Employer failed to meet government’s berm construction, says provincial minister
The Yukon government has engaged contractors to design and build a safety berm at the site of the Eagle Gold mine landslide after a heap leach failure late in June.
The berm is critical to ensure that groundwater monitoring and interception wells can be installed safely, according to the provincial government.
“The groundwater wells are required to monitor groundwater for potential contamination and to pump potentially contaminated groundwater to surface for treatment and safe discharge,” said the government.
Victoria Gold fails to meet government requirement
This comes after Victoria Gold failed to meet the government requirements that Yukon imposed following the landslide.
“Our directions to the company required them to start construction of an access road to the berm construction area by Sunday, to develop an execution plan for berm construction by Monday and to start construction of the berm itself by Wednesday,” said Lauren Haney, Yukon’s deputy minister of energy, mines and resources in a report from The Canadian Press (CP).
“The company has not met these deadlines.”
Government contractors are in a “holding pattern” until they can safely access the site, said Haney, according to the report.
This work is expected to take around two weeks to complete and groundwater wells can be installed in certain locations as construction progresses once it is safe to do so, according to the provincial government.
However, there is a forest fire burning along the access road, which may impede the contractors access to the site, said the government.
Haney said that the government is only focused on “specific environmental protection measures,” not taking over the site, according to the CP report.
Victoria Gold is still responsible for cleanup after the June 24 slide of about two million tonnes of cyanide-contaminated ore and the escape of millions of litres of cyanide solution, Haney said.
Water contamination concerns
Following the landslide, two experts raised water contamination concerns. The heap leach facility at the mine site uses a cyanide solution to percolate through ore, stacked in 10-metre layers, to dissolve the gold, according to a CBC report. And this is a cause for concern, said the experts.
Recent water samples from near the Eagle Gold mine show increasing cyanide levels in the groundwater. However, it’s still not enough to be dangerous to aquatic life, one expert said in the CP report.
“Faster groundwater paths are the main concern at this time. As such, our groundwater monitoring efforts focus on areas in close proximity to the mine site,” said Tyler Williams, a water resource scientist with the Yukon Department of Environment. “While there are limitations in being able to collect groundwater data, we are confident that our surface water monitoring in Haggart Creek will detect any contamination leaving the mine site.”
The June 24 incident was the second landslide at the site just this year, according to a report from The Northern Miner.
