Mine’s Reopening May Bring Region a Short-Term Revival

Lynn Kinney spent 42 years unearthing zinc and lead outside this town in Washington’s remote northeastern corner before the mine’s owners shut the operation down during a 1977 labor dispute.

Kinney retired a few months later, expecting another company to move in to tap the ore left after nearly a century of mining beneath the Selkirk Mountains.

“Every day, I’ve hoped they would open up again,” said Kinney, now 87, who managed the mine for 26 years and today lives in a housing project developed in World War II for mine workers.

His 23-year wait may be nearly over. Cominco American Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of Vancouver, Canada’s Cominco Ltd., is seeking regulatory approval to reopen the mine in early 2002.

The mine’s revival would bring 160 new jobs and an annual $10-million payroll to the sparsely populated region hugging the Canadian province of British Columbia. Although the mine would operate only for about 8 1/2 years, it’s a prospect the community eagerly embraces--particularly after the most recent promising economic development, the use of the area as a backdrop for a Kevin Costner movie, proved fleeting.

Metaline Falls and Metaline--separate towns on opposite banks of the Pend Oreille River with a total of 400 residents--have been trying to weather a long downturn in natural resource-based industries.

Mining, cement production, hydropower and timber were economic mainstays since the Great Northern Railroad created the area’s first boom by laying tracks here in 1909. The most stable job sources in recent decades have been two Pend Oreille River dams: Box Canyon, run by Pend Oreille County, and Boundary, which provides about half of Seattle City Light’s electrical power-generating capacity.

But mining took a big hit in 1977 when the zinc-and-lead operation closed, ending 150 jobs. In 1990, 64 more jobs were lost with the closing of a cement plant that supplied material for local dams.

The community refocused on tourism and spruced up Main Street, and had some success luring Canadian and American travelers with old-fashioned steam train rides along the river and a scenic highway loop.

The filming of Costner’s 1997 film, “The Postman,” pumped $10 million into the local economy and raised hopes that moviegoers would leave theaters wanting to see northeastern Washington in person. But the makeovers that Metaline Falls and the mine site got for the film were not the kind that would attract visitors. Buildings were dressed down to fit the plot line of a future America devastated by war.

And the nearly three-hour, $85-million picture was a flop.

“If it had done a better job in the theaters, it might have had a bigger impact on town,” said Pat Zimmerman, a Metaline Falls postal clerk and fabric store co-owner.

Residents are concerned that economic improvement from a reopening of the mine would be short-term. With that in mind, Cominco officials are meeting monthly with local citizens to discuss economic prospects after the mine closes.

Cominco, which acquired the mine in 1995, is seeking a new source of zinc and lead for its smelters after the scheduled 2002 closing of a nearly mined-out operation north of Metaline Falls in Kimberley, Canada.

The mine’s reopening is contingent on a series of regulatory approvals.

While local support was nearly unanimous at a March hearing, two Eastern Washington American Indian tribes have objected. Environmentalists are concerned about standards for waste water released into the Pend Oreille River and for disposal of tailings.