Hopefully, Taseko Mine’s announcement Monday that mineral prices will allow the Prosperity mine to operate 13 more years than originally expected will put to rest the argument that the mine’s benefits are for a short span of time.

Thirty-three years is the majority of most people’s working lives.

It’s enough time for someone who is 13 years old now to enter middle age.

It’s enough time for someone who is 33 years old now to retire.

It’s enough time for someone born this year to grow up, finish school, start a family, and have worked for years.

In 33 years, the editor of this newspaper will be nearly twice as old as he is now — he’ll be 64 years old.

He expects to work all of those years, like many people in Williams Lake.

That’s a long time to reap the benefits of $200 million a year in spending at the mine; the value of 500 full-time, high-paying mining jobs, and more than $1.65 billion to the federal government and nearly $3.8 million to the provincial government.

Thirty-three years is longer than the life of Gibraltar, which is scheduled to close in 2035. If built in 2011, Prosperity would not close until 2044.

Combined between 2011 and 2044, those two mines alone would contribute $300 million to the local economy.

Mining has been around for thousands of years, and it is not going anywhere. Three decades is plenty of time for the regional economy to grow, improve and diversify.

In terms of the Earth, 33 years is a blink of the eye. In human terms, it is a third of a lifetime, and that is a long time of prosperity.