Show big california phosphate deposit seen as intermountain competitor A california mining engl engi neer ineer said bald late last week that a three billion ton deposit of ore off the coast of san diego calif may hnieday bome lay satisfy west coast needs for the mineral now met by intermountain intel mountain producers L E shatter shaffer professor of mining at the university of california at berkeley calit calif told the sixth annual rocky mountain minerals confer trice ence of american institute of mining and metallurgical en ginders that california now was importing the equivalent of tons of ore annually supplies come from two ma ina jor sources the intermountain west and florida the total net cost is about 15 a ton prof shatter shaffer said the deposit at 40 mile dank bank an undersea mount 40 miles west of san diego is made up exclusively of nodules containing 29 per cent in values the deposit to is feet below the surface of the sea and could be mined by drag dredging he said at costs of 4 50 a ton transport to shore would add another 50 cents a ton thus the california market would be receiving ore from the sea at a cost of 5 a ton versus equivalent cost for ores from the intermountain district utah idaho and southwestern wyoming of 15 a ton prof shatter said ile he estimated that return on such a venture should approach 50 per cent per year ONLY commercial dredging has not been attempted at depths greater than feet out but serious study is being given to the development of the 40 mile dank bank ore beds on part of a major firm he said prof shaffer also said there were literally hundreds of bit bil llona lions of tons of strange egg shaped nodules composed of manganese and iron oxides with minor but important amounts of copper cobalt and nickel on the ocean floors the most important of these deposits have been made in waters from 0 6 to 18 feet in depth and are not at this time economic the engineer said that while the origin of the nodules la is not clear there seems little doubt that the manganese nickel copper cobalt nodule is the result ol of a complex ton ion exchange process in the sea water where during centuries of time the hydrous metal ions preci precipitate td and build up around debris on the hea bea floor such as aa sharks teeth etc A paper presented by D L king montpelier idaho president and general manager of san francisco chemical co related that the firms vernal utah rock deposit contains million tons of bention running 20 per cent on this tonnage about one third is available under a maximum overburden of 30 ft het et HE SAID THIS deposit be strip mined on a large scale for years without resort to underground methods on the alie other hand theres only about a decade of stripping ahead for the rest of the deposits in the intermountain west after that all future mining will be underground with weak walls and poor structural conditions condition predominating mr king said the vernal deposit being miles from a railroad will have a limited growth until rail facilities are built into the uintah da sin i dut but san francisco with stauffer chemical co in ia aim ing at current development of a ton a year concentrator mine complex in the area 15 miles north of vernal mr king also said it is an unpleasant statement to make but our experience with underground der ground mining of phosphate rock since 1933 1953 leads us to believe that any underground mining except that which can be done under the most classical of fully mechanized conditions to ia rapidly becoming a thing of the past unfortunately the underground mining of thin bedded badly faulted weak walled material characteristic of western phosphate rock just simply doesn doean t lend itself to high order of mechanization he said HE NOTED THAT the un der ground pho phosphate s phate mines in the region were suffering from a chronic shortage of mine labor despite shutdowns in nearby coal properties and the like san fran cisco he said 11 as a result continued to limp along at 79 75 per cent of desired capacity |