Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

NNSL (May 10/99) - The Nunavut government wants its concerns addressed in the review of the proposed Diavik diamond mine.

Deputy minister of sustainable development for the Nunavut government Katherine Trumper, has identified a number of concerns about the proposed diamond mine that would have an impact on Nunavut, among them:

• the contribution of the mine to the economies of both territories

• potential impact on the Coppermine watershed

• potential impact on the migration of the Bathurst Caribou herd

In an April 19 letter to DIAND deputy minister Scott Serson, Trumper asked that the Nunavut government be involved in any revision of the draft report on the review.

Trumper also requested that Nunavut be involved in any and all aspects, including changes to the project, which could have trans-boundary implications.

The mine is located about 100 kilometres west of the NWT-Nunavut border.

Meanwhile, all parties involved in the Diavik environmental review are carefully considering the impact of a court decision last month that overturned federal approval of a giant coal mine proposed for Alberta.

The Cheviot mine, as it is known, was to be located just outside Jasper National Park. Its pit was to be 23 kilometres long and three kilometres wide.

In his April 8 decision, Judge Douglas Campbell of the Federal Court of Canada said the environmental assessment of the proposed Cheviot mine came up short in several ways, among them:

• it did not properly consider the cumulative effects on the environment of existing and probable future development

• it failed to adequately consider alternate mining methods that would have less environmental impact than the proposed open-pit method

"This new case has raised the bar for environmental assessments," said Canadian Arctic Resources Committee research director Kevin O'Reilly.

Cumulative effects are the combined environmental impacts of the project being considered and others existing and proposed for the same area.

CARC, along with Ecology North, officially withdrew from the Diavik review last October, saying the process was flawed in several different ways, among them the way it dealt with cumulative effects and alternatives to open-pit mining.

DIAND contracted an independent expert to study alternative methods of extracting diamonds at the Diavik mine. Guidelines for the environmental review require that cumulative effects be examined.

O'Reilly said CARC has accepted an offer of assistance in dealing with the Diavik review from the Canadian Environmental Defence Fund. CARC has retained a lawyer, said O'Reilly, "to consider our options."

Diavik's public affairs and government relations manager, Doug Willy, in an address to the NWT Chamber of Commerce earlier this year, called cumulative effects "the next anti-development tool from the (environmentalists)."

The company hoping to build the Cheviot mine, Cardinal River Coals, could appeal the ruling to the Federal Court of Appeal.