[URBAN NOTE] "Salt mine keeps Goderich alive, 'youthful'"

[rfmcdonald]

CBC reported earlier this month on how a salt mine in the southwestern Ontario town of Goderich contributes to that city's relative economic health.

Deep under Lake Huron, five kilometres from shore, miners work in a cloud of fine particles, the beams from their headlamps piercing the darkness.

The rooms and tunnels they have dug out are huge, the ceilings 20 metres from the floor.

Trucks load and scurry about, tipping their loads of freshly mined salt into crushers connected to long, fast-moving conveyor belts.

Some 500 people work in this mine in Goderich, Ont., exploiting a massive and almost pure deposit that is the small town's ace in the hole.

"There is salt underground in this seam for 100 years of mining, " said Gerry Rogers, the Compass Minerals executive in charge of the operation. "It will last a long time."

The company says the salt mine in Goderich, a town about 100 kilometres northwest of London, is the largest in the world. And business is good.