Teck has announced plans for further investment into its Fugitive Dust Reduction Program.
In order to improve results for the current dust reduction plan, Teck will be constructing a Smelter Recycle building designed for just one thing.
“The building will have no other use than to enclose work that is currently taking place outdoors,” said Carol Vanelli Worosz, community engagement leader with the smelter plant.
The planned building will be vast, covering an area slightly larger than a football field, says Vanelli Worosz, and the construction site was picked specifically because of the work that happens in that area of the Teck facilities.
“It will be a new building that encloses an area that we have identified as a source of fugitive dust from our site,” she said, adding that it will be located in the northeast area of the site, adjacent to Tadanac.
“It will (cover) storage and mixing of in-process materials that we recycle back into the lead smelter furnaces and...improve air quality.”
In-process materials are materials coming from different areas on site that are “recycled back into the KIVCET furnace or the slag fuming furnaces,” clarified Vanelli Worosz.
“When you bake a cake, you have milk and eggs and combine them with flour and other ingredients to make a batter,” she said. “The batter would be considered an in-process material for the end product of a cake.”
The building design will also include an all-season wheel wash, air ventilation and filtration to make sure all dust produced from operations stays inside the building.
Vanelli Worosz says the new project will most benefit the residents living near the plant.
“We expect there to be a noticeable improvement in the dust levels in Tadanac,” she said, adding that residents will be kept in the loop. “We will be engaging with Tadanac residents prior to construction”
This new Smelter Recycling building will reduce fugitive dust emissions from Teck Trail Operations by an additional 25 per cent.
The project is currently in the design-build process, meaning contractors will be submitting bids for the project in the near future.
The new 168m X 75m Smelter Recycle building comes as an addition to the current Fugitive Dust Reduction program which already includes a smaller storage building, controlling dust emission of open piles of materials, cleaning internal roads, wheel washes and air monitoring to ensure that all efforts are going in the right direction.
The project is expected to take a year to build and Teck hopes to break ground in early 2015. The company added it’s too early to predict the number and duration of the construction jobs.