KITIKMEOT - Though permitting hurdles still remain, preparations at the future site of Miramar Mining Corp.'s Doris North gold mine are underway.

"It's not mining development work, but pre-development work," said Alex Buchan, manager of community relations for Miramar.

Miramar is still waiting for a final permit from the Nunavut Water Board to be able to kick into high gear and start construction for the mine, he said, but they weren't willing to sit and twiddle their thumbs.

"We just felt we didn't want to lose a year," said Buchan. "We're trying to get some of the puzzle put together."

The company is "cautiously optimistic" that the last big permit, a Class A water licence, will come through for them, he said.

The work being done at the site, 75 kilometres northeast of Umingmaktuuq, involves building infrastructure to accept camp and construction materials, said Buchan.

"We have made some advance purchases of things like camps, equipment, and supplies," he said. "They're slated to come up in the sealift this fall."

That means building a laydown area for trucks to drive over, as well as a short road.

"It's like a big parking lot made of gravel," he said, "in order to run equipment and vehicles on a flat surface instead of the tundra."

It was the approved project certificate from the Nunavut Impact Review Board, which Miramar received in September 2006, that assured it preparations would not be in vain, said Buchan.

"Overall the regulators believe that our project is sound and it should proceed ... We're really at the stage of the nitty-gritty."

Public hearings for the water licence are slated to begin in Cambridge Bay the first week of August, said Buchan.

The water licence was at the centre of a controversy earlier this year. A preliminary rejection of Miramar's application led to the Nunavut Water Board (NWB) board firing its executive director and the subsequent resignation of four technical staff members.

Dionne Filiatrault, acting executive director for the NWB, said the organization is putting the past behind it.

"The board is moving forward," she said.

Pre-hearing meetings were recently held between Miramar and interested groups such as Environment Canada and the Kitikmeot Inuit Association, she said.

The board is also in the process of interviewing applicants to fill the jobs left vacant in April, said Filiatrault.

Though there's no exact timeline for a decision on the water licen ce, Buchan said Miramar is hoping it will be able to begin construction early next spring. The challenge then will be to find enough local workers to build the mine, he said.

"We'll be looking at training people to slot them into jobs in 2008," he said.

There are presently about 120 people at Miramar's Hope Bay location, but the majority of them - about 100 - are working on an exploration project at the nearby Madrid site.

"Once we've finished mining Doris North, (we're hoping) to be able to shift operations and start mining at Madrid."