Victoria Gold’s Eagle Mine, which closed in June after its gold-processing facility collapsed and spilled cyanide into the encompassing rivers, will price about C$150 million ($111 million) to revive, in line with preliminary estimates from Yukon Territory, a area of simply 46,000 people who borders Alaska. But when historical past is any information, the associated fee might develop into a lot larger, warn activists and trade watchdogs.
“Price overruns are completely regular on this enterprise, and all of it will get paid by the taxpayer,” mentioned Jamie Kneen, head of Mining Watch Canada, an advocacy group. “I wouldn’t in any respect be shocked to see it price way more than what’s at the moment being mentioned, simply because we’ve got always seen that these issues price a number of occasions the unique estimate.”
Canadians are nonetheless on the hook for long-forgotten mining disasters within the Yukon, which has been a hub for gold miners for the reason that Klondike Gold Rush greater than a century in the past.
The Yukon’s Faro Mine — roughly the scale of Albany, New York and as soon as the world’s largest open pit lead-zinc mine — was deserted in 1998 and continues to be present process an in depth and complex remediation course of at this time. In 2002, Canada’s authorities projected the remediation to price round C$200 million; in 2022, it revised the determine to C$5 billion.
Big Mine, a equally deserted gold mine within the neighboring Northwest Territories, is now projected to price C$3.9 billion to scrub, in line with Canada’s atmosphere division.
Yukon’s authorities mentioned the price of the Eagle Mine cleanup will probably be coated via authorities loans to accounting agency PricewaterhouseCoopers, which was assigned to handle Victoria Gold after the mining firm was positioned into receivership in August. It started lending funds for the cleanup final month, advancing C$50 million to PwC to cowl the primary levels of remediation.
The loans are imagined to be repaid later via gross sales of Victoria Gold’s property, the worth of which is being decided by PwC, in line with Yukon officers.
“We acknowledge issues concerning potential prices to taxpayers following the Eagle Gold Mine heap leach failure, which is why we pushed for receivership to assist forestall this situation,” Yukon authorities spokesperson Laura Seeley mentioned in an emailed assertion. “Receivership helps forestall taxpayers from overlaying cleanup prices by prioritizing the usage of Victoria Gold’s monetary assets and property to fund the work.”
Patrons needed
Discovering consumers for a distressed mining agency’s operations, nonetheless, isn’t any assure. PwC finally did not discover a purchaser for the close by Minto copper-gold mine final yr after it was assigned the receiver to the asset, which had been deserted by its homeowners. It additionally did not discover a purchaser for the Wolverine Mine, a zinc operation, after appearing as receiver of the Yukon operation since 2019.
Eagle Mine was Victoria Gold’s sole working mine, and the corporate owns few different vital property that might generate sufficient to repay Yukon’s authorities.
PwC didn’t reply to requests for remark.
“Now we have only a few examples, in current reminiscence, of efficiently reclaimed mines,” Kate White, chief of the Yukon’s official opposition social gathering, the New Democratic Get together, mentioned in an interview.
The catastrophe has prompted officers to revisit its regulatory method to mining within the territory. Within the wake of the collapse, Yukon’s authorities suspended the issuance of latest licenses tied to gold processing, pending the end result of an impartial evaluate of the spill at Eagle Mine.
(By Jacob Lorinc)