Vintage shafts re-opened at Engineer Mine

A mining company operating in northwest B.C. is re-opening parts of a gold mine submerged for almost 90 years.

Operators at the historic Engineer Mine on Tagish Lake said they're making significant progress by exposing one of the gold shafts that has been flooded since the 1930s.

The mine is 32 kilometres west of Atlin, British Columbia.

B.C. Gold Corporation’s vice-president, Darren O’Brien, said it’s spent about 4 million dollars over the past few summers working on the project.

He said after water was recently pumped out of one of the deeper mine shafts, it was found to be perfectly preserved.

"The water is stagnant and so nothing is oxidizing and the wood it's pretty incredible, even though it's coming on 90 years, it looks brand new,” O’Brien said.

Engineer Mine produced thousands of ounces of gold before it shut down around 1930. O'Brien believes the flooded tunnels they’ve exposed have never been mined.

"This is a great bonus for us because the old timers did a lot of the work for us,” he said. “Even though they drifted across, they didn't mine any of it so it's all still in place."

O'Brien said if the mine proves viable he estimates the small mill required to process the ore would employ about 20 to 30 people with about 4 million dollars required to finance construction.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/story/201...toric.html