On our recent vacation to Lake Superior, north of Duluth, I picked up a pamphlet about Northshore Mining Company in Silver Bay, Minnesota.
So that this doesn’t sound like a high school math test story problem, basically, the phamplet said:
5.8 million tons of iron ore is moved by rail 47 miles from mine in Babbitt, to taconite plant in Silver Bay.
*The iron ore is 25% iron
*The taconite pellets are 65% iron after processing
*In it’s heyday, the company railroad hauled 11 million tons of ore from mine to plant
*Since it’s opening in 1956, 219,024,410 million tons of taconite pellets have been shipped out by Great Lakes ships from Silver Bay
By doing some math, I figure that Some 800# out of every ton of ore moved the 47 miles, gets seperated out at the taconite mill and becomes spoil to be disposed of. (Until the late 70’s, it was dumped into Lake Superior. Now, it is hauled 7 miles back up the rail line to a disposal site.)
Industrial Siting, 1950’s hindsight:
Because of the mine and taconite plant being 47 miles apart, I figure they currently haul 109.04 million ton miles of spoil per year- plus backhauling it 7 more miles for disposal.
Any thoughts about why the mining company didn’t build the taconite plant near the mine, and simply haul the taconite pellets the 47 miles to the harbor. The mine, taconite plant, dock facilities, Silver Bay, and Babbitt were all built from scratch starting about 1950.
Based on costs at the time the plant was built, the cost per ton of finished pellets was cheaper with the plant at Silver Bay. The big change was to not being able to dump the tailings into Lake Superior, that pushed their costs much higher. All of the Taconite plants have exhausted their supply of nearby crude ore and are hauling their raw materials much further than at the time of the plants construction. The first two plants built both featured significant rail hauls of their raw material (Reserve Mining, now NorthShore Mining at Silver Bay, and Erie Mining, later LTV, and now closed). United Taconite formerly Eveleth Taconite has CN haul crude ore from the Thunderbird Mine to their processing plant at Forbes, MN which is about 20 miles.
I am sure there are some good history books about the region, the company, and the mining/smelting industry in genera. But a single smelting plant could use more than the ores from one mine, was nearer the available labor and other resources (coal, water, electricity, etc.), rail services in and out…etc. Get a book on the history of the industry or the region and it will tell you a lot more and more precisely
henry- I’m going to try and be delicate here, and choose my words carefully. The truth is, I’m a nice guy. I’m trying to interpret your meaning based on what ,and how you write. If I’m reading it wrong, you better set me straight.
What you are basically telling me, is to get off the forum and go read a book, because there is no one on the forum qualified(?) to give me an answer. I disagree with you, for several reasons.
First, I am an avid reader. I literally read 100+ books a year, on all kinds of subjects. I find that books are very subjective, and tend to be written with the particular author’s point of view front and center. That’s the same way that this message board works. While I’m always interested in reading other poeple’s perspectives and opinions on things, I’ve found I learn a lot more by asking questions of folks smarter than me. ’ Hard to do that with a book.
Second, I feel that any time I’ve asked about something , or offered an opinion about something in your neck of the woods, or something you are more familiar with than me, your take on things was that henry’s opinion was the only right one, as he lives in that area/ is familiar with that facet of railroading, etc… Nor very helpful to me, but easily worth what I’m paying for it.
Lastly, I’ve found the the folks on this forum are indeed very smart about a lot of subjects beyond railroading. Trains is the common tie we have to this forum, but everyone has a different part of them that has a whole different range of interests and knowledge. Getting these folks to share opinions and knowledge is the highlight of using these forums. I’ve always figured that the best use of my brain was to learn about things that I didn’t have to learn about, simply because
Thanks for the reply. I figured that being able to dump tailings into Lake Superior had to be a factor. The pamplet notes that because of “environmental issues”, the company built the dump site 7 miles inland in the late 70’s, then closed down a couple of years later.
Do the tailings have some chemicals added during the taconite process?
Don’t take it personally. I am a big believer in books and libraries. They have a lot of information and are available to everyone. And the information there is more likely to be precise and correct. Yes, memories by old timers are good but often misses important information. I assume that anyone asking a question here is looking for correct and complete information and therefore always point to books and libraries. I’m surprised anyone in this day and age of communication and information, especially those seeking information, would take affront to being guided toward the treasure trove of answers: books and libraries. Sorry. But I will continue my two mantras: look in books and running one train does not a service make.
And I guess, Murphy, if you don’t like my answers, advice, or opinions,then you don’t have to read them.
Asbestos fibers are the primary haz-mat, the concentration isn’t very great in the crude ore, but when you process vast amounts of ore you get significant amounts. No chemicals are added, what winds up in the tailings is from the ore. Besides the Asbestos fibers, logically you get small amounts of heavy metals. The tailings moved to the Milepost 7 disposal basin are wet, but mostly solid finely crushed waste rock.
I am not that familiar with the taconite industry, but I am guessing that the milling process requires a lot of water, and that is one reason for milling on the lakeshore. I have studied the copper mining and milling of Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula, and that copper milling required a lot of water. So the mills were built on the shores of Lake Superior, Portage Lake Canal, and Torch Lake.
But the copper was not near the lakeshores, so the mines were usually separated from the mills by some distance. Railroads hauled the ore to the mills, and backhauled coal to the mines. Water was taken from the lakes for milling and the tailings sand was dumped in the lake. Later, as the milling art progressed, they were able to start reclamation operations to take the tailings out of the lake and extract more copper from them.
I remember when the Silver Bay taconite milling was un
A company called Magnetation is processing waste rock to extract the residual Iron. There is so much waste rock available on dry land that my children’s children will not see the day that the tailings dumped in Lake Superior would be worthwhile to reprocess.