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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Mine site clean-up jobs will be strictly B.Y.O.E., "bring your own equipment," from now on, as the federal government is ditching its heavy equipment assets.

Scott Mitchell, senior adviser for the Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada contaminants and remediation directorate, led bidders on tours of the surplus items being sold at the Giant Mine site on Saturday. - Simon Whitehouse/NNSL photo

Contractors will now be required to supply their own heavy equipment to take on clean-up contracts, as Public Works and Government Services Canada and the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada are currently auctioning off a catalogue of heavy equipment previously used for mine site remediation.

Most of the surplus items currently up for online bidding come from the recently completed, $135-million clean up of the Colomac Mine site.

"Now that Colomac's done, there's a lot of stuff that's no longer of value to the government," said Scott Mitchell, senior adviser for the contaminants and remediation directorate. "We're getting out of heavy equipment."

Mitchell, who has worked on remediation of mine and military sites for the past 20 years, including Diversified, Port Radium, North Inca, and Colomac, said the government purchased heavy equipment when it first started contaminated site cleanup, in an effort to involve community contractors that did not have the capacity to purchase the required equipment.

"We wanted to get the local people who put up with this stuff, involved," Mitchell said, "so that the communities could at least benefit from the clean-up work."

Now that a number of Northern businesses have built up the capacity to handle major remediation contracts, future cleanups will be done with contractor-supplied equipment.

Grant Pearson, vice-president of business development for Nuna Logistics Ltd. - which holds the multi-year care and maintenance contract for the Giant Mine remediation project in a Det'on Cho NUNA joint venture - said the move will not impact the company's ability to bid on major remediation contracts with its partners.

"We've always had the capacity to do the jobs that we take on," Pearson said. "We've been involved in many of the Northern projects and certainly our experience in the North has helped us to take on the bigger projects."

NUNA plans to bid on components of the Giant Mine remediation project, which will see roughly half a billion dollars in contracts tendered over the 10-year cleanup of the heavily contaminated site.

Contracts slated to be tendered in the coming months include the demolition of the roaster complex - a series of buildings where the ore was originally milled; underground stabilization; and operation of hazardous materials storage areas.

The Crown surplus items, which include ice augers, chain saws, haul trucks, boom trucks, and all-terrain vehicles, have been up for online bidding since Aug. 21.

The sale is scheduled to close tomorrow.

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