Richard Gleeson & Doug Ashbury
Northern News Services

Yellowknife ( Mar 03/00) - The Diavik environmental agreement should be a done deal sometime next week.

"There was general agreement among everybody," said Dogrib negotiator John B. Zoe immediately after yesterday's meeting of aboriginal, government and company officials.

"Everything's settled - it's just a matter of working out the legal language."

Kitikmeot Inuit Association president Charlie Evalik refused to comment on the meeting, saying he had to discuss it with his board first.

"I think it's fair to say that negotiators for all the parties will be recommending an agreement to their principals," said Gary Bohnet, who chaired the four-and-a-half-hour session held in a meeting room in the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs' Bellanca Building Northern headquarters.

All aboriginal groups were represented at the meeting, said Bohnet and Zoe.

Diavik president Stephen Prest said he anticipates a deal will be finalized next week, but cautioned the agreement is not final until it's signed.

The signatures of the five aboriginal groups effected by the project are not essential to the agreement.

Prest said the agreement is something "the Government of Canada and the company can be very proud of."

Time running short

Diavik will only be able to salvage about a third of its planned year 2000 construction work, said public affairs manager Tom Hoefer.

It is not clear just how much of the previously planned tens of millions of dollars worth of work will be postponed though. Regardless, some Yellowknife contractors will have to wait for revenue they expected to receive this year.

"We lost so much time," Hoefer said. "There are businesses that won't be realizing revenue they thought they would."

Diavik needs about 10 days to prepare its Lac de Gras site for fuel and equipment that will be trucked up the ice road.

Hoefer could not say if losing a big chunk of the planned 2000 work will delay construction of the mine enough to delay diamond production.

The mine is scheduled to be built over a three-year period and be operational in the first half of 2003.

Hoefer denied rumours Diavik has been shipping material up the ice road and storing them at BHP's Ekati mine. He said there is equipment at Ekati that some contractors have left there in hopes that they would be able to move it over to Diavik for contract work there. Hoefer said Diavik has not moved any fuel up the ice road.

Aboriginal signatures to come later

DIAND associate regional director general Lorne Tricoteux said he understands that aboriginal leaders will not be signing the agreement until after the remaining regulatory approvals, most notably the water licence for the project, are granted.

Tricoteux added that a land-use permit will be issued once the environmental agreement is signed.

Though the security deposit formalized in the environmental agreement includes security for water-related liability, the NWT water board has yet to determine a dollar figure for that liability. During water board hearings, DIAND estimated the water-related liability would peak at $177 million.

"It would be better if everything was done together, but that's not the case in this instance," said DIAND director general Hiram Beaubier.

Beaubier said the security deposit determined by the water board will be taken out of the environmental agreement security deposit.

Asked what would happen if the water board determined water-related security amounts to be more than the security deposit in the environmental agreement, Beaubier said, "If it's more than what is in the environmental agreement, then the company will have to deal with that."