Metal Prices Are Key Element In Mines’ Future

Miners’ identification tags still hang on hooks in the silent headquarters of the Troy Mine.

The smell of grease lingers in the engine shop. The inventory room is full of parts.

“It gives you an eerie feeling to walk around,” said Bruce Clark, on-site manager for the closed mine. “You expect to see a lunch pail on every table.”

More than 300 people worked at the mine before Asarco Inc. closed it in 1993, due to low metals prices.

Many of the workers thought the shutdown would only last about six months. Clark still gets resumes from former workers who want to move back to the area.

“There isn’t a day that goes by when someone doesn’t ask, `When are you going to fire up again?” he said.

The Troy Mine still has about five or six years of ore left. Asarco’s strategy was to shift workers to the Rock Creek Mine as the Troy Mine was winding down.

Sterling officials would follow the same strategy. It will take about two years to build the Rock Creek Mine after it is fully permitted. Transferring workers gives the company the benefit of a trained work force.

Sterling officials said the Troy operation would employ about 100 workers when it reopens. The proposed Rock Creek Mine would be much larger, employing about 330 people over 25 years.

However, the key to both projects is metals prices. Both silver and copper prices would have to rise for the mines to make a profit, said Frank Duval, Sterling’s chairman and chief executive officer.

The two mines could do a lot to revitalize communities in impoverished Western Montana, Clark said.

Clark, 44, was an unemployed mill worker when Asarco hired him to work at the Troy Mine in 1979.

“The best move I ever made was going into mining,” he said.

Clark worked underground a year, quickly rising to foreman. Asarco paid for training to advance his career. He was safety engineer/personnel director when the mine closed.

The mine also brought an influx of professional people to the area’s small towns, he said.

They served on schools boards, fire districts and provided the volunteers that rural communities depend on, he said. “It’s a beautiful example of what a mine can do.”