Cindy MacDougall
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Nov 22/99) - A Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DIAND) official says despite Royal Oak's bankruptcy, the company will be held accountable for cyanide-laced tailings at the Colomac mine site leaking into a nearby lake.

Floyd Adlem said he hopes recent charges laid against Royal Oak under the Northwest Territories Water Act and the federal Fisheries Act will send a strong message to Northern resource industries.

"I think it's important people understand people and (industry site) operators will be held accountable for their actions, no matter what their financial position," Adlem said.

Colomac is located near Indin Lake, about 200 air kilometres north of Yellowknife. It was mothballed by Royal Oak in 1997.

Royal Oak faces a total of six charges, five under the NWT Water Act and one under the Fisheries Act.

The company is accused of allowing cyanide-laced tailings to leak into Duck Lake between October 1997 and October 1999, thereby endangering people, fish, property and the environment.

DIAND's water resource inspection office also accuses Royal Oak of lying to or misleading water resources officer Ron Breadmore, and not following his orders to stop the leak and clean up the site.

Finally, the company allegedly violated its water licence through these actions.

Breadmore could not be reached for comment, but Adlem spoke on behalf of the inspectors and DIAND.

He said even though Royal Oak is defunct, he believes the case is not a waste of energy.

"There are still some (company) assets around, and the principals of Royal Oak are still pursuing mining elsewhere," he said. "These charges will now be on the public record."

Andrew Spaulding of Ecology North said he is pleased charges have been laid, but wonders why it took so long.

"Why did they not do this in 1997, instead of waiting until the mine is bankrupt?" he said. "It seems a little bit late."

Adlem said the department placed the charges soon after it concluded investigating.

"The inspectors have been working on this, it's been under investigation for quite some time," he said.

Colomac has had a number of tailings crises since the site stopped producing gold and went into care and maintenance mode in 1997.

The most serious occurred in the winter of 1998, when one of the mine's tailing ponds threatened to overflow the banks and spill a mix of arsenic, cyanide and other toxic waste into the environment. At one point, the effluent was just 15 centimetres below the overflow mark.

Mine workers at the site and DIAND officials managed to avoid the overflow by pumping the excess into an unlined, open pit.

Royal Oak was also accused of violating its water licence during public hearings on the licence's renewal, held in 1998.

Since then, the site has been taken over by Royal Oak's interim receiver, PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The case has been scheduled for Yellowknife territorial court Dec. 14 for election and plea.

Royal Oak will be represented in court by Bayly Williams, the Yellowknife law firm working for PricewaterhouseCoopers.

At press time, the lawyers involved in the case could not be reached for comment.