Clean-up gets $1 million boost
Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Dec 22/00) - The snail's pace clean-up at the Giant and Colomac mines inched forward with another $1.3 million in federal funding that arrived in late September.
"We were able to get going again on the surface reclamation and get back more aggressively on our arsenic trioxide investigations," said Dave Nutter, head of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development's Royal Oak project team.
Clean-up of Giant and Colomac became a federal responsibility last year when Royal Oak, owner of both gold mines, went bankrupt.
This year, funding for the clean-up work was late and very thin. Nutter requested $8.8 million for work at both mines and received $3 million.
Because of more pressing environmental problems at Colomac, located 120 kilometres North of Yellowknife, all but $800,000 of the $3 million was to go to Colomac.
Waste site secured
The hazardous waste dump at the northwest tailings pond is the most pressing problem in the surface clean-up at Giant. It holds more than 1,000 drums of arsenic trioxide and other substances as well as asbestos. Some of the drums are leaking.
"We've cleaned up everything possible there," Nutter said. "There's a little bit frozen to the ground that we can't get at without doing more damage than good, but the vast majority has been picked up."
Waste batteries have also been collected and will be shipped south with a load from the city dump this winter.
Arsenic options
The September funding is also financing a study of options for an estimated 270,000 tons of arsenic trioxide dust stored in underground vaults at Giant.
A report on will be ready by March, but choosing the final solution will probably take longer, said Nutter.
A report on tailings that have eroded into Back Bay is still in limbo. The sampling was done a year ago, but the consultants are still working on a plan of action.
Nutter said getting the report has taken "far too long" but said analysis of the sampling has eased the pressure to act.
"I've been told we don't have a problem with mercury, I've been told we don't have a problem with acid generation," said Nutter. "That being the case there's less of a time pressure."
