On Sept. 22, my wife Kathleen and I had a chance to tour what must be one of the technological wonders of the world: The Twin Creek Mine of the Newmont Mining Corporation.

Here is what we learned that day:

This site is comprised of over 13,000 acres, over 500 employees and is one of the largest gold producing sites in the United States. Several rotating schedules are used with a majority of the operations employees working 12-hours shifts. The site runs 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. The company has 15 tour quality buses that provide transportation for the employees at scheduled shift-change intervals; transportation to the closest city of Winnemucca, Nevada. Winnemucca is approximately an hour commute away. The mine facility is located about 50 miles northeast of Winnemucca in a very remote area of Nevada. The mine is surrounded my several large cattle ranching operations which are common in northern Nevada.

The site is a city in itself. The site uses electricity from the Nevada Energy transmission grid. The company owns its own power plant (The TS Power Plant – a ~200MW coal fired power plant) that is located in a different area of northern Nevada approximately 70 miles from the Twin Creeks site. A majority of the TS Power Plant’s electrical production is consumed by Newmont’s various operations in northern Nevada. Power from the TS Power Plant is transmitted via Nevada Energy’s transmission line infrastructure. The Twin Creeks site is a zero discharge facility (permit by the Nevada’s Division of Environmental Protection) which means that all process-related materials and/or solutions must be contained by secondary liner technology to ensure ‘no’ discharge to the environment. The site does not utilize evaporation facilities for water disposal; any water that leaves the site is of drinking water quality.

The employees themselves are amazing. They have extremely high morale, various levels of education and much professionalism. Dirt and dust are not predominant as dust control is required by an environmental operating permit issued by the State. The site runs three ~30,000 gallon water trucks to ensure dust control and compliance with their operating permit. The site does not have a dress code that would identify the bosses or skilled workforce; however, all employees wear high visibility reflective vests when working in and around mobile equipment.

The mine has a 100% safety record, which is amazing since much of the operation involves potential work-place hazards. These hazards are controlled using a multitude of engineering and administrative controls; Safe Work Performance is foundational to all employees. The workforce participates in many hours of safety-related training efforts. We were constantly drummed with safety procedures – for good reason – before we were shown any specific thing.

There was nothing at Twin Creek that did not massively exceed our expectations.

We arrived at Twin Creek at 11:00 a.m., and departed at 4:15 p.m. We saw many operations during our visit with the exception of the actual gold bars being produced (for obvious security reasons).

It was a totally fascinating day that started before 6:00 a.m. in Carson City and ended following a wonderful dinner at the Martin Hotel in Winnemucca, Nev. Lunch, transportation and first class explanations of the mine were also provided by Newmont Mining Corporation.

Wow . . . is all we can say about Sept. 22!

-Jim Stemler