Cape Breton Development Corporation - Production Problems and Mine Closures

Production Problems and Mine Closures

By the late 1980s, production problems at DEVCO saw the last of the older mines inherited from DOSCO shut down, with production concentrated at Lingan, Phalen and Prince; the latter not receiving any rail service. The Point Aconi Generating Station was built by Nova Scotia Power Incorporated to receive coal from the Prince colliery directly by conveyor belt, however the Lingan and Phalen mines still hauled coal to the Victoria Junction preparation plant and then to the Lingan Generating Station.

The SYSCO steel mill stopped using DEVCO coal to produce coke as a fuel for its blast furnaces in the mid-1980s. By the late 1980s, SYSCO had modernized by changing to an electric-arc process, smelting recycled metal.

Problems with flooding and roof-falls at the Lingan mine saw production cease in 1992, just months short of the colliery's 20-year design limit. The Phalen mine continued to be the only source of online traffic for the Devco Railway, however subsequent flooding and roof-falls at Phalen caused ever increasing production costs at a time of fiscal restraint by the federal government.

In mid 2008 DEVCO sponsored the new Industrial Research Chair in Mine Water Remediation & Management at Cape Breton University in order to assist in the mine closure and to research in new environmentally friendly after uses of the mining legacy.