The Sudbury Star, the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper. This article was published on June 4, 2011. mwhitehouse@thesudburystar.com
Mining analyst Stan Sudol argues government should pick up the estimated $2-billion
cost of building a rail line to move ore from the yet-to-be-developed Ring of Fire deposits
to potential processing sites. … That investment, he said, would be easily made back
through the resulting economic development and taxes created by the Ring of Fire
deposits, which include nickel, copper, zinc, palladium, platinum and chromite …
A provincial and federal commitment to build a 350- kilometre railway could be key to keeping ore from the largest mining find in a generation in Northern Ontario, an analyst says.
But what community that railway leads to is one of the most hotly contested questions in the north this summer. The prize — a billion-dollar ferrochrome smelter and hundreds of high-paying jobs — has communities across the north queuing to position themselves on the other end of the proposed railway.
Cleveland-based Cliffs Natural Resources will announce a site as early as September. Cliffs estimates 500 people will work on the smelter during construction and up to 500 when it’s operating.
Cliffs’ preferred location is a site just north of Capreol. But the company also said it would consider other locations in the north, including Timmins, Thunder Bay and Greenstone, the community closest to the mine site in the James Bay lowlands.