HUMBOLDT TOWNSHIP -- Surface operations at Rio Tinto's Eagle Mine are about 80 percent complete. The company has now shifted their focus to their Humboldt processing mill in Humboldt Township.
Officials say Rio Tinto has spent three million dollars in cleanup from previous mining operations at the site. They're now refurbishing the mill's interior and exterior and adding a water treatment plant at the north end of the pit.
"One of the other things that we're doing is building a cutoff wall at the north end of the pit, and what that'll essentially do is stop any water that's currently seeping out of the pit into the adjacent wetlands," said Rio Tinto Communications Advisor, Dan Blondeau.
The decline at the underground Eagle Mine operations has reached the ore body, and production is still slated to begin in 2014.
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