Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Sep 20/02) - The long, slow road to giving the Giant Mine reclamation project a public face may be wrapping up by today.

It's been more than a year since the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development pledged to establish a community liaison committee to oversee the cleanup of Giant Mine, and some local groups are growing restless.

But today, representatives from local aboriginal governments, environmental groups, and local businesses, are attending a workshop at the Abe Miller Centre to hash out terms of reference for the community liaison committee.

Participants are hoping terms of reference can be worked out today -- in other words, how the committee will work -- but workshop chair Hal Mills, a GeoNorth Limited consultant hired by DIAND, says it could take longer.

"I have to see how things go at the meeting as to whether or not we can deal with things at this one meeting," said Mills.

"My expectation is that we will need a follow up meeting in order to finalize things."

GeoNorth wrote a report for DIAND earlier this year recommending that the committee have no more than 12 members on it, and for the sake of public credibility, keep an arm's length from the government.

"The key players should be involved in determining what gets done, and increasing the priority of getting something done with Giant Mine," said Bob Turner, North Slave Metis Alliance's lands and resources manager.

"I thought things would happen a lot faster over the years."

Foremost on everyone's mind is what to do with the 270,000 tons of arsenic trioxide buried in vaults underneath Giant Mine.

DIAND was not able to come up with a management plan for the underground arsenic by the Mackenzie Valley Review Board's appointed deadline, Oct. 1.

But now that DIAND has an extension until next summer, Kevin O'Reilly, attending the meeting as an Ecology North representative, said at least the committee will have time to make recommendations.

"I've always taken the position that DIAND should take as much time as needed to put together a good project description that has some support from the community," said O'Reilly.