Bullion River Gold (fka BLRVQ)

[alexindef]

Gold mine looks to hire

REDDING, CA — Newly reorganized and emerging from bankruptcy, a historic gold mine near French Gulch is once again hiring miners.

Now known as Shasta Gold Corp., the firm that operates the old Washington Mine is based in French Gulch, a small Gold Rush town west of Redding.

Fifteen miners already are working the mine and in a year there will likely be 40, said Tim Callaway, president and CEO of the company. That’s a third of the nearly 120 who worked at the mine in 2007, when the company running it was called Bullion River Gold Corp. and based in Reno.

“We are not doing anything bigger,” Callaway said. “We’re actually doing things smaller.”

Callaway, who was Bullion River’s acting chief operating officer in August 2007, said the reorganized company will try to haul 100 tons of ore per day out of the Washington Mine.

Bullion River had explored the mine only for quartz veins, which hold gold, he said. Since the operation never reached full production, Callaway said, he didn’t have an ore-per-day amount with which to compare what it will soon produce.

Bullion River filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January 2009.

Callaway said the company has been completely reorganized and a federal court confirmed Shasta Gold Corp. as a company in February.

First mined in the 1850s, the Washington Mine still has the potential to produce three-quarters of an ounce of gold per ton of ore, Callaway said. Gold is going for $1,115 per ounce. At that price the mine could generate about $85,000 a day.

While the company was in bankruptcy court, work was stopped in the mine. Callaway said nine full-time workers stayed at the mine to work on “care and maintenance,” but no gold was mined. As the company rebuilds its workforce, he said, it will look to rehire workers who were laid off.

But first the company is focused on revising its environmental permits to start mining again, he said.

Chief among those permits is a plan being reviewed by the Regional Water Quality Control Board for a $300,000 water treatment plant that will be built over the next three months, Callaway said.

While the mining was on hold, groundwater filled many shafts in the Washington Mine, said Phil Woodward, senior engineering geologist in the control board’s Redding office.

“When it was closed it got flooded in there,” he said.

As the mine is drained, the treatment plant will pump 300 gallons of water out of the mine per minute, he said. The water will be diverted into French Gulch Creek, which joins with Clear Creek and flows into Whiskeytown Lake.

Once the water is drained the plant will still need to pump about 20 to 30 gallons per minute to clear groundwater seeping into the mine.

The treatment plant will remove arsenic from the water. If the plant weren’t in place, Woodward said, the water would likely seep out of old mine vents and into the creek.

“By pumping that water and treating it, the water quality will actually improve,” Woodward said.

http://www.redding.com/news/2010/apr/07/gold-mine-looks-to-hire/