Yukon’s government has been left to pay for the clean-up of a decommissioned mine that could leach toxic metals into Kluane River, raising questions about the federal government’s decision to let the owner walk away decades ago.

A nine-hectare tailings pond containing roughly 170,000 tonnes of tailings at the Wellgreen property, where rare earth metals such as copper, nickel and gold were mined in the 1970s, could be generating acid that reacts with metals in the tailings, making them toxic. This poses a risk to surface and groundwater in the area, as well as aquatic life.  

The mine site is made up of two leases, one of which is still being mined by Nickel Creek Platinum. The Yukon government issued an order in council in  2012 to block future staking  of the other parcel — containing an old tailings pond and mill previously used by Hudson Bay Mining — to prevent further environmental damage.

A portion of the Wellgreen Project site requires remediation to prevent toxic metals from potentially leaching into surrounding ground and surface water, while the other portion, seen here, is actively mined. Photo: mining.com / Flickr

Just who is tasked with cleaning up the site, which is located 27 kilometres northwest of Burwash Landing, harkens back to the transfer of power from the federal government to the territory in 2003 — known as devolution — which gave Yukon control over natural resources such as minerals. When this transfer happened, the site wasn’t classified as a Type II mine — an area deemed to pose significant liabilities that would be remediated with federal funding. Now that it has been deemed enough of an environmental liability to be a concern, the Yukon government and, by extension, Yukoners are on the hook for remediation. 

Paul Inglis, manager of the assessment remediation unit, a branch of Environment Yukon, said the clean-up tab could be $15 million based on recently contracted assessment work. According to the Yukon government’s contract registry, the territory has spent nearly $1 million related to inspection and reclamation work at the site over the past decade. 

“We’re not quite sure if the Yukon government is going to have to pay for the whole thing or if there’s going to be contributions from somewhere else,” Inglis said, noting that it’s unclear at this point where those other funds could come from.

“It needs to be cleaned up before it becomes an issue.”

Environmental concerns at the Wellgreen site 

There are three ingredients that make acid generation a very real prospect in the old Wellgreen tailings pond — sulphide, air and water, which, when they react, create acid. That acid then converts metals into a more active form that can pose a significant risk should it reach ground or surface water. 

“It’s those metals that are toxic to aquatic life,” Inglis said. 

Kluane River, home to fish such as chinook salmon and Arctic grayling, is roughly one kilometre east of the site. There’s a spillway from the tailings pond that leads to nearby Quill Creek, which drains into the Kluane River.

“We have the conditions that mean that, at some point, it’s likely that there would be acid generation into either the groundwater or surface water that flows over the tailings,” Inglis said. Though he added that it would be rare for surface water that comes into contact with tailings to reach the creek, as it usually dries up or goes into the ground before making it that far.

Wellgreen’s remediation history and why it still isn’t remediated

Hudson Bay Mining, now Hudbay Minerals, operated the Wellgreen mine until 1973, then the mill was shuttered and dismantled, leaving behind debris and thousands of tonnes of tailings. The company attempted to stabilize the site during the next three years by submerging the tailings and increasing the height of the tailings dam.

“The feds basically said make sure it’s covered by water and you’re good to go,” Inglis said. “It was effectively abandoned.”

While the company had met the standards of the day, it became clear that the plan wasn’t sufficient, with inflows not large enough to adequately cover the tailings pond with an even layer of water throughout the year, increasing the risk for acid generation, Inglis said. There’s also no liner on the tailings pond, he said, raising the possibility of metals leaching into groundwater.

The Wellgreen Project site is in southwest Yukon, near the Kluane National Park boundary. Photo: mining.com / Flickr

According to the remediation proposal, samples collected in the immediate area of the tailings pond had the highest concentration of metals, but those taken farther away, including in Quill Creek, had not been impacted by the metals. 

Nonetheless, seeing the risks, the Yukon government stepped in to complete remediation. While the predecessor of Hudbay Minerals — which remains in operation today with two mines in Canada and more abroad — had followed the rules, the rules have since changed, rendering the reclamation work inadequate.

Corporate responsibility and financial security

The Wellgreen property raises questions about how long companies are responsible for tidying up former operations, said Lewis Rifkind, mining analyst at the Yukon Conservation Society.

“Is there a legal responsibility or not? That doesn’t seem clear,” he said. “While I look at this through green goggles, old abandoned sites, when they become toxic hazards, you tend to go after whoever created the mess and ask them to clean it up. It’s an interesting legal question and it hasn’t been resolved.”

The undercurrent to this, Rifkind continued, is why this site wasn’t considered a Type II mine when devolution occurred. Rifkind pointed to the case of former asbestos mine Clinton Creek, which received Type II designation and in turn the funding attached to the  federal government’s Northern mine reclamation program. 

Unremediated Yukon asbestos mine poses health hazards, flood risk 42 years after closing

“It seems unclear how sites are determined to be Type II,” Rifkind said, adding that the Wellgreen site appears to pose enough of an environmental risk to warrant giving it Type II status. Doing so, he said, would have insulated Yukoners from paying for its clean-up.

In a submission to the Yukon Mineral Development Strategy, an independent panel tasked with recommending improvements to the territory’s mining regime, Kluane First Nation says the Wellgreen site poses a risk to the environment and the nation’s traditional territory. The First Nation said that a long-term solution is needed to avoid repeat problems, including the potential for more unremediated mines to surface in the future.

The Yukon government “must implement a comprehensive system to deal with abandoned sites,” it says. “While Wellgreen is tied to the past and murky, future abandonment of sites will occur and [the Yukon government] must be prepared to address those issues with mechanisms such as increased security amounts.”

Chief Bob Dickson wasn’t immediately available for comment.

Where remediation of the Wellgreen property is at now 

The Yukon government’s remediation proposal, currently being assessed by the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board, says the preferred clean-up option is  containing the tailings with a cover layered with clay and soil that will ultimately be revegetated, and using drainage ditches to divert surface water from the tailings area.  

But the project in front of the assessment board only accounts for 30 per cent of the remediation design, Inglis said. It will be the basis for continued work to fully reclaim the site.

Remediation work is slated to start in the spring of 2022, Inglis said.

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Companies looking to use native seeds and plants for mine remediation are getting a boost from Yukon University through a new revegetation study.

The goal of the study is to develop a greater understanding of the best plants to choose, and the conditions they need, to help remediate disturbed lands.  

“There’s a lack of knowledge regarding mine revegetation in the North,” said Guillaume Nielsen, the industrial research chair in northern mine remediation at Yukon University who launched the study in collaboration with the University of Alberta. 

“We don’t know how to do revegetation in the North because of our specific climate.”

He also noted the lack of a Yukon seed bank for industrial use is part of the challenge.

“Without this research, we might continue to encounter failed attempts to do mine revegetation or continue to do revegetation projects in a way that does not align with First Nations’ expectations,” he said.

The four-year project will focus on the hard rock industry, and some of the largest miners in the territory — both in operation and awaiting the green light from the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board — have signed on to it, Nielsen said. 

Companies such as Victoria Gold, whose Eagle Gold Mine is the largest producing gold mine in Yukon’s history, are funding the research.

Newmont’s Coffee Gold mine to host research test sites

Next month, researchers will select parcels of land on the Coffee Gold mine property south of Dawson City to study the feasibility of revegetation there. (Newmont, the company that owns the proposed Coffee project, is also a funder for the study.) 

By production value, Coffee Gold could eventually eclipse Eagle Gold Mine’s production and will have a footprint of 22,000 hectares — equal to about half of the City of Whitehorse. It’s currently under review by the environmental assessment board and a production start date hasn’t yet been set. 

There are two operating mines in Yukon currently — Minto and Eagle. Coffee Gold and Casino are both under review. Map: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

“While the Coffee project is still only in exploration, planning for closure allows us to make better decisions in early mine design,” said Lillian Chow, a company spokesperson, in an email to The Narwhal, adding that using native plants is baked into its reclamation plans. 

The research project will include two one-hectare test plots at the mine site — one above the alpine treeline and another below it. Green alder, soapberry and white mountain avens may be planted, though the species selected could change over time. 

At mine sites, tree cover is often cleared away, meaning there’s no shelter for plants from strong winds and snow, for instance. Researchers are going to look into using native shrubs that could provide that shelter to other plants, which Nielsen said could increase rates of survival. 

He said the Coffee Gold site is ideal because it can act as a barometer for future revegetation work across the territory. Exposure to the sun, moisture, soil nutrients and climate change predictions will be assessed to select the plants that are hardened to potentially harsh conditions.

“It’s central Yukon, so it has a climate condition that is kind of representative of the rest of the Yukon,” Nielsen said. “The knowledge we produce has to be usable for the rest of the North.”

There’s a short growing season in the territory, which is compounded by a lack of organic material, dry soils and high concentrations of metal at mine sites, according to a 2017 Yukon Research Centre report. Native plants are the best candidates for revegetating these spaces because they have the right genetics to grow and survive in Yukon and using them ensures that invasive species aren’t brought in.

First Nations input is essential to the research project, Nielsen said, as they supply traditional knowledge regarding the local flora, fauna and changes to their environment. Coupling this with scientific research means the chances of success is higher, he said, adding that variables such as growing plants that sustain caribou herds or fostering the growth of certain medicinal plants will be considered. 

While a proposed research plan has been completed, the university’s partners, including the University of Alberta, need to sign off on it before it’s made public.

First Nations are tapping into mine revegetation potential

The community of Ross River, located in southeastern Yukon, is working with the university on a project of its own that involves turning a native plant nursery into a profitable business venture by selling seeds and seedlings to companies and governments charged with cleaning up some of the most contaminated mine sites in the territory.

Stanley Noel, chief executive director of Dena Nezziddi Development Corp., the economic development arm of Ross River Dena Council, told The Narwhal recently that there are billions of dollars’ worth of remediation work to be done on sites such as Faro and Wolverine mines. Native plant revegetation could pose one opportunity to both restore mine sites and provide further financial security for communities.

This Yukon First Nation wants to use native plants to help remediate abandoned mine sites

Yukon Seed and Restoration is another company that the university is working with on mine site revegetation. Launched in 2018, the business, the majority of which is owned by Na-Cho Nyäk Dun Development Corporation, harvests wild, native seeds and sells them to companies — Victoria Gold, for instance. It also provides recommendations for reclamation plans that involve the use of native seed species. 

This summer, the company intends to collect between 100 and 1,000 kilograms of wild seeds, said Eri Boye, co-owner of Yukon Seed and Restoration and principal at Core Geoscience Services.

Boye said the company is in the process of building up a stockpile of local seeds and provided the university with upward of 13,000 wild seeds for the research project.

He sees this research as a benefit for Yukon as it provides a template to work from on remediation projects. And, he added, it won’t only apply to mine sites, with other areas such as highways, transmission lines and trails also requiring different scales of restoration. 

While this year’s field season was pushed back due to COVID-19, Nielsen said planting on the test sites should begin in the fall or next spring. 

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With unreclaimed mine sites littering Kaska territory, the community of Ross River is hatching a plan to help solve the problem: an industrial-scale nursery replete with native plants.

In southeastern Yukon, the Faro, Ketza and Wolverine mines have all seen their owners go bankrupt, leaving behind contamination and hefty cleanup tabs. Here, the community of Ross River, which is less than 180 kilometres away from all three mines, sees an opportunity. 

The native plant nursery will be the first of its kind in Yukon, according to the project’s organizers, with a scale and mandate of supporting major reclamation projects that sets it apart from other nurseries in the territory. 

The Yukon Research Centre at Yukon University quantified the need for and barriers to accessing native plants for reclamation efforts in a 2017 report. This work drew on interviews with ecologists, consultants and industry players and found that using native plants was preferred and generally considered best practice in remediation, but was not always an option due to access.

Ross River’s native plant nursery could remedy this.

“We want to return our lands back to what they were,” said Jody Inkster, environmental manager and biologist at Dena Cho Environmental and Remediation Inc., which is leading the nursery project on behalf of the Ross River Dena Council. “It’s going to take a long time to do that, and to begin that process, we need to bring back the vegetation. Right now, we’re left with these abandoned mine sites that we’re trying to clean up for future generations.”

Why native plants?

Mine sites in Yukon can be harsh environments for plants to grow. Not only is there a short growing season in the territory, but there’s a lack of organic material, dry soils and high concentrations of metal in these sites, according to the Yukon Research Centre report. Native plants are best, as they are adapted to grow and survive in Yukon. Plus, using them ensures that invasive species aren’t introduced.

While the Yukon government requires mining companies to replant lands they’ve disturbed as part of the reclamation process, there’s no clear stipulation that native plants be used, the Yukon Research Centre found. Regulations allow instead for use of what’s available and adaptable to the local environment.

Ross River’s plans would ensure that different types of local grasses, shrubs and trees, for instance, are available, while removing transportation costs from producers in southern regions. And, once firmly established, there could be potential to sell to buyers across the borders of the Northwest Territories and Alaska that have similar, and similarly adapted, flora.

“Using native plants, they’re adapted to where they grow,” Inkster said. “They’re better at establishing themselves, and we’re not introducing plants from down south from Alberta. They have the genetics to grow more successfully. It just makes sense and uses traditional knowledge, as well.”

The business case for a nursery

The cash cow for the nursery will be larger sites in need of remediation, such as the Wolverine and Faro mines. The cleanup costs for the latter, a zinc and lead mine that was once the largest in the world, could require $500 million from federal coffers (thanks to its bankrupt owner). 

Remediation at Faro mine is expected to begin in 2024 and will require a lot of revegetation work — more than 600 acres worth, or up to 200,000 seedlings per year over 10 to 15 years of work, according to the Yukon Research Centre.

The Wolverine mine is another candidate for locally sourced seedlings, though a start date for reclamation hasn’t yet been determined. In 2018, the Yukon government requested an additional $25 million from the bankrupt Yukon Zinc company to remediate the former underground mine that primarily extracted zinc. A recent Yukon Supreme Court decision waived this request, while ruling that any further money squeezed from the site — through the liquidation of assets, for instance — will go to the territorial government for reclamation work.

“These are, collectively, multi-billions of dollars of remediation work,” said Stanley Noel, chief executive officer of Dena Nezziddi Development, the economic development arm of Ross River Dena Council, which owns Dena Cho Environmental and Remediation. “Those are our critical clients.”

The Faro Mine was abandoned in 1998, leaving behind 320 million tonnes of waste rock and 70 million tonnes of tailings. Photo: Matt Jacques / The Narwhal

A rendering of the Ross River Dena Council’s proposed native plant nursery. Image: Dena Nezziddi Development Corporation

But it isn’t only the delinquent miners and abandoned contaminated sites of today that Ross River has in its sights. Mining companies still operating in Yukon, or still working towards opening their doors, will be the reclamation projects of the future and an opportunity to get it right. 

Mining company BMC Minerals is already on board with the idea of a native plant nursery for industry, contributing $35,000 for a feasibility study of the project (the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency contributed another $80,000, while the community of Ross River kicked in the rest, but declined to share the total amount). 

BMC’s Kudz Ze Kayah project, a proposed open-pit and underground mine roughly 115 kilometres south of Ross River, is working its way through the environmental assessment process right now. Noel said the company has expressed interest in buying seeds or seedlings, though nothing has been confirmed and prices haven’t been set. 

“We’re not looking to do charity here,”  Noel said. “We are looking to create a business that is profitable, that gets us involved in a meaningful and sustainable way. We’re responding to an opportunity, more than anything, and we’re going to do everything we can to incorporate what the community needs and wants.”

A side project to address food security

Like much of the North, food prices are high in Ross River, Inkster said. The grocery store relies on truckloads of food making their way up from the south and any delay en route can mean bare shelves and spoiled produce.

There is a seasonal greenhouse in Ross River, capable of yielding some fresh produce, Noel said, but they hope to increase that capacity through the nursery project.

Once the nursery is established, the idea is it will bankroll the construction of a hydroponic system for food production, built within shipping containers. This would offer year-round access to fresh food, but could be a long way off, Noel said, possibly three years down the road.

Fix the environment first, then reap the rewards — that’s the idea behind the whole project.

Next steps for the native plant nursery

Dena Cho is looking at the ins and outs of financing the roughly $1-million project to bring it to fruition. Drawing on recommendations in the feasibility study, they’re also sketching out different options for the scale of the project, and partnerships with other Yukon First Nations.

It could take roughly two years to produce the quantity of seeds and seedlings required to follow through with remediation efforts, Noel said. But they’ll hold off on propagation until they have confirmed clients on board.

“We’re working to identify some fall season clients,” Noel said. “If we know we have the right clients, we might be able to start our project this fall, but it’s very ambitious and very unlikely at this point in time, especially with the coronavirus.”

Whether those clients will come forward in such uncertain times is hard to say, but the need for plants, built for Yukon’s environment, will only increase in the coming years as remediation plans move ahead at large, abandoned mine sites, the Yukon Research Centre noted in its 2017 report.

The people here want to nurse the local environment back to health, turning the page on operators that have scarred the land and left. 

“The community of Ross River has seen some of the most egregious remediation and contamination sites in the Yukon,” Noel said. “There’s a real long history of things not being done the proper way.”

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Yukon’s Wolverine mine, which primarily extracted zinc before it closed in 2015, has a storied history of failure. 

It opened and closed with only a few years of production, due to plummeting stocks. It left a flooded underground shaft and contaminated water in its wake. And in 2018, the Yukon government was forced to step in to start environmental monitoring as the mine site had been neglected by Yukon Zinc, owned by the private Chinese company Jinduicheng Canada Resources Corp. 

Now the bill is growing every year to keep the Wolverine mine from polluting the landscape around it, the territory’s mine closure fund is drying up and its bankrupt owner has walked away — in a situation one mining analyst says reveals flaws in Yukon’s bonding system for mines. 

Lewis Rifkind, the mining analyst at the Yukon Conservation Society, says the case of Wolverine mine reveals how nearsighted the current security regime is, leaving territorial taxpayers on the hook for cleanup costs down the road.

A recent Yukon Supreme Court decision confirms the Yukon government will be the first recipient of dollars flowing from bankruptcy proceedings for Yukon Zinc, the company that built Wolverine mine in southeast Yukon. On May 26, a judge ruled that once the government spends the  roughly $10.6 million in bonding already held to clean up the Wolverine mine site, any money acquired through the liquidation of assets, for instance, will go toward its continued remediation work.

This is the first instance of the territorial government taking a mining company to court for defaulting on its claim. The territory only took over management of resources and remediation from the federal government in 2003, at which point its regime for collecting securities was written.

What this first court case doesn’t do is affect that underlying system, Rifkind says, adding that how much a mining company must pay in a security deposit upfront is “opaque.”

“It would appear that it always comes up short when it comes to security,” Rifkind says. “The Wolverine mine is the prime example.”

How Yukon’s mine securities work —  and didn’t work at Wolverine mine

Before a mine goes into operation, a required security deposit is decided on between the Yukon government and the mining company. That figure represents the estimated cost of cleaning up the mine after it’s no longer operational.

The amount is calculated for mines on a case by case basis, depending on the degree of land the project will disturb, a departmental spokesperson from Yukon’s Department of Energy, Mines and Resources told The Narwhal, adding that ongoing reclamation work throughout the life of the mine can keep security costs down.

The miner has to pay 100 per cent of its security deposit to the Yukon government before it can go into operation. The territorial government reviews that amount every two years and it could increase if, for example, additional infrastructure is built on the mine site.

Location of the Wolverine mine in Yukon. Map: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

In the case of Yukon Zinc, the company paid an initial security deposit of $1.78 million when it received its mining licence in 2006. Commercial production began in 2012 and by 2013 the security increased to $10.6 million. 

A study conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers Inc. last summer, which delved into the strengths and shortcomings of the Yukon government’s security regime system, found the requirement for security to be paid upfront doesn’t necessarily alleviate the financial risks associated with a mine in the long-term.

“The estimated costs for reclamation and closure evolve over the life of the mine, which is why updates to the (quartz mining licence) are required at least every two years. In the case of the Wolverine mine, the company allowed liabilities to increase at the site, a decision that was influenced by their financial difficulties and lack of accountability to shareholders,” it stated.

Considering the unforeseen environmental damage at the site, the government requested an extra $25 million in securities from Yukon Zinc in 2018, arguing the full cost of remediation would now be more than $35 million. This amount was never paid.

In July 2019, the Yukon government petitioned to have Yukon Zinc put into receivership so its assets could be liquidated and those funds put back into cleaning up the mess left by the delinquent miner. That request was granted by the Supreme Court of Yukon on Sept.13, with PricewaterhouseCoopers taking control of proceedings and the mine. Yukon Zinc declared bankruptcy in October 2019.

In its recent ruling, the Yukon Supreme Court waived the territorial government’s request for an additional $25 million — now coming from Yukon Zinc’s bankruptcy proceedings — arguing it wasn’t clear whether that exact amount would be required for the mine clean up. The judge also urged the government to be more proactive in the future, noting such a significant increase to the security over the course of 2018, when the company was already in “financial difficulties,” was not reasonable.

This is also a tough amount to raise for remediation work now that the mine is closed and unlikely to find a buyer.

“The concern is how do you get $35 million out of that site?” Rifkind says. “It’s a bit of a contaminated mess.”

Tracking the money for Wolverine’s remediation

Care and maintenance costs could still increase at the Wolverine mine site, which is something that needs to be watched closely, Rifkind says, as the government quickly eats away at the security in place.  

Last month, the Yukon Supreme Court approved PricewaterhouseCoopers’s request to increase the sum borrowed from the Yukon government to cover the inflating care and maintenance costs at the mine from $3 million to $7.5 million. A government spokesperson confirmed that money would be borrowed from the territorial government but it is unclear where exactly those funds are coming from or whether they’ll be paid back through bankruptcy proceedings.

A spokesperson with Energy, Mines and Resources confirmed that money for treating water at the site is accounting for a “significant portion of the care and maintenance costs.”

When Wolverine’s underground mine flooded in 2017, the resulting contaminated water had to be diverted to the mine’s tailings pond, treated and then discharged. Yukon Zinc was supposed to build a water treatment plant by 2015 as per its licence, issued two years prior. That never happened, so the government was left to build it.

Wolverine mine, between Ross River and Watson Lake, Yukon on Kaska territory. Photo: Yukon government

“The cost of the water treatment plant accounted for approximately 60 per cent of the increase in security that the company has not paid,” says a Yukon government report, noting the government-run plant started discharging treated water last September.

The Yukon government has already directed $5.8 million of the $10.6 million from Yukon Zinc’s security to pay for the cost of work to treat and discharge 15,000 cubic metres of water from the facility, a department of mines spokesperson told The Narwhal earlier this year.

“There are technical issues on-site that can be resolved, but it takes money,” Rifkind says. “The question is: is there enough money, and, if there isn’t, where does the money come from?”

And the longer it takes for remediation work to be completed, the higher the likelihood that security is chewed up by ongoing care and maintenance costs, such as dealing with contaminated water, Rifkind says. 

He adds it shouldn’t take a court decision for taxpayers to be privy to the fact that mine care and maintenance costs are climbing, and these costs could land on them. 

What needs to change to ensure taxpayers aren’t on hook for future mine cleanups?

With other mine projects on their way through the assessment process — Coffee Gold, for instance, which, by its current estimated production value, could be the largest gold mine Yukon has ever seen — the government needs to ensure that security costs don’t get out of control, Rifkind says. Otherwise, Yukon could be facing the same situation — only perhaps costlier — a decade from now. 

“Something needs to be done now to ensure there’s increased money for closure,” he says.

That work has started. The report by PricewaterhouseCoopers recommended the Yukon government conduct a more robust risk assessment prior to handing out licences. This could include studying a company’s financial assessments, the plan for the lifecycle of the mine and changing market forces. Based on these factors, the report said the government could enforce bonding that’s higher than 100 per cent of the security estimate.

The Yukon government shot down this idea in a subsequent report, arguing it had strengthened the system in 2013 with the provision to increase required security based on additional infrastructure added to the mine site. It called on PricewaterhouseCoopers to review the feasibility of establishing a territory-wide reclamation fund to manage unpaid clean-up fees. 

A second report is expected this year but an Energy, Mines and Resources spokesperson said it hasn’t yet been finalized. It’s unclear at this time who would pay into the fund — whether it would be Yukon taxpayers, the federal government or companies themselves.

To Rifkind, this suggests solutions are few and far between.

“I think we’re going to get more and more Wolverine mines if we keep doing this the way we’re doing it,” he says. “We’ve learned nothing.”

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In a shaky GoPro video taken deep underground, the so-called “snot” hangs from the ceiling and coats the floors. The dim light of flashlights and headlamps exposes the yellowish tinge of the shiny, gooey film.

The room is one of many subterranean tombs housing 237,000 tonnes of arsenic trioxide, a dusty powder deadly to humans and most other living things, far below the surface of Yellowknife, N.T.

Whatever is growing on the walls doesn’t seem to mind the poison; in fact, it seems to thrive in its presence.

Scientists have been looking at the biofilm and have even sequenced its genes. The slimy bacterium’s ability to live with dissolved arsenic could make it part of the solution to the intractable problem of dealing with 70 years’ worth of the stuff, the legacy of Giant Mine’s gold smelting process. Above all else, its ability to convert the arsenic at cold temperatures makes it especially valuable.

But despite headlines hailing the discovery as a potential solution to the arsenic problem, it’s not a silver bullet, explains Heather Jamieson, the geochemistry professor at Queen’s University who first took a sample of the bacterium from deep within the mine.

“I think saying it’s ‘cleaning up’ is way overstating the case,” she says. “It’s not any kind of magic solution.”

What the microbe can do is oxidize the arsenic — add a couple of oxygen atoms to the molecule — converting it to a less deadly form that is also easier to treat.

“But you can do the same thing using a chemical,” she writes later in an e-mail. “So it doesn’t really solve the problem. There is still as much arsenic in the water as before.”

Arsenic “snot” clings to the walls of an underground chamber in Giant Mine. Photo: Heather Jamieson (Submitted)

The arsenic trioxide dust, released from the rock as it was roasted to get the gold, was pumped underground during most of the mine’s life. Better there than in the air (in the early days of the mine, it was sending up to 7,400 kg of the dust out into the environment, sickening locals and even killing a Yellowknives Dene child) but it presents its own problems underground.

Dealing with the arsenic trioxide has been the central headache for the federal government since 2004, when it took over remediation of the mine from its bankrupt owner. The dust has meant that, barring an unforeseen technological breakthrough or unthinkable disaster, there will never be an end to the government’s role in keeping the site secure.

“This will never be a walk-away solution,” Brad Thompson, senior project manager for Public Works and Government Services Canada, told a group of reporters at the mine in mid-September.

He means that the government, and therefore taxpayers, will never walk away from Giant Mine — a feat that, for its owners, took just a flick of a pen. They mined $2.7 billion worth of gold, and then Canadians were left with the billion-dollar cleanup.

“These long-term environmental legacies and financial liabilities — the ‘zombies’ that stalk northern mine sites and communities — illustrate the fundamentally unsustainable nature of extractive industries such as mining,” wrote Arn Keeling and John Sandlos in the conclusion to their book, Mining and Communities in Northern Canada.

“[The] environmental liabilities associated with historic abandoned mines provide a potent reminder of the need for strict environmental assessment, public oversight, and regulation of new northern mineral projects in all phases of their operation.”

The void

The Giant Mine site still resembles a mine today in the level of activity on the surface: heavy machinery rumbles up and down the long roads, piles of rock and earth hold tailings water as it’s treated for arsenic and workers mill around in hardhats and reflective vests. The billion-dollar project is ramping up as it awaits a water licence from the territory that would allow the main work to be done.  

The goal, though, is to leave the site looking something like its previous form, before gold was ever discovered or mined there.

The townsite where miners and their families lived is being scraped down to the bedrock to remove contaminated soil, then refilled to create a livable neighbourhood. Even the sediment in the water will be dredged out so that people can swim there safely.

During operation, Giant Mine housed some workers and their families directly on site. Aside from cleaning the soil for arsenic, the residential area will also require removal of asbestos-filled homes; unlike the rest of the site, the townsite will be remediated to residential standards so it can one day be occupied again. Photo: Matt Jacques / The Narwhal

The residential area is at the end of Baker Creek, which runs through the site. Grayling are already swimming up the creek from Great Slave Lake and spawning there like they used to. It winds past what is currently an open pit, but which will soon be filled in; still, the creek is being rebuilt and diverted to avoid the potential for flooding the mine.

Water could transport the arsenic out of its protective chambers and into the environment, so the precautions are heavy: the engineers are preparing the new banks of Baker Creek for a flood even greater than a one-in-500-year event.

Much of the tailings rock is being stuffed back underground, filling the mine, in order to reinforce its tunnels and prevent a collapse that could prove catastrophic if it affected the chambers holding the arsenic.

One particularly large chamber — the engineers call it “the void” — is proving especially difficult to fill, requiring a thick layer of concrete as a backup to the tailings slurry.

‘The grey and ugly’

But some of the Giant Mine site will never look the same as it did before, and that is deliberate. A working group is trying to figure out ways to warn people about the monster underground.

“If somebody were to stumble across the Giant Mine site in 1,000 years, would he or she know that the site was contaminated with arsenic?” asks a report from the working group.

Next to the 360 shipping containers containing the arsenic-coated remains of the roaster and destined to be stuffed underground, there’s a wide-open plain where the rock will be deliberately left bare, with no soil or vegetation added.

Yellowknives Dene First Nation community members asked for this in consultations, calling it “the grey and ugly.”

Much of the wide-open area to the left of the image will be left bare, with a rock covering meant to convey the inhospitable nature of the place to future generations. Photo: Matt Jacques / The Narwhal

It’s meant to stand as a marker to future generations — people who may not share a language, culture or semiotic understanding with those of today — that this is not a safe place. That this is somewhere to be feared and avoided.

Another area is intended to warn off future people as well. The tall pipes carrying heat from below the surface to keep the arsenic frozen in place, the thermosyphons, are presumed to be a warning sign themselves, though it’s unclear how they would seem menacing to people who may not have any understanding at all of what they are for.

Even to those who have seen them before, they could be mistaken for the thermosyphons across the North that keep foundations frozen in the melting permafrost.

The designers are still working out how to make the site look sinister, uninviting, and dangerous, informed in part by the design of a nuclear storage facility in New Mexico.

A northern tradition

Giant mine is not alone as a contaminated site left behind for future generations to pay for. The North is riddled with them.

In mid-September I’m part of a small group of reporters arriving by bush plane at the Bullmoose-Ruth site, a complex consisting of several gold mines and exploration sites that were operational in the 1940s through to the 1980s. From the plane, we board a helicopter — the site is so vast that one aircraft gets us to the site while the other gets us around it.

The sprawling site today consists of filled-in mine shafts and deep trenches, scoured-out soil and backcountry landfills.

Like Giant mine, and like hundreds of smaller sites across the North, it was left in a state that posed risks to wildlife, to humans and to the environment.

Fuel drums were left rusting and leaking, holes were left gaping in the ground over 600-foot drops while equipment, vehicles and piles of trash were scattered across the site.

It was a big job in a remote area, requiring new ice roads and camps to be built in the bush.

At the Ruth mine site, the contaminated soil was scraped down to the bedrock and replaced with sand left behind by the last glaciation while three Olympic swimming pools’ worth of soil was treated and buried in a landfill.

The government decided to bury it on site instead of risking further contamination along the ice road; and besides, what do you do with that much hazardous material back in the city?

Messes like this are a holdover from when the world was thought to be big enough to treat this way — when the planet had no limits and the consequences of far-away activities bore no consequence to the folks back home.

Miners could drill holes and leave piles of ground-up toxic waste, tangled steel and even boxes of dynamite behind with no deposit against the cost of cleanup.

They could build roads and camps and have the luxury of believing they would have no lingering effects on the animals whose habitat was being fragmented and opened to new predators.

Finally, when the company went bust, they could walk away, dust off their hands and start digging someplace else.

The Faro Mine was once the world’s largest open-pit lead and zinc mine. The mine’s tailings pond stretches five kilometres along the Rose Creek valley. Photo: Matt Jacques / The Narwhal

When the owners of the Faro Mine declared bankruptcy in 1998, the company left behind more than 320 million tonnes of waste rock and 70 million tonnes of tailings. Photo: Matt Jacques / The Narwhal

After nearly 20 years of maintenance and remediation planning, more than $350 million has been spent via the Federal Contaminated Sites Action Plan but remediation isn’t expected to actually begin until 2022. Photo: Matt Jacques / The Narwhal

Adjacent to the mine site, Rose Creek winds through a wetlands ecoystem that feeds the Pelly River. Without remediation the Pelly and Yukon Rivers could become contaminated by toxic metals from the Faro Mine. Photo: Matt Jacques / The Narwhal

It happened at Giant Mine, it happened at Faro mine, it happened at Bullmoose, Colomac, Tundra, Eldorado, and so many more across the vast North that a $2.37 billion cleanup program has been established to deal with it all.

That’s enough money to operate the entire Northwest Territories government — its schools, roads, hospitals and all — for a year and a half.

It’s not that it isn’t needed now, or being spent appropriately (a 2016 audit found the Northern Contaminated Sites Program to be running almost flawlessly) but it’s a cost that never needed to be borne by taxpayers had there been adequate regulations in place.

Despite finishing ahead of schedule and under budget, the cost to clean Bullmoose-Ruth will be more than $20 million by the time the project wraps up. Even then, it will still require monitoring: the dams built to control water flow will need to be checked on and maintained forever.

“The mining industry often invokes the words reclamation, remediation, and restoration as a cornerstone of efforts to paint itself green,” wrote Keeling and Sandlos in a 2013 paper. “But such emphasis on the visual aesthetics of remediated landscapes obscures as much as it reveals about abandoned mines. As important as it may be to repair the uglier side of extensive, open-pit mining operations, in many cases it is the unseen (or more accurately, the unseeable) impacts of mining that pose the gravest long-term threat to ecological and human health.”

As we leave one part of the far-flung site in the helicopter, a government official points out the aircraft window at rusted fuel barrels that were discovered after the cleanup finished.

Two of the three barrels that were discovered just outside the area of the remediation contract after the remediation finished. Photo: Jimmy Thomson / The Narwhal

They, along with other debris that’s still being discovered, will have to be airlifted out. Even the cleaned-up parts of the site bear the markings of a heavily disturbed landscape, cut up and bulldozed.

We take off from a cleared area between the landfill and a wetland water treatment project. The wash from the propellers blows a cloud of dust across a square test area not much larger than an ambitious home garden, where a few seedlings are taking root.

In a new approach to revegetation, the seeds being planted here aren’t brought in from the south, or grown in nurseries; they’re collected from the trees immediately surrounding the patch. Using the most local seeds possible makes sure the plants that will grow there are the right ones for that particular area, and it gives them the best chance to take root and thrive.

Even so, plants grow slowly in the North, stunted by the cold and the dry air and the wind that whips past the nutrient-poor soil.

It will be decades before the shrubs and grasses and trees grow back to cover the bare ground, and much longer before the site looks anything like it did before its short stint as a mine turned it upside down.

If it ever does.

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For years, Alberta’s government has reassured the public that it has a plan to ensure the oilsands’ 1.2 trillion litres of hazardous tailings are permanently dealt with after mines shut down.

That assertion is becoming less convincing by the day.

Industry still hasn’t decided on a viable long-term storage technology to begin testing. The fund to cover tailings liabilities in case of bankruptcy is arguably extremely underfunded. And there are concerns from the likes of the Pembina Institute that the future costs for tailings treatment will be far greater than anticipated.

Martin Olszynski, assistant professor in law at University of Calgary, told DeSmog Canada such questions simply can’t be left unanswered.

“It would the height of unfairness if at the end of all this massive profit and wealth generation, Albertans were left on the hook for what will be landscape-sized disturbances that are potentially very harmful and hazardous to humans and wildlife,” he said.

Oilsands Tailings Plans Nonexistent

The history of tailings regulations is a short one in the province: there simply hasn’t been anything binding. Toxic tailings have been allowed to expand for decades without any real constraints. The last attempt by the province’s energy regulator to require companies “to minimize and eventually eliminate long-term storage of fluid tailings in the reclamation landscape” completely failed.

Every single company breached their own targets.

Directive 085, introduced by the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) in July 2016, is intended to rectify that.

On March 17, the AER somewhat surprisingly rejected the first tailings management plan that was submitted under the new rules by oilsands giant Suncor for a series of reasons, including its uncertain timelines and reliance on the “unproven technology” of end pit lakes or water capping (the practice of sealing fine tailings under freshwater with the expectation ponds will evolve into healthy aquatic ecosystems).

“What this most recent rejection of Suncor’s proposal suggests to me is they haven’t done the work, and they’re not yet doing the work,” Olszynski says.

“And they need to do the work.”

No Definite Plan A and Definitely No Plan B For #Oilsands’ Tailings https://t.co/scnvuXz9OV #ableg #cdnpoli #YEG #YYC #oilandgas

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 21, 2017

Provincial Auditor General Warned of Risk of Oil Price Drop

In July 2015, provincial auditor general Merwan Saher issued a harsh indictment of the fund intended to ensure that Albertans won’t be on the hook for reclamation expenses when oilsands and coal mines shut down.

At the time, only $1.57 billion was held as security deposits in the Mine Financial Security Program for all of Alberta’s reclamation liabilities, worth an estimated $20.8 billion.

As of September 2016 that total is now $1.38 billion with oilsands companies responsible for $940 million of the total. The other $19 billion or so is expected to be paid by companies in the last 15 years of a project's life, with reserves effectively serving as collateral — but that's a risky approach, especially with declining oil prices.

There is a “significant risk that asset values…are overstated,” Saher said..

“If an abrupt financial and operational decline were to occur in the oilsands sector,” wrote the auditor general., “It would likely be difficult for an oilsands mine operator to provide this security even if the need for the security was identified through the program.”

Oilsands Accounting Expert Says Situation Is “Major Concern”

That very thing has happened.

Thomas Schneider, assistant accounting professor at Ryerson University who has written extensively on oilsands liabilities, said in an interview that “it’s a major concern” given the recent decline in asset values.

“The main asset securing the liabilities now as per the government and people of Alberta — and ultimately Canada I guess as I don’t know who’s going to have to pay for it if it doesn’t get cleaned up — are supposedly the assets in the ground,” he told DeSmog Canada. “That’s where it stands right now.”

The province’s $20.8 billion estimated liability is already based on shaky market grounds; the asset-to-liability approach considers “proven” (90 per cent likely to be commercially viable) and “probable” (only 50 per cent likely to be commercially viable) reserves as equally valuable, allowing companies to avoid putting in additional securities to the fund so long as assets are assessed at three times that of liabilities.

It’s a potentially troubling prospect in the era of massive write-downs of reserves by the likes of ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips.

Schneider says at this point in time, the government is supposed to re-evaluate the asset-to-liability ratio and require companies to cover off any missing securities with letters of credit or other financial instruments.

A government spokesperson didn’t respond to a question about whether the government has taken a recent look at the ratio.

No Definite Plan A and Definitely No Plan B For Oilsands’ Tailings

Companies and industry groups are putting a lot of work into developing new technologies to deal with tailings.

Nina Lothian, senior analyst at Pembina, said in an interview with DeSmog that there are pros and cons to every tailings technology — end pit lakes, centrifuges, atmospheric fines drying, consolidated tailings — with no clear best choice. Based on the recent rejection of Suncor’s plan, it’s clear the AER is expecting more from companies.

However, there’s the obvious related problem of if those plans fail.

The AER has established an unfortunate reputation in some circles for failing to implement required monitoring and enforcement actions to ensure compliance when it comes to pipeline safety and orphaned wells.

Lothian says that end pit lakes are considered a bit of a “silver bullet” by industry.

The Canadian Oil Sands Innovation Alliance, a joint effort by 13 companies, has long planned to build a Demonstration Pit Lakes Project, made up of over a dozen test water bodies and based off of learnings from Syncrude’s Base Mine Lake. The alliance’s website still notes that “phase one of the project could move to construction with potential operation by 2017.” However, when contacted by DeSmog, a spokesperson was unable to provide any information on the status of the Demonstration Pit Lakes Project.

Olszynski says that it will likely require 15 years of monitoring data to know if any particular plan worked. He says that as a result, we wouldn’t have solid results until 2032. But the alliance hasn’t even started building the project.

“For me, the big problem here is we’re well into 2017 at this point, we’re staring down the productive life of some of these sites, and we do not yet have a proven tailings mitigation technology,” he says.

Recent Mining Disasters and Abandonments Point to Potential Dangers

As to whether or not security deposits are meant to include the treatment of tailings, Lothian says Pembina has had no success in answering that question.

Neither Alberta Environment and Parks or the AER have provided clear responses to Pembina. Lothian says that submissions from companies under the Mine Financial Security Program include related reclamation costs like land contouring and revegetation, but there’s no indication of whether funds have been set aside explicitly for tailings treatment.

“We know from all this work with the tailings management plans how many billions of dollars are associated with the treatment side of things,” she says.

In 2011, University of Alberta energy economist Andrew Leach wrote in an Alberta Oil article: “As long as companies expect to pay the full costs of reclamation, there’s no reason to expect that deferring environmental security payments will appreciably increase investment.”

In other words, the “asset-to-liability approach” might not even have notably increased investments, and instead exposed Albertans to serious costs down the road if companies go bankrupt.

That’s assuming companies expect to pay the full costs of reclamation.

There have been numerous examples in recent years that indicate mining companies can get away without fines or charges for catastrophic tailings breaches, most notably the Mount Polley mine disaster in B.C. and Peabody bankruptcy in the U.S. (the latter of which left around $2 billion in unfunded liabilities).

Provincial Regulator Has Variety of Options to Pursue, Critics Say

But regulators like the AER could take a different approach to avoid such financial disasters.

That could include providing clarity around what the Mine Financial Security Program actually covers, revoking leases for non-compliance, update calculations to acknowledge the distinction between “proven” and “probable reserves” and tap into financial instruments such as letters of credit which Olszynski describes as “bankrupt-proof.”

It would ultimately be up to the AER as an independent agency to craft new calculations for required security deposits or improve communication of the scope of the Mine Financial Security Program. But such shifts would likely require pressure from the government.

In fact, Premier Rachel Notley appeared reasonably convinced of that fact when serving as opposition environment critic, asking during Question Period in 2010: “will this government commit to eliminate the existing lakes of poisonous sludge within 20 years and to exercise all authority necessary to make sure it happens?”

However, since forming government the Alberta NDP has said little publicly about tailings management that served as contrast to previous decisions; Environment Minister Shannon Phillips responded to the 2015 report by the auditor general by stating: “We need to analyze whether the asset calculation needs to be changed. We need to update this security program and conduct that detailed risk analysis.”

Nothing appears to have been changed or updated since then.

“This is a really common strategy, where industry just kicks the can down the road over and over again until they are able to get out of cleaning up the waste themselves at the end of operations,” said Jodi McNeill, policy analyst, from the Pembina Institute, in a recent webinar.

“There’s a lot of reason for us to be very concerned.”

Image: Alberta oilsands tailings pond. Photo: Alex MacLean 

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Gary and Peggy Zorn lost their livelihood in the wake of the Mount Polley mining disaster one year ago today, the couple explained, after foreign tourists lost the desire to experience the region as a travel destination renowned for its wildlife.

Gary Zorn, adorned with the impressive title of “bear whisperer,” said their eco-tour grizzly-watching outfit lost hundreds of thousands of dollars the day the mine’s tailings pond breached sending as estimated 24 million cubic metres of contaminated mining waste down the Hazeltine Creek and into Quesnel Lake, a local source of drinking water.

The Zorns said in the year that has passed since the spill, the mine, owned by Imperial Metals, has only completed a superficial cleanup in the area, leaving a lingering stain on both the environment and the region’s reputation.

“It’s pretty quiet here,” Gary Zorn said. “The businesses are suffering quite a bit here in Likely because of the damage the breach has done.”

“It’s not just what the breach did environmentally to us; it’s what has happened with the bad publicity we got when this went around the world. That also hurt everybody here.”

He added Mount Polley has yet to deal with the social aspect of the accident.

“They did a lot of damage to a lot of people and are they going to address that? That’s what a lot of people here are wondering about.”

He said he questions the province’s decision to even consider giving the mine a partial start up license “when they’ve totally avoided dealing with what they’ve created.”

Gary said their guide business has been hit hard so he can empathize with the community’s need for economic stimulus — the kind a reopened mine might provide.

“I do know there are people who need jobs. There’s no two ways about it,” he said. “We’re not against mining or logging at all. I worked in mine and in the forestry industry and we worked together with these people.”

“It’s just that when I go ahead in our business and I make a mistake in the bush that affects someone else I’m expected to make that right.”

“That’s all that people here are expecting of Mount Polley. We’re called ‘Canada’s largest mining disaster’ now,” he added. “You guys screwed up. At least make it right.”

B.C. Claims "Significant Progress" Made in Mount Polley Cleanup

Last week the B.C. Ministry of Environment announced “significant progress” had been made in the first phase of the Mount Polley mine mitigation and remediation plan. According to the province the plan focused on stabilizing Hazeltine Creek and improving the quality of water entering Quesnel Lake.

The Ministry of Environment said it considered the containment of tailings, water treatment and the protection of fish “complete or suitably initiated.” Ongoing work will include an ecological and human health risk assessment, the province said.

Environment Minister Mary Polak said she acknowledges “full environmental remediation will take years,” but said the work done over the past year “is truly impressive.”

Peggy Zorn said the mine and the province are over-emphasizing clean up efforts without acknowledging the vast majority of the spill remains lingering at the bottom of Quesnel Lake.

“They’ve taken care of the aesthetics,” she said. “Things look okay but they haven’t dealt with the environmental mess.”

“They talk about the clean up that has been done. They’ve cleaned up the surface but there’s a lot of other stuff that hasn’t been done. They’ll never get [the mine waste] out of the lake so you can hardly call that a cleanup.”

Gary added, “all we’re saying is, hey, you guys created the mess. At least make an effort to straighten it out and not just what looks nice along the road.“

"Year of Frustration"

Richard Holmes, Likely resident and fisheries biologist, said he wishes there was more progress when it comes to environmental cleanup and recovery for the community on the one-year anniversary of the spill.

“We’ve managed to carry on in spite of it all, but we wish there was better news. It’s unfortunate this turned out the way it has,” he said, adding the community is divided over the outcome of the spill and the recent approval from the province to partially restart the mine.

“There are people going back to work at the mine that live here and there are at the other end of the spectrum people that were impacted or had their businesses impacted that haven’t had their needs addressed whatsoever by the company or the government.”

“We find that to be really lacking.”

Holmes also criticized the mine and the B.C. government for their self-congratulatory attitude concerning remediation and the reopening of the mine.

“The last public meeting was about a month ago and I was really disappointed to watch the mine and their consultants and the government people act like they’d just won the lottery. There were as happy as pigs in shit,” Holmes said.

“I felt somewhat insulted, actually.”

Holmes said his community was at the tail end of a “year of frustration” and to hear Mount Polley and the government so focused on making the mine profitable again seemed insensitive. “They’ve forgotten completely about the social impacts and the cultural and economic impacts on the people in the community. It’s disappointing.”

Holmes acknowledged that important environmental remediation work has been done but that both parties are likely too happy with what they’ve accomplished.

“They’ve certainly accomplished some things. Hazeltine Creek has been somewhat cleaned up," he said, adding flatly: "it looks like a pretty ditch now."

"But unfortunately it’s going to be used as a pretty ditch for a couple of years to transport waste water and it’s not going to be used for fish habitat for at least two years.”  

“They may be happy but for people who live here it’s not what we envisioned at all,” he said.

“We expect better. They’re going to be here another 12 years. We expect them to get along with all the community and not just cherry pick who they hang out with here. They seem to be really focused on looking after their employees, the rest of us be damned.”

Image Credit: Tailings waste in the Hazeltine Creek, August 11, 2014. Photo: Carol Linnitt

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