Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Jan 12/00) - A report prepared for the territorial and federal governments estimates surface cleanup of Giant Mine will cost taxpayers at least $16.3 million.

Prepared by the Deton'Cho Environmental Alliance, the report indicates the accuracy of the estimate was limited by a number of clean-up issues that have yet to be worked out.

The most significant unanswered question is how the arsenic trioxide dust stored underground at the mine will be dealt with.

"The issue of the stored arsenic trioxide and the selected remedial methods will have a significant impact on potential environmental concerns and safety hazards associated with the surface..." noted the report.

Hazards posed by arsenic stored underground were not part of the study.

The report relied on site inspections, a review of environmental studies of the site, and interviews with past mine employees, regulators and local residents.

The $50,000 report identified 15 areas in which additional environmental work needed to be done.

These areas include:

- determine whether any mercury contamination occurred as a result of the reported dumping of tailings into Back Bay;

- determine the environmental hazards, if any, associated with the dumping of an estimated 3,000 to 13,000 barrels of arsenic trioxide waste into tailings ponds;

- undertake a detailed study of the tailings containment areas, including methods of dust suppression; and,

- identify areas that have been contaminated by fuel spills.

DIAND spokesperson Dave Nutter said over the past two weeks workers have been on site testing soils to identify levels of contamination of areas around fuel storage sites.

Nutter said DIAND will also drill through the ice on Back Bay this winter to test the lake bottom for contaminants.

"If there was mercury in those tailings, my suspicion is it would have shown up earlier, because we have sampled Back Bay in the past and there's never been any evidence of mercury," said Nutter.

DIAND plans to spend $450,000 on clean-up related work at Giant this fiscal year. Included in that work is finding a building to store the drums of arsenic trioxide dust and other hazardous materials currently stored outside.

The department recently completed a study on different ways of preventing contaminated dust from being blown off the tailings ponds.

Nutter said the issue of how the territorial and federal governments are going to share the cost of the surface clean-up is yet to be resolved.

"We're going to be talking later this month about that," said Nutter.