IKALUKTUTIAK/CAMBRIDGE BAY - Nature has been left to take over a former mine site near Cambridge Bay. The mine openings are closed, the tailing ponds are capped, the contaminated soil has been removed and debris no longer litters the landscape.

Quantum Murray LP site superintendent John Wiegel at the same spot at Ida Bay after the cleanup. The $7.5 million cleanup of the former silver mine at Roberts Bay and the Ida Bay silver deposit – both along Melville Sound some 155 km southwest of Cambridge Bay – were just completed. - photo courtesy of INAC

The Roberts Bay silver mine along Melville Sound, some 115 km southwest of Cambridge Bay, and the Ida Bay silver deposit, located about 7 km north of the mine, were abandoned sometime in the 1990s.

Quantum Murray LP of Richmond B.C. was awarded the $7.3 million remediation contract to clean up the sites in September 2007. Mine openings, abandoned mine waste, former building structures – including metal frames and platforms – litter, contaminated soil, tailings pond and even waste rocks and core samples faced the cleanup crew when they started the project in the summer of 2008.

Over two summers, clean up crews dismantled old buildings, the tailings pond was contained and capped with non-hazardous waste and dirt covers, while debris from the original landfill was relocated to the new engineered landfill. Hazardous materials and contaminated soils were excavated and shipped to a licensed disposal facility down south and the three mine openings were collapsed, with the original depressions backfilled with waste rock matching the landscape.

Getting the work done in short time frames – in this case July to early September – was challenging, said Gavin Domitter, a project co-ordinator with Quantum Murray LP in Richmond, B.C.

"I think just overall, the scale of the debris clean up, demolishing the old structures and dealing with the old tailings pond – probably all those things combined (were challenging)," he said. "Probably the biggest challenge is doing it within the window that weather will allow."

He added some of the people working on site had relatives with outposts camps in the area.

"One thing we were very happy about was the local crew from Cambridge Bay. They were very good to deal with and very much on task," he said.

Joe Otokiak is a Cambridge Bay resident who worked on site last summer. He started as an interpreter during the three-week work site safety training before getting trained himself and working as a general labourer.

"I wanted to experience something different for the summer and I thought that might be a good little break from the interpreting and translating," he said. "It was a real good experience."

He added when they arrived, it seemed a "real big mess" but they eventually got down to picking up the debris and dismantling things.

"Even though it's across the water, across the Coronation Gulf, there's people from this area, from Cambridge Bay and probably from Kugluktuk or Bay Chimo-Bathurst (Inlet), (who) lived in that area to hunt and fish years ago," he said.

"For them to see the site, what it looked like before and then to see the pictures of what it looks like after the cleanup, crew goes in to do the work, it was just like night and day. A lot of people were real happy the work went through and it worked out well."

The cleanup project was the first mine site Indian and Northern Affairs Canada remediated in Nunavut, as it normally deals with military sites such as DEW lines, said Natalie Plato, director of the contaminated sites program at INAC.

"Technically, it was different. We had a tailings pond on site. We had to do a geotechnical investigation of the tailings pond, which was a little different from us compared to a military site," she said. "Otherwise, I guess the biggest challenge again was logistics and getting to the site and completing the work in the short time frame allotted by the arctic summer."

She added the project went smoothly overall.

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