Yukon zinc mine closer to production

Yukon Zinc Corp. says its Wolverine mine in southeast Yukon should begin production around October, months after the company's plans were postponed by the death of a worker underground.

The Yukon Workers' Compensation Health and Safety Board ended a stop-work order this week in some parts of the lead-zinc mine, located 200 kilometres south of Ross River.

The stop-work order was imposed after part of an underground tunnel wall collapsed onto Will Fisher on April 25, killing the 25-year-old contract mechanic from British Columbia. Two other workers survived.

The tunnel collapsed in a deep underground part of the mine, and that area has since been left untouched, said Kurt Dieckmann, the safety board's director of occupational health and safety.

Dieckmann said the stop-work order has been lifted for the upper sections of the mine, allowing work to resume in those areas.

"We lifted it on the specific areas of the mine where they had identified additional ground support needed to be done and had the plan for it," Dieckmann told CBC News on Tuesday.

Production ramping up

The safety board's preliminary investigation found that the tunnel had been widened beyond what its supports could hold.

Pamela O'Hara, Yukon Zinc's vice-president of environment and community affairs, said supports are being strengthened in the upper parts of the mine.

With the stop-work order lifted, both underground mining and milling operations should get underway sometime in the next month, O'Hara said.

"Our plan is to ramp up production over probably a six-month period, and we will start that in late-September, early October," she said.

"We have several headings opened up and so we can head towards production in various levels of the mine because we set ourselves up to have that flexibility over the past year."

150 workers needed

Yukon Zinc had originally planned to begin production at the Wolverine mine in June.

O'Hara said the company still has to hire about 150 people, most of whom will work at the mill. A total of 300 people will eventually work at the mine, she added.

While O'Hara said she doesn't know how many of those workers will be Yukoners, she said Yukon Zinc plans to hire locally over the long term.

"That's been our focus, is to hire competent, trained people now so we can start off on a good footing, and then train local people as we move forward," she said.

The safety board's final report on Fisher's death will not be completed until the lower part of the Wolverine mine is stabilized, allowing inspectors to look at the fatal cave-in, Dieckmann said.