By paNOW

K+S Potash Legacy Camp opens ready to house 1,470 workers

May 30, 2014 | 1:21 AM

A mining camp four times the size of the nearest village of Bethune is open and ready.

“It’s great. It’s awesome,” said Ulrich Lamp, CEO of K+S Potash. “It must be great for the workers.”

The K+S Potash Canada Legacy Camp celebrated its opening Thursday with a gourmet roasted chicken, potato, and carrot lunch.

Once it’s full, the camp will house 1,470 workers. Each worker will get a single room with a personal bathroom, outfitted with a TV and internet. The camp has a pool hall, a surround-sound theatre, a lounge, and a weight-room.

“I think it will help the performance of the workers,” said Ulrich. “That’s important, yeah, that we’re attractive to the people who have to work there.”

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The camp seems to be attractive to the surrounding community as well.

“There’s hiccups where people don’t like the extra traffic and they don’t like the extra change,” said Terry Neugebauer, Reeve of the Rural Municipality of Dufferin.

But Neugebauer says most of the concerns have been addressed. The camp is set up to limit the amount of traffic in the area as much as possible. Workers will be shuttled to and fro the construction site.

The site is also considered a ‘wet’ camp, so workers won’t have to go off site to grab a beer.

At the height of construction, the camp will employ 1,700 workers. Once the mine is in production in 2016, there will be about 300 permanent jobs.

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