With silver prices approaching $ 20 a troy ounce, a second boom may be in the making for former mining town turned ghost town Shafter, Texas.
Aurcana, a Vancouver B.C. based publicly traded “junior” company in Canada expects to finalize acquisition this week of the Shafter Silver Mine from another Canadian company Silver Standard Resources Inc.
“The company has secured all funding necessary to take the high grade Shafter silver mine acquisition through to production without further (stock) dilution,” Ken Booth, President of Aurcana Corporation said.
Aurcana recently received a twenty-five million dollar line of credit to secure the purchase. They plan to commence Shafter mining operations in 2009. At press time the price of silver was $18.73 an ounce, a jump of 243 per cent since 2001. Booth believes he can break even at eight dollars an ounce.
Jobs will be created and some local Shafter residents are excited about the prospects.
“If they hire me, I’m good with it,” Shafter resident Marion Hughes said.
“We don’t know for sure but under full production we expect eighty to a hundred jobs to open up,” Booth said. “We will employ from the local area.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Presidio City Manager Cindy Clarke said. “That mine has changed hands a lot in the past 16 years. I’d love to see it open and the jobs, but people can’t wait around.”
Not only does Aurcana intend to extract ore from the 1050 foot deep “East” shaft, but they also plan to process it and produce silver dore on site, a 98per cent pure silver product. An ore processing mill, capable of refining 900 tons of ore per day is already at the mine. The dore will then be shipped to another location where the final two per cent of silica and quartz impurities will be removed to make silver bullion. Aurcana plans to produce 3 million troy ounces of bullion per year. According to Booth, this will require processing approximately 325,000 tons of ore.
The sequence for converting ore to silver dore includes a chemical wash and separation step where the ore is agitated in a bath of special liquid. Cyanide is often used in these baths and arsenic can be a by-product. Both chemicals are poisonous and require licensing from TCEQ.
According to Booth most of the permits at the mine are current. Charles Vo at the TCEQ in Austin, advised that current permits transfer to new companies when acquisitions are made. These permits include: Air quality, disposal of hazardous waste, underground injection disposal, waste water systems, petroleum storage and dust control.
According to the Blacksmith Institute, five of the ten most polluted places on the planet are mining sites where heavy metal ore processing takes place. None of the five sites are in the United States.
American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO) operated a lead, zinc and copper smelter in El Paso for approximately one hundred years until it stopped processing ore in 1999. The EPA designated the smelter as a superfund site and clean-up continues today. Results from a 2003 City of El Paso inspection in the adjacent neighborhoods showed high levels of lead and arsenic in children’s blood. Last month, an Indian company led by billionaire Anil Agarwal offered 2.6 billion dollars to the present owners Grupo Meixco, to takeover the site and restart smelting operations. The Sierra Club, Public Citizen and other environmental groups are seeking to block the sale.
The last Shafter silver mine boom ended in 1942 and it hasn’t been commercially mined since. In 1977, a South African company, Gold Fields Mining Company, bought the mine from American Metals who had owned it since 1926. Gold Fields did some testing before selling it to Rio Grande Mining Company in 1994. The present owner as of press time, Silver Standard Resources carried out additional exploration at the mine including a 5100 hundred foot core sample. They improved the elevator system at the 1050 foot “East” shaft and in 2003 they also placed on site the 900 ton a day mill.
Since the late 1800’s approximately 15 mines in the area have operated under names such as Chinati Mine, Perry Mine, Moctezuma Mine and Last Chance Mine and produced a number of minerals including gold, silver, zinc, lead, copper and uranium.
Shafter silver deposits were discovered in 1882 by John Spencer, who convinced William R. Shafter to purchase the land where the discovery was made. Mining expertise was brought in from San Francisco as well as the first laborers who were fresh off the boat from Ireland after working for a short period in the boom gone bust placer region of northern California.
The next set of laborers came from Mexico and they became the back bone for the mine until its closure in 1942. Fitted with hammer-action hand drills and chirimbuelas, a small, hand-made oil holder, with a wick and made from tin, it produced a smoky dim light that miners used to illuminate the 12 x 15 foot “East” shaft. By 1900, the shaft had expanded to 400 foot deep with four working levels.
In 1890 a smelter was brought in and placed in Cibolo Creek just down stream from present day Shafter, to process not only silver but also lead ore. At that time mercury was used to separate the minerals from the ore. Later cyanide was found more effective, and a cyanide plant and new smelter was set up in the creek upstream from Shafter in 1912. The following year hand drills were displaced by air driven percussion drills and by 1930 the “East” shaft had deepened to 700 feet.
According to the Shafter Museum only three under ground deaths were reported at the mine from 1900 to 1942.
Goats however did not always make out so well. Shafter resident Monroe Elms, relayed a story about locals weary of their goats drinking from the creek for fear of death.
“Santiago Lopez,” Elms said, pointing down creek from his house, “told me about his father who lost his herd after they drank out of the creek one sunny day in the 1920’s.”
Elms, who gets his water from the Cibolo Creek, had it tested in the late 1980’s and found good water except for a high concentration of gold and silver.
He contacted the Texas Railroad Commission about the pile of tailings in the Cibolo Creek, leftover from the hay-day of ore processing. They inspected the site in 1990 and shortly thereafter the EPA got involved.
“Rather than litigate, they pressured American Metals to come in and clean-up the mountain of tailings they left in the creek. There were many, many tons, so much it could not be moved, so they covered it up,” Elms said. “They found lead, mercury and cadmium. They took out billions of dollars of silver. It wasn’t too much to ask them to spend three or four million dollars to clean it up.”
Elms served as Presidio County Judge from 1990 to 1994. During his reign he was able to secure funding for modernizing the water and sewage system in Redford, but was unable to convince his neighbors in Shafter.
“The mine didn’t want Shafter to go outside for their water system needs,” Elms said.
Today much of Shafter’s water is supplied by water pumped from the mine.
“We were told not to drink it,” former Shafter resident Lori Keyes said.
“Most of the people in Shafter get their water from the mine,” Elms said. “The water sits in the shaft and it (heavy metal) is bound to leach into the water.”
When asked about who would supply the water for Shafter in the future, Booth said, “We’re not sure, but we’re going to take our time, do things properly and consult with the locals.”
By 1940 the “East” shaft had deepened to 900 feet. Water had begun to seep in and the pumps were having trouble keeping the shaft dry. In 1942, according to the Shafter Museum, “water flooding, labor problems, poor quality ore and low silver prices” were the reason the mine shut down.
A press release from Aurcana stated that the mine was shut down in 1942, “not from lack of ore, but by the War Act.”
Four wars and sixty-six years have passed since the last commercial attempts to extract silver from the limestone hills of Shafter. Ghostly adobe structures, weathered to half walls, dot the desert landscape around the mine. It is not uncommon to see buzzards circle above it in the wind-swept air. Locals talk about the three wild burros that can sometimes be seen at the chain locked entrance to the silver mine, as if they were the keepers, waiting for the new boomers to arrive.
When queried about resumption of silver mining in Shafter, five year resident and Presidio Elementary teacher Kevin Long said, “Ask me in a year. If there is a giant industrial glow across the highway from us going twenty four hours a day, it might not be so great.”
