"The Giant Yellowknife Gold Mine began production in the 1940s in a region that is unusually rich in gold-bearing rock. Unfortunately, that rock also contains high levels of a naturally-occurring variation of arsenic - arsenic trioxide."
-Norm Zigarlick, April 2014
Most of the stories Norm Zigarlick has told me are exactly as one might expect from someone who has worked in underground mines, as a bush pilot and on the land with many First Nations people.
A fascinating blend of a lifetime of experiences and campfire tales that grow taller with each telling, most are colourful threads that make up the tapestry of Canada's Far North.
But the history of a 60-year accumulation of toxins abandoned by a succession of owners at the Giant Yellowknife Gold Mine is deadly serious.
It is a tale the Dene First Nations wish had never happened in the region they and their ancestors have called home for centuries.
Starkly undressed, this is a story about one country's accumulation of a toxin in large enough proportions to contaminate the 10th largest lake in the world.
The country is Canada. The toxin is arsenic trioxide - a byproduct of the Giant gold-mining operations just a stone's throw from two of the largest Dene communities. The lake is Great Slave Lake and its entire river system.
The bottom line of this story, however, is less about how the toxin came to be there, than to ask when Canada's federal government will grasp the nettle to ensure that a 237,000-tonne dump can safely be defused or eliminated and prevented from ever happening again.
The stage was set in 1935 when, according to the historical timeline detailed by Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (aandc-aandc. gc.ca), Burwash Yellowknife Mines Ltd. staked 21 mining claims, including the future Giant Mine.
The pace accelerated two years later when YK Gold Mines Ltd., acquired the Burwash assets. But it was not until 1948 when the first gold bar was poured and mine tailings were dumped into nearby Back Bay, that the disturbing story was born.
All told, between 1935 and today, the saga only partially covered by the official timeline details poisoned drinking water, community health problems and contamination of soil and onsite buildings.
Toxic airborne emissions were recorded at 7,500 kilograms/day and arsenic trioxide dust was pumped into underground storage chambers in the hope that permafrost would contain it. Corporate takeovers, receiverships and government-to-government transfers of jurisdictional management, regulations and liabilities were the order of the day.
There is no doubt that the Canada we enjoy today was built largely by the mining, forestry and other resource industries.
But the history of the Giant Yellowknife Mine is a blueprint that shows why people today have such litle trust that corporations will put citizens' well-being ahead of shareholders' profits, or that government regulators will protect the best interests of Canadians and their environment.
In 1997, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, then owner Royal Oak Mines, Environment Canada, the government of the Northwest Territories and the City of Yellowknife co-hosted "a technical workshop to discuss the management of arsenic trioxide at Giant Mine."
But it was not until 2000, when SRK Consulting was named technical advisor to Aboriginal Affairs, that one senses federal agencies had awakened to the seriousness of the situation.
Four years later, Aboriginal Affairs decided to "proceed with the Frozen Block Method as the preferred long-term management alternative for storage of arsenic trioxide dust."
Yet even then, it would take nine years before the 245-page, June 2013 decision of the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board was released, which stated in part, "it is the board's opinion that the proposed Giant Mine Remediation Project is likely to cause significant adverse impacts on the environment, including [those] arising from the effects of past activities."
The report then proposed nine measures aimed at mitigating those effects and ended by recommending the project be approved subject to those measures being implemented.
As this column winds down, concern is still being expressed that relying on permafrost and man-made coolant devices for 100 years may not be enough to prevent the highly-soluble arsenic trioxide from leaching into and poisoning Great Slave Lake and other natural watercourses that surround the mine-site.
After 60 years and millions spent on committees, studies and 300-page technical consulting advice, it is disturbing that neither Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada Minister Bernard Valcourt nor the federal government have signed off on the $1-billion Mackenzie Valley clean-up plan for the Giant Mine legacy.
Zigarlick believes that, "according to current health standards, at 60 per cent purity there is enough arsenic trioxide in that pile to kill the population of the planet many times over."
Prime Minister Harper and his minister have the science on their desks - the Dene and Canadian taxpayers are asking, "Why the delay?" [email protected]
