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City wants feds to pay for water line Simon Whitehouse Northern News Services Published Wednesday, February 1, 2012
On Jan. 17, Public Works director Dennis Kefalas sent a letter to Vern Christensen , executive director of the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board, requesting that the federal government cover the $10 million needed to replace an underwater pipeline as part of the Giant Mine clean-up plan. The current line, which runs about eight km between Pumphouse No. 1 on 48 Street and Pumphouse No. 2 at the Yellowknife River, is expected to reach its expiry date by 2020. The city has an eight-year window in which to find funding before a replacement is needed. Kefalas argues that because contaminated water from Giant Mine was discharged into Yellowknife Bay, it should also be included in the clean-up plan, which is being carried out by the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development. The city had originally planned to discontinue collecting water upstream from Giant Mine at the Yellowknife River, and draw water from Yellowknife Bay. Doing so would have been $7 million cheaper but concerns from residents over arsenic contamination scuttled that plan, particular after Baker Creek overflowed its banks last spring and into a arsenic-contaminated tailings pond and back into the creek and out into Yellowknife Bay. "Regardless of what the science says the majority of Yellowknife residents believe Yellowknife Bay will continue to be contaminated with arsenic due to historical operations and any proposes remediation processes," wrote Kefalas. "This is the reality of the situation." In the letter, Kefalas argues part of the Giant Mine Remediation Project should include the costs of the line replacement. The federal government had funded the original line in 1969 due to public concerns about arsenic contamination in the water source. "Without financial assistance from other orders of government, these replacement costs will be solely on the city to absorb," Kefalas adds. "The city feels that these costs are undeserved and will place excessive financial burden on the tax base of Yellowknife." Mayor Gord Van Tighem said the federal government should be providing more money to ensure the health and safety of the drinking water source, given this is the mandate of the Giant Mine cleanup. "Since there is a large remediation project going on reflecting the impact of the mine, we thought it was a good idea to put a hand up and say, 'hey, part of what you should be doing is replacing this pipe because everything that we are doing is about public safety," Van Tighem said this week. Van Tighem admits there is still a "level of uncertainty among residents about what could happen" with a potential contamination of arsenic in the drinking water source and this was affirmed in the Kefalas letter. The city is currently in the design phase of building a new water treatment plant and new pumphouse. Christensen told Yellowknifer he could not comment in detail about the letter until the review board reads it. A decision is to be made next week when the six-member board will be meeting in Yellowknife from Feb. 7 to 9. "We need to look at the letter to see what the implications would be to the overall process and we haven't completed that yet," said Christensen. "We would be briefing the board on that at the meeting next week and they would have to give some direction on how to manage it." While Christensen could not comment on the implications of the request, he admitted it "would change the scope of the project, which will take some consideration." Van Tighem was cautious about whether or not he was optimistic about a funding approval. "It has been in discussion with the people involved in the mine remediation and the discussion has not been negative," he said. An Aboriginal Affairs spokesperson told Yellowknifer the department wasn't prepared to comment at press time.
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