Yerington business owners see longterm benefits from new mine

For Peggy Bitler, owner of the Copper Inn Motel in Yerington, the planned launch of Nevada Copper's Pumpkin Hollow copper mine in 2014 already has provided a financial windfall for her 13-room property.

Drillers from exploration company Boart Longyear have been bunking at the Copper Inn Motel for well over a year as they work their way through an extensive drilling program by Nevada Copper to define the scope of mineral resources at the Pumpkin Hollow project.

Business owners in Yerington for the most part say they are eager for the opening of the mine, which could employ as many as 800 miners for both open-pit and underground operations. The economic impact of the mine would provide a much-needed stimulus to the local economy, which has been in decline since copper mining in the Mason Valley ceased in 1978.

"It's been very good with the drillers," says Bitler, who also owns the 400-unit Surprise Mini Storage facility on North Main Street. "We kind of cater to them with the refrigerators, microwaves and the Internet. With them here, occupancy has been really good."

Bitler says business is slow at the storage facility because many residents have had to leave the Mason Valley to find work. Lyon County, whose principal cities are Yerington, Fernley and Dayton, has had the highest unemployment rates in the state for many months of the recession. Unemployment in December stood at 16.1 percent, the Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation said.

With the copper mine coming online, and continued operations expected to run through at least 2034, Bitler and others in Yerington are hoping for a long-awaited improvement in business, as well as an influx of new businesses to the Mason Valley.

And with few new housing or rental options and limited lodging properties, Yerington also could see an influx of new housing starts through the later half of the decade that could far outpace new housing in larger metropolitan areas of the state.

"We need a little boost," Bitler says. "The kids who graduate and don't go to school and stay, where are they going to work? There are no jobs for young people."

Jim Sciarani, principal for the accounting firm Sciarani and Co., has lived in Yerington all his life. He says the closure of the Anaconda open pit mine in 1978 was a huge economic shock to the Mason Valley, a blow from which the town of Yerington never quite recovered. The mine has since been declared a superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency, but another company, Singatse Peak Services, a subsidiary of Quaterra Resources of Vancouver, has expressed interest in resuming mining at the site.

"We have been pretty depressed," Sciarani says. "We started out being a mining town in the late 1950s. But when that mine site went away, we lost 200 to 300 employees and the payrolls supporting local businesses.

"By and large everyone is pretty excited about it. Some people here don't like to see growth, but I don't see much of that. We would like to get a few more amenities in town and some new businesses."

Sciarani's accounting firm has yet to see a boost from mine site personnel, but he expects ancillary businesses such as his to lag behind first-wave businesses such as eateries, lodging properties and gas stations.

Among the second wave of businesses to benefit from the mine, he says, would be construction and realty firms and building materials suppliers.

Darroll Brown, owner of D&S Waste, has lived and worked in Yerington for more than three decades. As the exclusive trash hauler for the region, Brown has seen firsthand the declining economy of Yerington: Less consumption means less trash to haul.

Though he was a just a teenager at Yerington High School when the Anaconda Mine was last in operation, Brown still recalls a more vibrant local economy.

"When Anaconda Copper was going it was great," he says. "Everybody had money, and people did things. The community was closer knitted."

Although a spike in population means more tonnage to haul to the regional landfill at Lockwood, Brown is more eager for a mining boom to return to Yerington for its across-the-board impact.

"All we have seen is a decline," he says. "Even in this small town, you watch a business start and then their garbage starts going down because people aren't doing things. I don't have any negative at all with this; it is a plus to the community."

Gov. Brian Sandoval and officials from Nevada Copper on Feb. 18 turned the first spadefuls of dirt for a planned 2,164-foot-deep underground shaft.

Construction of the 24-foot wide underground portal is expected to take up to 18 months.

Nevada Copper has identified mineral reserves estimated at 5.8 billion pounds of copper, 1.5 million ounces of gold and 40 million ounces of silver at the Pumpkin Hollow site.

The company expects to employ about 200 miners for its underground operations and could have as many as 800 miners on its payroll once open-pit mining commences on the west side of the property.