“We're pushing hard as we can push. We started laying liner this week,” said Delbert Parr, Fort Knox environmental manager. “We're hoping to get the pond in with both liners run. We really don't want to get caught in the middle-we think we've got a good shot at getting it completed.”

The current stage of the construction project involves first laying out a secondary liner over the graded, prepared stack area at the bottom of the heap leach, then covering that with crushed rock and topping that with the primary liner. It will take six to eight weeks, depending on weather.

The construction project began last fall and ramped up in earnest earlier this year. Efforts have been plagued by an unusually wet summer in Interior Alaska, according to the second quarter report of the mine's Toronto-based owner, Kinross Gold Corp.

“Construction of the heap leach project pad is advancing, with construction approximately 57 percent complete. Delays have been encountered in the placement of the lead pad liner due to unseasonably wet weather conditions,” Kinross said in its report, released Aug. 12. “Scheduled start-up of leaching operations is in the third quarter of 2009.”

Local managers are working to improve that schedule. If crews can finish placing the two layers of containment liners this fall, mine crews will begin to haul ore into the valley heap leach facility.

“As soon as the weather allows in spring, after breakup, we'll apply solution,” Parr said. “That brings us into production into spring. If we have to wait until spring to get the heap storage pond constructed, we're looking at fall before we start applying solution and get any production.”

Current plans call for placing up to 160 million tons of low-grade gold-bearing rock on the heap leach pad being constructed in the Walter Creek valley drainage, located above the mine's existing tailings impoundment.

A water and cyanide solution will drip through the pad, filtering through the stack. Gold attracts to the cyanide and the mineralized solution is captured at the bottom of the pile. The gold-bearing solution will be pumped via enclosed pipeline to a carbon-in-column (CIC) plant also being built at Fort Knox, where gold is extracted from the cyanide solution. The gold-loaded carbon will be stripped in the existing mill and the cyanide solution will be regenerated to specifications and returned to the heap leach pad.

Construction crews this summer have completed the footings for the new CIC plant, which will be 130 feet long, 56 feet wide and 60 feet high.

“They will have all the steel up by the end of October,” Parr said. “We're hoping to have it ready to commission in February.”

Costs for the heap leach construction, estimated at $103.6 million, are part of a bigger plan to extend gold mining at Fort Knox. The company's board also gave final approval in February for the $193 million phase 7 pit expansion project at the mine.

Together, the two projects will extend the mine's life by five years, Parr said. According to the company's March report, the existing Fort Knox open-pit mine is expected to continue producing ore until early 2012. Afterward, the rehandling of low-grade stockpiles to the leach pad is expected to continue until early 2018, the company said.

Kinross continues to look for more gold in the region. Exploration spending at the Fort Knox mine site and other locations within the Fairbanks district in 2007 was $4.4 million, the company said, a substantial increase from the $1.4 million spent in 2006.

No budgetary numbers were released for 2008 exploration spending. The work plan for this year includes completing 23,415 feet of drill samples, using three core drills and one reverse circulation rig, according to Kinross' second-quarter report.

“Drilling was initiated on the South Wall target testing extensions of mineralized structures beyond the current pit design,” the company said. “Exploration drilling commenced along the Fort Knox trend at the YPS and Johnsons Saddle targets late in the quarter.”

Those two named targeted areas are located south of the existing pit, over the crest of the hill on the southern border, according to Parr.

In addition to exploring for more gold around Fort Knox, Kinross announced in its quarterly report that work began this summer with partner Full Metal Minerals on reconnaissance work in the Kuskokwim Mountains in Southwest Alaska.

Full Metal, a Vancouver, B.C.-based junior exploration company, announced in late February that the two companies formed an exploration alliance to look for gold deposits in Alaska and the Yukon Territory.

No specific targeted areas were identified in that initial release, which said the first year's exploration budget would be made up of a $150,000 contribution from each company, for “compilation and generative field work.”

“Full Metal and Kinross are planning an exploration program consisting of surface mapping, sampling, geophysics and mechanical trenching for 2008,” the release said. “Full Metal's exploration team will utilize Kinross' extensive historical database to generate new targets and Kinross will be able to access Full Metal's exploration expertise in the partnership.”