AngloGold Ashanti breaks ground on new community relations building in Beatty

BEATTY — Global mining company AngloGold Ashanti, officially broke ground on a new community relations building in Beatty earlier this month as it continues to work on the North Bullfrog Mine and other Nevada projects.

“We’re not [the] kind of a mining company that is looking at this as kind of a short-term endeavor and we want to do it with the community,” Nick Fouche, senior vice president for AngloGold Ashanti’s Nevada projects, told the Pahrump Valley Times. “So, we deliberately selected a community relations building as our first infrastructure project in Beatty as a symbol of our connection to the community.”

Local residents, community leaders, and AngloGold Ashanti representatives, including those who call Beatty home, attended the groundbreaking ceremony on June 8. Construction is expected to proceed in the coming months.

“We wanted a permanent space that would actually be a space that’s very inviting for our community to actually visit, use and that we would have exhibits about how the mining industry operates, number one,” Fouche elaborated. “Number two is how AngloGold Ashanti operates and the responsibility that we take on in building out a mining district around things like conservation, water management, community participation.”

Fouche said that in addition to the mining exhibitions, the building will also have conference rooms for the community to use and a 3D model of what a mine looks like, viewable through virtual-reality goggles.

“We also want to do it so well that when visitors pass through Beatty and people go to Death Valley National Park, that they would also be interested in visiting that center and actually getting an understanding of mining in the district and the work that AngloGold Ashanti does,” Fouche said.

Fouche added that the space is important from an educational perspective, hoping that schools will come out to visit the community relations building.

“We’ve got a real opportunity to work with our community, and we’ve got a real opportunity of doing conservation work that is world-class conservation work and we want to build that all as an integrated approach to developing Beatty,” Fouche explained.

AngloGold Ashanti’s proposed North Bullfrog Mine north of Beatty aims to produce gold and silver.

“The project is expected to bring approximately 359 jobs annually during the construction phase and 345 jobs annually during production, according to a recent study by researchers at the University of Nevada, Reno,” a press release stated.

For more information about AngloGold Ashanti’s work in Nevada, visit nevadaprojects.anglogoldashanti.com.

Contact reporter Elijah Dulay at edulay@pvtimes.com