WC136 MayJune 2024 - Magazine - Page 27
ern winters, delivery is by truck due to a lack of underground
infrastructure. “Water is a human right,” Sangris said. “If the
mine wasn’t here, I would set up a pump station down by the
lake and give all my members good drinking water.”
Without question, any resolution to Giant Mine’s impacts
stands to be complicated and costly. Arn Keeling, a geographer
at Memorial University in Newfoundland who has studied
abandoned mine sites in Canada’s Far North, has documented
historical and ongoing impacts to communities and the environment surrounding Giant Mine through the Toxic Legacies
Project, and says remediation activities have largely been
perceived as expert driven, highly technical, and thus lacking
legitimacy. However, Keeling says new mechanisms such as
the Giant Mine Oversight Board have given Dene and other
communities a voice.“There’s been much better communication
and increasing levels of community engagement in the actual
remediation planning itself,” Keeling said.
Still, Keeling points to lingering concerns over specific details
of CIRNAC’s remediation strategy. A prime example is the
planned thermosyphon technology to freeze the underground
storage systems, essentially mimicking permafrost, to prevent water from infiltrating into the chambers and mobilizing the highly
soluble arsenic trioxide.
“People wanted to better understand that proposal,” Keeling
added, explaining that arsenic is stable and its toxicity is exceedingly slow to degrade, so it will need care and attention potentially forever, much like underground nuclear waste repositories with
radioactive lifetimes estimated in the tens of thousands of years.
“Water is so much a part of people’s everyday life. It all goes
back to the poisoning of the water by the mine itself during its
operation, and ongoing concerns about fish, drinking water, and
the future safety of their territories.”
While remediators and local communities struggle to address
the nuances and practicalities of planning ostensibly for forever,
Giant Mine isn’t alone. CIRNAC has some 165 abandoned
and contaminated sites within its purview, each with a unique
storyline. In central Yukon, for instance, Faro Mine, once
considered the world’s largest open-pit lead and zinc mine,
now ranks as one of Canada’s most complicated mine cleanup projects.At 25 square kilometres, Faro Mine compares in
size with Victoria, B.C., so the presence of 70 million tons of
tailings and 386 million tons of waste rock presents a massive
challenge.“You’ve got different contaminant issues and chemical
reactions happening,” Lewis Rifkind, a mining analyst with the
Yukon Conservation Society, said. “There isn’t just one single
smoking gun when it comes to water contamination. There are
many smoking guns.”
Plans for a new permanent water treatment plant include
high-density sludge treatment, and filtration and conveyance
systems designed to operate seasonally and address complica-
WAT E R C A N A D A . N E T
tions such as excessive concentrations of zinc and other metals
in the water and soil, and acid rock drainage, where metals leach
from previously unexposed rock. Like Giant Mine, Faro Mine
also stands to require monitoring into perpetuity to ensure it
meets regulatory standards and to address anticipated climate
change impacts such as flooding and loss of permafrost.
Despite the complexities which lie ahead, Rifkind said ongoing research and developments in water treatment and other
remediation technologies offer room for optimism. “I’ve been
in this job for more than a decade, and when I consider some
of the systems that were proposed a decade ago, there really is
an improvement.” Rifkind also noted increased participation
and input from First Nations, and the potential for longer-range
consequences to be considered when decisions are made.
“With enough time and money, I suspect the cleanup crews
will eventually get a handle on most of it, but not all of it,”
Rifkind said. “We’ve made such a mess of such a large area that
we’ll have to treat the water in perpetuity. But I’d like to think
we’re seeing a change in the way we’re thinking about some of
these issues. Back in the wild west days, mines were just considered progress. There was no stopping them. Now, I think we’re
starting to take more of a thoughtful approach.”
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WATER C AN ADA • M AY/JUNE 2024
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