Saskatoon Star Phoenix
March 27, 1961. p.14
By Jack Denhoff
Esterhazy - A complex potash mining venture which to date has cost more than $20,000,000 was a major step nearer to production Saturday when Premier T.C. Douglas rode a miner's cage 1,500 feet down into the earth to turn a bolt signifying a mining company's victory in taming a nightmarish, water-laden geological stratum.
It was the last of 17,000 such heavy steel bolts used by workers in International Minerals and Chemical Corporation (Canada) Ltd., in securing a 3,000-ton cast iron mine shaft lining which walls off the 200-foot Blairmore, a capricious geological sand and clay layer which for more than two years thwarted some of the best brains in North America at a cost of millions of dollars.
In some areas coal and oil is found in the Blairmore.
But at Esterhazy, as at Saskatoon, it carries water at extremely high pressure. The Blairmore can absorb water sealing cement by the carload and still pour water forth like a burst dam - said one engineer, "it seems you'd have to pump enough concrete into the Blairmore to make a cement basement for all Saskatchewan before you can stop that water."
Using a method unique in this hemisphere but well-known in Europe, mining engineers finally sealed off the Blairmore with the heavy cast-iron liner and took the shaft to the 1,488-foot level.
To do the job they had to spend a year freezing the Blairmore to minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit-a temperature lower than any achieved before in a North American mine.
This involved sinking 58 freeze pipes, each 250 feet long, in a circle around the shaft and installing a refrigerating unit capable of making ice for three Maple Leaf Gardens.
Meanwhile an $11,500,000 "pilot plant" to refine the potash ore lying 3,150 feet below has been sitting gathering dust and interest charges of more than half a million dollars annually.
Production target had originally been late 1959 or early 1960 now it is 1962.
Shaft sinking started here in August, 1957 and the Blairmore was reached by June, 1958 at the 1,240-foot level. Then diggers were stymied and various methods were tried until the freezing - tubbing techniques were adopted just over a year ago.
But despite the many difficulties and the additional millions of dollars in costs - the cast iron tubbing segments alone cost about $750,000-IMC President Louis M. Ware indicating his company's confidence in the ultimate success of the venture, Saturday announced the company will start - early this summer on a refinery addition which will more than double the 420,000-ton annual capacity of the "pilot plant." The start will be made months before the shaft is completed.
Directing the mining operation are two Canadians, Mervyn Upham, operations manager, with years of experience in Canadian hard - rock mines and Alex Scott, shaft supervisor, a young Saskatchewan native with experience in South African mines.
Now that the shaft has entered the limestone rock formation, which extends down to the salt and potash beds below, Mr. Upham and Mr. Scott are both confident that no further major problems should be encountered. "The worst is behind us," said Mr. Upham.
A Nova Scotian, Mr. Upham has been mining since 1938, when he started in the Malartic gold fields. He built and operated the first uranium mine in the Elliott Lake area, as well as the eighth and second last in that area.
Mr. Scott, born at Lashburn Sask., graduated from the university here in 1949 and has aided in shaft sinking in South Africa. He designed for the company a three - deck "Galoway Stage" of the type used in South Africa, but never before used in Canada, which will speed sinking operations by one third to one half.
