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| SiftoCanada, cropped It shares the harbor with the P&H grain elevator. |
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They narrator points out that the mine is now larger than the town.
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| Dave Hooton posted Mid 1970’s postcard view of the salt mine at Goderich Ont. The boats tied up in the background are out of service grain storage boats for the grain elevator. Posted July 7, 24. Walter E Pfefferle: I see the CP bridge in the top of the picture I guess it was still being used in the '70s. Dave Hooton: Walter E Pfefferle Used until Dec.1988. |
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| John Vincent commented on Walter's comment Not a great picture, but a close up of the bridge mentioned in the mid 1970's. |
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| Papple Aviation posted A salt ship and a grain ship being loaded at the same time at Goderich harbour. Tyler Papple shared Jeff Pederson: And one in layup. Robin Gates: Jeff Pederson I loaded the fuel off that boat in the winter before everyone thing laid up and that one’s being decommissioned possibly getting fixed but after it got stuck in the Saint Lawrence they weren’t sure if they were going to fix it or not. [The laid up freighter is the Tim S. Dool. (paycount of 12) Since it is not a self-unloader, equipment had to be brought in to remove the grain before the reflotation attempt was made. Fortunately, it grounded outside of the channel so it did not stop Seaway traffic for the three weeks that it was grounded. This article said no damage was found. I wonder what needs to be fixed.] |
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| Maurie MacDonald posted This came up today in my feed....not my pic..but wow..what a great shot of Goderich harbour with some of “Our” Ships. Jim MacKinnon: Left in photo top is Tim S Dool was the ship that grounded in St Laurence last fall. The next boat down is the Huron Atlantic or Atlantic Huron been here a while. The grain boat is the “Blacky”. The salt boat is Algoma Innovator. We were out sailing yesterday (nope no wind) so anchored up and went for a swim. Lake is clearest Ive ever seen down here not Tobermory clear but darn close, chilly too 63F. I love watching our harbour it’s awesome having a Coast Guard station there and OPP marine unit and don't forget our HASAR and volunteer rescue boat, real nice folks. Always something on channel 16 eh! The nice folks at Papple Aviation were over head yesterday as proof by the photo. The fellow who would take you up is a former RCAF Snowbird so I'm pretty sure a flight with him would be pretty cool. Oh almost forgot we have a fish and chip place right at top of harbour right off the nose of the Dool with picnic benches! Goderich is worth a visit for sure. |
Brian Calley posted four images with the comment:
The world’s largest salt mine sits on the shore of Lake Huron. And it’s not because that’s where the most salt is.Some of it runs miles out beneath the lake.The Michigan Basin stretches from the western shore of Lake Michigan to the eastern shore of Lake Huron, and it contains a layer of salt across nearly the entire region. Some of its thickest deposits lie deeper, toward the center of the basin.But thickness alone doesn’t determine where mines go. Depth matters just as much.At the center of a basin, salt can be too deep to mine economically. Near the outer edges, it can be too thin. The best location is a band in between, where the salt is still thick but close enough to the surface to reach.Goderich, Ontario sits in that band.About 1,800 feet below ground, miners work inside a vast salt layer covering roughly 7 square kilometers beneath Lake Huron itself. The underground footprint is so large that it rivals the size of the town above it.Geology made it possible. Geography made it practical.The mine sits beside a deep-water harbor, so once the salt reaches the surface, conveyors carry it straight to ships. No rail transfer. No long trucking routes. Just a direct path from ancient seabed to Great Lakes freighters.The biggest salt mine on Earth isn’t where the basin has the most salt. It’s where the salt is thick enough, shallow enough, stable enough, and close enough to ship.
Brian Calley: This mine produces about 7 million tons of salt a year. And the salt deposit is so massive it’s often described as having roughly a century of mining left at today’s pace.
Jim Goodall: Brian Calley It's much bigger than that. I was down there 20 years ago, and was told that there's a similar mine on the American side, digging towards the Canadian mine. At the present rate of digging, those two mines will meet, in 2000 years.
Brian Calley: It’s essentially unlimited in human scale terms, since it runs all the way to and past Chicago, Green Bay, Mackinac, and even Cleveland at various depths. The 100 year figure comes from what the current mine has mineral rights to I believe.
Margbrian Craig: "No rail transfer. No long trucking routes. Just a direct path from ancient seabed to Great Lakes freighters." While some of your story is correct and entertaining the above statement is only partially correct. The Goderich mine ships road salt by rail all year around. They also ship salt by truck all the time. This past couple of months their has been times when the lineup of trucks was 2 kilometers long.
Clayton Mizen: spent 22 of my 32 years at the mine. Drifts ( roads) 45 feet wide. There were stretches where you could race 2 45 ton rock trucks at up to 60 miles an hour.
Eileen Jackson: Thanks for your interesting & informative posting. There is a book called The Salt Mine by Anne Kay about the discovery of salt in Goderich, they were actually drilling for oil but discovered salt instead.
Michael Edward Blondin: Constance Gruen they have a main shaft with smaller shafts jutting out from it . once the salt is removed from the smaller shafts they close the start of that shaft and over a few yrs the salt grows back in on its self! crazy EH
Ann Hagman: can confirm it is mainly road salt, my son works on the one of the freighters that ships the salt.
Jack Smith: yes, it’s road salt, and we have a major shortage of it Ontario at the moment, because the mine is owned by an American company and they’re shipping the salt out. Making for some treacherous roads this winter.
Mike Vail: And yet they don't have enough of a stockpile to supply Southern Ontario's winter road requirements. It's easy enough to do, given the size and location of the mine. But Compass management decided to go to a 'just in time' kind of supply and demand kind of system. That way they can reduce production costs (Workers' hours) throughout the year and ramp up production when required. This time winter somehow sneaked up on them and they're losing sales and reliability because of it. That's management justifying their wages by coming up with schemes like this to look good on the books for their overlords.
Pat Ringler: The biggest reason that many municipalities are experiencing shortages in their onsite supply has absolutely nothing to do with the mine or ownership of the mine. It speaks instead to the lack of foresight on the part of the municipalities keeping their road maintenance budgets within average usage over the past several mild winters only to be caught with their pants down due to this years weather. Why would a commercial business hold back filling of existing orders going to foreign markets because our municipalities were too short sighted and do not stockpile an adequate supply? How many other projects did the affected municipalities fund instead while trying to hold the line on big property tax increases?
Pat Ringler: they ship all year - freighters several per week and even trucks in the summer months although not as many as during the fall through mid spring when the trucks line up Harbour Road to the top of the hill waiting their turn to get filled.
Mark Andrew Morse: Road Salt. I live in Goderich… ships are still coming into the mine with the help of ice breakers… seen lines of up to 150 trucks waiting to pick up loads.
Liz Brown: i believe there is also an evaporator plant in Goderich producing table salt (and for industry). Not right on the docks but still in town. [Other comments confirm this.]
Peter Thurley: in Ontario, it's mostly road salt, but it gets shipped all over the world thanks to the St. Lawrence seaway and the rest of the Great Lakes shipping lanes. It's often further processed at its destination. There is a processing plant in Seaforth that preps the product for domestic road use. My father in law used to work there.
Walter Lewis: There is a significant amount of salt moved out of Goderich by rail. GEXR is a short track line that runs out of Goderich and the Sifto mine head. I used to live down the line after the tankers were switched over to CN tracks and we’d see hundreds of GEXR cars over the year.
Dan Green: What would happen if it caved in ?
Kevin Ritchie: As Brian mentioned not likely. There is also hundreds of feet of solid rock in between the mine and the lake bottom. The salt they are mining isn't loose, it is very dense and compressed almost like stone. This also aids in the stability of the mine. The mine operates under several distinct geological layers, primarily consisting of Paleozoic sedimentary rocks, and is situated within specific salt beds:
A-2 Salt Bed (The Mining Zone): The primary mining activities take place within the A-2 salt bed, which is approximately 79 feet thick at the shaft location and is part of a larger Paleozoic salt deposit.
Overlying Strata: The mine is covered by roughly 900 feet of "tight" or "dry" rock—primarily limestone and dolostone (carbonate rocks)—that seals the salt deposit.
A-2 Carbonate Sequence: The salt bed is immediately overlain by the A-2 carbonate sequence (dolomite/anhydrite).
Upper Salt Beds: There are other, shallower salt beds located above the main mining level, specifically the B, D, and F salt beds, with the uppermost (F bed) located about 980 feet below the surface.
GEOLOGICAL LAYERS ABOVE: The sequence from the surface down through the rock layers includes:
Quaternary Deposits: Sediment at the surface.
Devonian/Silurian Rock: Layers of Paleozoic sedimentary rock, including limestone and dolomite.
Salina Group: The geological formation hosting the salt, characterized by shale, carbonate, and evaporite sequences.
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