Hydrocarbon Management

Having a mine site located on a national monument requires careful management in every aspect. Hydrocarbon management is especially crucial at Greens Creek. I was involved in an exploratory project to determine how we can improve our current setup.

We were dealing with numerous storage tanks. Tanks full of diesel, glycol, jet engine lube, other types of lube, etc.... There are two other factors which affected this project: Lack of space and Greens Creek.

We didn't have the ability to take out a few trees and build a fuel farm. Anything aside from a major change in building layout would require our containment options to be implemented in the current location of the tanks.

Greens Creek runs right along the road (the tanks are placed right near the road on the opposite side of the river). Any sort of containment options we discussed had to avoid disturbing the current draining systems of rain water into the river.

I had to learn a lot about what hydrocarbon management really is, what the regulations are, and how we could implement it in our existing layout. It takes a lot of creativity when you are working with limited (and valuable) space. Everyone had their nook for which to store things and they didn't want that to change. All in all we came up with a few short and long term options.

For the most part mobile units were the most feasible option for our situation. Unfortunately I wasn't able to stay and see how things panned out.

Work environment

I don't know if there are too many experiences that can top gliding over the cool Alaskan ocean waters at 5:00 AM. Working on Admiralty Island provided me with the opportunity to commute by car, boat, and bus each day to work. It was a 20 min car ride to the dock, a 35 minute boat ride from Juneau to Admiralty Island, and then another 30 minutes up to my office at the mine site. Despite the lengthy commute, it was worth it every time you saw a few brown bears on the side of the road or a whale cut through the water.

Pouring Gold

While working at the mine, I was able to witness a number of gold pours. That is a lot of money I'm holding there!

Fan Skid Plate

I was asked to build a skid which would carry a 10 ton fan base into our mine shaft. The real restriction was the size of our mine shaft. We had a limited height of ~ 20ft which is why we choose to drag the fan base in the first place.

Since I had never "really" taken a project from the concept -- to the design -- to a finished product before, I sought insight from our mechanics. They proposed a number of ideas, as did the mining engineers and my job was to pull it all together and design it.

I drew up the CAD drawings and then gathered up the supplies. We used 2 4'x4' plates (1/2" thick) for the main base of the skid and then we again used 1/2" plate for the other sections.

After a great weld job by our mechanic, we were done. The skid not only functioned well for this project but they have used it other times to drag other awkward pieces of equipment.

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