Next step for Baffinland: final hearings on the Mary River iron mine project

Solomon Awa represented the Qikiqtani Inuit Association at this past week’s technical hearing of the Mary River iron mine project. (PHOTO BY JIM BELL)

Ryan Barry, the executive director of the Nunavut Impact Review Board, spells out the next steps in the review process of the Mary River iron mine project. (PHOTO BY JIM BELL)

Baffinland Iron Mines Corp. representatives, (from left to right) Greg Missal, Erik Madsen and Oliver Curran, listen May 3 to the proceedings of the technical meeting in Iqaluit. (PHOTO BY JIM BELL)

It’s taken a long time to get there — in fact, more than two years, but now the last big step in the permitting process for the Mary River iron mine project remains the final hearings.

Those are scheduled for July in Iqaluit, Igloolik and Pond Inlet.

The proposal to develop the iron mine on northern Baffin Island moved into review in February 2009.

Now, its promoters, the Baffinland Iron Mines Corp, can look forward to hearing the Nunavut Impact Review Board’s final report on its mine project this coming September.

This week representatives from Baffinland Iron Mines Corp., the Qikiqtani Inuit Association, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., Makivvik Corp. and various government agencies spent three days talking to each other during a public technical meeting in Iqaluit.

There they reviewed all the information requests still flowing from the Baffinland’s final environmental impact statement, which the NIRB received this past February.

Those touched on Baffinland’s choice of the port at Steensby Inlet , discussions of marine shipping, marine environment, marine wildlife, ballast water and fuel spill modeling and marine wildlife monitoring and mitigation and the impacts on caribou and communities.

The message from NIRB during the technical meeting was to talk out, not wait for final hearings to resolve the issues.

That was something Baffinland appeared increasingly eager to do over the course of the three days, scheduling after-meeting get-togethers and emphasizing its commitment to adapative management — a kind of ongoing adjustment of the mine’s many activities to limit.

Even those parties at the Iqaluit meeting, who grumbled Baffinland’s gestures came late in the game, seemed to have come around at the end of the meeting.

That prompted Ryan Barry, NIRB’s executive director, to praise everyone at the meeting during his final comments for their “positive and cooperative attitude.”

All the participants in the technical meeting will now submit final submissions on the project before it moves into hearings.

The NIRB staff will also organize additional community information sessions in Igloolik and Pond Inlet in advance of the final hearing “to promote public awareness and participation.”

Five representatives from each of the 11 communities affected by the mine will attend the final hearing in Iqaluit.

Community representatives will attend all proceedings and will directly participate in discussions during a two-day community roundtable in Iqaluit, the NIRB said.

The community roundtables in Igloolik and Pond Inlet will be structured for local residents.

The dates for the final hearings into the Mary River project are:

• July 16 to 20 in Iqaluit;

• July 23 to 25 in Igloolik; and,

• July 26 to 28, 2012 in Pond Inlet.

There’s a lot on the line. That’s why Li Wan of the Nunavut Impact Review Board, Nunavut Tunngavik’s Bert Dean and the Qikiqtani Inuit Association’s Kim Poole, Solomon Awa and Stephen Williamson Bathory listen carefully May 3 during the final session of the NIRB’s technical meeting on the proposed Mary River iron mine. Read more about the next step in the permitting process for the huge iron mine that Baffinland Iron Mines Corp. wants to build in north Baffin on Nunatsiaqonline.ca. (PHOTO BY JIM BELL)