Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.
Last week, the federal government revealed that cleaning up Yellowknife's Giant Mine is now projected to cost $4.38 billion instead of $1 billion. This is, by one measure, greater than the mine's total estimated revenues during its operation. Quantifying, in dollar terms, the impact of the mine on the local economy, the environment, and the people who live on and use the area's land and water is complicated, if not impossible.
A team working to address environmental and health effects from a former gold mine outside Yellowknife has provided an update on the effort to clean up one of the most contaminated places in Canada. The Giant Mine Remediation Project, co-managed by the Canadian and Northwest Territories governments, is expected to take until 2038 to complete. Arsenic trioxide waste stored underground is anticipated to require perpetual maintenance.
One of the constant responsibilities of the project team is to prevent the underground from flooding — so that water doesn't come into contact with the arsenic trioxide and threaten to carry it elsewhere. Right now, water underground is pumped into the northwest tailings pond year round. Every summer, water in the tailings pond is treated and discharged into Baker Creek, which flows into Yellowknife Bay. Rather than treat water three months per year, a new water treatment plant is being built that will treat water year round. Construction on that plant is set to begin in 2023, and is expected to be done by 2025. Once it's up and running, the northwest tailings pond won't be needed to store contaminated water anymore — allowing the project team to start remediation work there.
Another major project expected in 2023 is construction of a year-round water treatment plant, which will allow the cleanup team to stop storing water on-site for much of each year, in turn hastening the speed at which the site can be remediated. A lot of the work still to come involves, at least in part, managing water and reducing the risk contamination of that water might pose.
An Indigenous filmmaker is using TikTok to raise awareness about the toxic mess left behind at Giant Mine in Yellowknife, N.W.T., and the health risks it poses to the surrounding community. Morgan Tsetta, a Yellowknives Dene First Nation photographer and filmmaker working in Vancouver, has been posting videos about the mine in an effort to pressure the federal government for an apology and compensation.
Northerners looking to participate in the economic spin offs of the $1-billion Giant Mine remediation project can expect to wait for the water licence before the project's main manager gets specific on potential contracts. The project's deputy director, Natalie Plato, said that the main construction manager, Parsons Inc., gave the board the "most detailed schedule" it could within last six months.
