical challenges. Heavy equipment must be modified to fit tight, confined spaces. Sinking a 2,500 m shaft requires stronger materials and vigilant safety protocols. Water management is critical, as is ventilation. Working conditions at nearly 3,000 m are hot, wet and cramped.

Cementation Canada, based in North Bay, Ontario, dealt with one of the world’s deepest mines at GlencoreXstrata’s Kidd project in Timmins. The Kidd copper-zinc mine is the deepest base metals mine in the world, and the company was tasked to design its No. 4 shaft. “It was a winze where the collar started at 4,700 ft (1,433 m) below surface,” explained Roy Slack, president of Cementation Canada. “Instead of constructing it incrementally, we built both simultaneously, which took a year off the project schedule.” By the time it was finished, the shaft bottom was 3,014 m below surface.

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Rising nickel prices good for Sudbury – by Ben Leeson (Sudbury Star – May 14, 2014)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

World events including an export ban on nickel ore in Indonesia and uncertainty over the political situation in eastern Europe have helped drive up nickel prices, analysts say. Nickel high a two-year high this week, peaking at more than $9.50 per pound on Tuesday.

That’s more than $2 higher than two months ago and about $3.50 higher than six months ago. Terry Ortslan, nickel analyst at TSO and Associates, based in Montreal, said the primary cause of the increase has been changes to mining laws in Indonesia, which previously supplied China with much of its nickel ore to be processed into pig iron, for use in stainless steel.

“China produces more nickel than Canada and (the former Soviet Union) combined,” Ortslan said. The Chinese have relied on deposits in Indonesia, as well as New Caledonia and the Philippines, before the Indonesians announced a ban on nickel ore exports, in an effort to extract more value from its mineral resources, in 2009.

That ban went into effect in mid-January and though there are presidential elections in Indonesia this summer, it’s not expected the next government will change course.

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What Sudbury can teach China about air pollution – by Kate Allen (Toronto Star – May 10, 2014)

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

Air pollution was once so bad in Sudbury it literally blackened the earth. Now countries such as China can turn to cleaned-up Canadian city for hope. In so many stock images of Beijing, someone is wearing a face mask. Air pollution has become a feature of the urban Chinese landscape.

There was another city where debilitating air pollution once seemed permanent. In this other city in the 1960s, housewives reportedly planted their tomatoes in wagons: when a plume of bad air descended, the tomatoes could be wheeled out of the toxic cloud.

As for sulphur, “you could taste it when you were outdoors,” says Bill Keller. Keller is the director of the Climate Change and Multiple Stressor Aquatic Research program at Laurentian University, and a resident of Sudbury for the past 40 years.

In Sudbury, he remembers, air pollution was so bad it literally blackened the earth: acid rain, along with mining operations, stripped the land of vegetation, leaving 100,000 hectares of barren or semi-barren moonscape.

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Rodriguez ‘back to finish the job’ (Mine revenue sharing with governments) – by Harold Carmichael (Sudbury Star – May 10, 2014)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

The “bus driver” wants to get back behind the wheel of the city council bus to finish the job he started in 2006. John Rodriguez, a long-time Nickel Belt New Democrat MP and retired educator who lost his re-election bid in 2010, announced Friday he has entered the mayoral race.

“I always felt I had to run again to complete the job I started,” Rodriguez told reporters at a press conference at Bertolo’s on Durham Street. “I am determined to finish the job I started.

“We haven’t gotten resource revenue sharing. We haven’t made the improvements to our infrastructure …We need to increase our revenue streams. We can’t keep going to the homeowner with 2.9% (property tax) increases.”

Rodriguez, who became known as the bus driver during his term a mayor, promised to:

– restore the province’s Ombudsman (Andre Marin) as the city’s secret meetings investigator (he would introduce a notice of motion at the first council meeting and then have it debated and voted on it in the second meeting);

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Updated: Lockerby miners being recalled – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – May 9, 2014)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

First Nickel Inc. was to begin a staged recall of its workforce Thursday after the Ministry of Labour lifted the suspension of its underground operations in all areas of Lockerby Mine, except the area where two men were killed early Tuesday.

Drillers Norm Bisaillon, 49, and Marc Methe, 34, employees of Taurus Drilling Services, were killed by a fall of material, believed to have been preceded by seismic activity.

The area where the men were killed from 3 to 3:30 a.m., at the 6,500-foot level, remains under restricted access while the ministry investigates. The ministry is being assisted in that investigation by the company and by Mine Mill Local 598/Unifor, which represents production and maintenance workers at Lockerby Mine, although Methe and Bisaillon did not belong to the union.

Before First Nickel began recalling its 120 production and maintenance workers, employees were reintegrated into the worksite through a series of sessions designed to provide a safety reorientation. The company said the reorientation would reconfirm First Nickel’s commitment to providing a safe working environment for employees and contractors.

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Mine committee presses on, mindful of Sudbury deaths – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – May 9, 2014)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

The deaths of two more men in a Sudbury-area mine can’t halt the work of those involved in Ontario’s Mining Health, Safety and Prevention Review, says its chair.

What it can and will do is strengthen the resolve of those conducting it to continue and produce what George Gritziotis calls “deliverables” so the review can have an impact on the mining industry as soon as possible.

Gritziotis, who is Ontario’s chief prevention officer, was saddened, as so many Sudburians were this week, by news that two men were killed at First Nickel’s Lockerby Mine.

Marc Methe, 34, and Norm Bisaillon, 49, died early Monday morning after being struck by a fall of material, preceded by a seismic event, believed to have been a factor in the accident.

The men were experienced drillers with Taurus Drilling Services. Tragedies such as this one, and the death exactly one month earlier of millwright Paul Rochette, 36, and critical injury of a 28-year-old millwright at Vale’s Copper Cliff Smelter Complex, hit the community hard, said Gritziotis.

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Mourn for those dying to live [Sudbury mining deaths] – by Dave Dale (North Bay Nugget – May 7, 2014)

http://www.nugget.ca/

Two more miners died in the Sudbury area this week, raising the death toll to six in the past three years. The latest incident happened at First Nickel’s Lockerby mine Tuesday.

Norm Bissaillon, 49, and Marc Methe, 34, contract drillers with Taurus Drilling Services, were killed in a fall of material, preceded by seismic activity, which is believed to have been a factor in the accident.

Nipissing is a close Nickel Belt neighbour and many North Bay and area residents are linked in one way or another to families dependent on their children or parents toiling underground there and north of here.

Whether you knew them or not, it’s important to pause and reflect on how people are dying to make a living. With so many other career opportunities evaporating in this province, it might be your own child, parent or cousin next.

It was less than two weeks ago on April 28 that the National Day of Mourning paid tribute to all those who lost their lives or were injured on the job.

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Ministry issues orders related to Lockerby mining deaths [Sudbury] – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – May 8, 2014)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

The Ministry of Labour has issued one order and one requirement to First Nickel Inc., in its investigation into the deaths Tuesday of two drillers at Lockerby Mine.

Marc Methe, 34, and Norm Bisaillon, 49, were killed by a fall of material, that was preceded by seismic activity believed to have been a factor in the accident. The men both worked for Taurus Drilling Services.

The ministry, which is leading the investigation into the men’s deaths, has issued a requirement for documentation including training records, shift lineup, level plans, shifter log books, seismicity records and ground control inspection reports. The compliance date for those materials is Friday.

The ministry has also ordered that the accident scene remain barricaded until released by an inspector. The orders are a normal part of a ministry investigation into a mining fatality. Meanwhile, United Steelworkers has also issued a statement about the deaths of the two contractors, who were not members of a union.

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PoV: Words no longer suffice for [Sudbury mining] tragedy – by Brian MacLeod (Sudbury Star – May 7, 2014)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

We are blessed as a community to live in a mining town, with good jobs and a good lifestyle. But it is a hard truth that we must also live with tragedy. We are horrified when it happens in our mines, but it is equally tragic that we are not shocked.

We have lived with the dangers present in underground’s unforgiving environment for as long as our community has existed.

And so now we mourn two more. Marc Methe, 34, and Norm Bissaillon, 49, died at First Nickel’s Lockerby Mine Tuesday morning after a fall of ground. Methe is said to have become an uncle recently, and devoted to his trade. Bissaillon, an underground miner with two decades of experience, was dedicated to his family.

They are the fifth and sixth employees of mining companies in Sudbury to die on the job in the last three years. And so again, we hear words of sympathy and condolence from industry officials and politicians. They are words we must find a way to stop the need for saying.

We said them for millwright Paul Rochette, 36, who died April 6 when a piece of equipment malfunctioned at the casting and crushing plant in Vale’s smelter. Another miner was badly injured in the incident.

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Sadness greets Sudbury Lockerby Mine deaths – by Star Staff (Sudbury Star – May 7, 2014)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

It’s the responsibility of all Ontarians to work together to stop senseless tragedies from occurring in the province’s mines, says the chair of the Mining Health, Safety and Prevention Review.

George Gritziotis, Chief Prevention Officer for the Province of Ontario, said he was shocked and saddened Tuesday to learn of the deaths of two men early Tuesday at First Nickel’s Lockerby Mine.

Norm Bissaillon, 49, and Marc Methe, 34, contract drillers with Taurus Drilling Services, were killed in a fall of material, preceded by seismic activity, which is believed to have been a factor in the accident.

Gritziotis released a statement Tuesday saying his thoughts and prayers were with the men’s families and colleagues, and with the people of Sudbury.

“These tragedies are devastating to the community. I know the people of Sudbury, miners everywhere and all Ontarians are shaken by these tragedies,” he said.

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Ground fall caused death of 2 contractors [Sudbury Lockerby mine] – by Star staff (Sudbury Star – May 6, 2014)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

The Greater Sudbury Police Service’s forensic unit is onsite at First Nickel Inc.’s Lockerby Mine following the death of two contractors due to a ground collapse early this morning. The Ontario Ministry of Labour and First Nickel have confirmed there was a double fatality at the site.

According to an FNI release, the workers were drillers from Taurus Drilling Service and “a fall of ground, preceded by (seismic) activity is believed to have been a factor in the accident.”

All underground activities, except emergency requirements, were suspended following the incident, which is being investigated by FNI officials and the ministry.

“We are deeply saddened by this tragic accident that resulted in the deaths of two men and we extend our heartfelt condolences to their families, friends and colleagues,” Thomas M. Boehlert, FNI’s President and CEO, said in the release. “Safety is the top priority for the Company and we will ensure this accident is fully investigated.”  The company was planning a press conference for this afternoon.

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