In high prices, moribund mines find a silver bullet

By William Yardley
The New York Times
Thursday, April 3, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/03/us/03wallace.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&o

WALLACE, Idaho -- The strangest thing happened here in the Silver Valley as it began the transformation from historic mining camp to yet another Western confection of ski slopes and condos for newcomers with money.

The real estate market slowed, and the price of silver soared.

Two condominium projects under construction in Kellogg, just west of Wallace, are stalled, while once struggling or shuttered mines like Lucky Friday, Galena, and the historic Sunshine Mine have been revived and are expanding into the hillsides.

Though real estate developers continue to have faith in the area for the long term, speculators who maneuver for land these days may well want to build underground. Miners are feeling less like fading local color and more like the backbone of the local economy.

"This is the Silver Valley, not the Tourism Valley," Greg Riley, a miner who takes an elevator 5,900 feet down into the earth each workday, said between sips of beer at the Metals Bar and Lounge. "I've actually had people right here in this bar say to me, 'Oh, they still mine here?'"

It was not such a foolish question a few years ago, when silver was slumming at less than $5 an ounce. Back then local mines were closed or running skeleton crews or immersed in seemingly endless environmental cleanups. Since the 1980s an entire generation of Silver Valley workers had left to find jobs elsewhere. Shoshone County, previously one of Idaho's three most prosperous counties, had become one of its three poorest.

Now silver is around $17 an ounce, there is talk of reopening a local mining training site (it is a mine-it-yourself tourist attraction now), and an industry that declares itself cleaner and safer than ever is reaching out across the West to find workers.

"One of the things we never thought we would be experiencing again is a desperate need for more miners," said Kathryn Tacke, a regional economist with the Idaho Department of Labor. "But anyone who wants to find a job mining in the Silver Valley probably can."

For years some kinds of mining have survived near increasingly affluent Western towns like Steamboat Springs, Colo. A few other old camps, including Leadville, Colo., are also now moving toward reviving mining operations. But for others, like Crested Butte and Breckenridge, also in Colorado, the natural surroundings remain what they became long ago: amenities for newcomers, not resources for industry.

"Now prices have recovered to where it's finally economical" to mine again, said Laura Skaer, executive director of the Northwest Mining Association, but in many cases "the community has changed."

The Silver Valley has not changed nearly as much as pricey resorts like Crested Butte, however. The town of Wallace remains a tiny triangle of 890 people and dozens of historic red-brick buildings, all wedged between steep evergreen slopes and Interstate 90. About 10 miles west, the historic uptown section of Kellogg has plenty of vacant storefronts, and chain-link fences surround the two stalled condominium projects.

Local officials say the revival of mining, however counterintuitive the idea may seem to the second-home aesthetic, is critical if the area is to remain affordable to a population whose families have lived here for generations. (Already there are concerns about the long-term rise in housing prices.)

The average pay for mining jobs in Shoshone County in 2006 was about $57,000, more than double the average of all other jobs, Ms. Tacke said. And while the current total of 700 mining jobs is a small fraction of the 4,000 that the county had in the early 1980s, still it is 200 more than at this time last year.

Many people here say they just want another chance to do what they do best. "I don’t really care about growth," said Mayor Ronald Garitone, 68. "The price of silver is what determines our economic development."

Dick Vester, an optometrist here for three decades, said his office had been bustling with newly flush miners finally able to update their prescriptions. Some splurge on sunglasses.

"Real estate is good, tourism is good," Mr. Vester said. "But there's nothing like good old industry. That's what puts money on the table."

For now, at least, the new mining boom does not appear to be creating a culture conflict between miners and those nurturing a new Silver Valley.

Mark W. Stromberg, an official of the federal Superfund project to clean up old mining contamination in the valley, said he was unaware of any organized opposition to the mining expansion. A huge toxic smelter has been largely leveled and removed as part of the cleanup, and the new mining involves expansion underground only and must meet a variety of environmental requirements.

Neal Scholey, sales director at the new Silver Mountain Resort in Kellogg, said the revival in mining had been largely invisible. "Where are they?" Mr. Scholey said. "The environmental impact is basically nothing."

The resort, with 277 condominiums built and hundreds more houses and a golf course planned, is an island of precise roof lines and fresh paint a few hundred yards from some of the last, dilapidated remains of old mining operations. The slogan behind the front desk of the sales center says: "Yesterday, silver. Tomorrow, gold" -- the latter a reference to sunsets, not the metal.

With mining making a comeback, sales representatives strive to balance messages, assuring newcomers that the vacant storefronts in Kellogg will soon turn over with new shops, that the area has a bright future as a resort and that the mining here is now clean and safe.

Jacques Lemieux, a real estate agent with Century 21, works in a small office across the street from the resort and next door to new town houses whose prices, he said, have been lowered to $395,000 from $585,000.

"We maybe got a little ahead of ourselves," Mr. Lemieux said of the resort boom. "But it's going to happen."

Then he nodded east toward Wallace and smiled.

"Wallace is the damnedest town," he said. "Wallace never gave up the mining dream."

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