Salt water leak shuts down drill at Nunavut’s Hope Bay mine

Here’s a view of the Doris North camp at Newmont’s Hope Bay gold project south of Cambridge Bay where the discovery of leaky drill rig closed down an exploration site last week. (FILE PHOTO)

(updated July 19, 9:15 a.m.)

A regulatory site inspection has led to the shut-down July 14 of a diamond drill rig at Newmont Mining Ltd.’s Hope Bay mine project, a company news release said July 17.

Salty drill water was found leaking from a diamond drill on a site located on Inuit-owned land near the Boston exploration camp, located 170 kilometres southwest of Cambridge Bay.

Inspection and drilling operations at that site were immediately shut-down, the news release said.

Salt is regularly added to drill water in permafrost conditions to facilitate the flow of drill cuttings to the surface.

“We are taking this issue seriously and have suspended surface drilling by the contractor at Hope Bay pending environmental compliance checks at those drill sites,” said Jim Spenceley, president of Hope Bay Mining Limited. “Protecting the environment must be paramount, and we are cooperating fully with regulators to understand how the incident occurred in order to prevent the reoccurrence of such events in the future.”

The drill water caused damage to vegetation downhill from the drill rig and salt water may have entered Imaokatalok or Spyder Lake, the news release said.

The company is currently monitoring what effect the salt may have on the environment and ongoing testing will be conducted to assess the potential for impact to the lake area, it said.

Government of Canada officials are conducting an investigation of the discharge.

“Hope Bay Mining Limited continues to cooperate fully with authorities including the Inuit landowners,” the company said.

After the discovery, Newmont took the following actions, the company said:

• A site response team has been activated to manage the ongoing response;

• Surface drilling on all of the contactor’s other drill sites has been suspended until environmental compliance checks are completed ;

• A report on the incident has been made to the NWT-Nunavut Spill Hotline by the drilling contractor;

• The drill rig has been shut down and the discharge stopped;

• Absorbent materials including coconut matting has been deployed to absorb the salty drill water;

• A containment boom was deployed around the potential discharge area in the lake; and,

• Salt-soaked drill cuttings have been gathered and removed.

“We regret any damage that occurred, and we are taking all necessary action to ensure a thorough clean up while identifying and remedying the cause of the incident, and keeping regulators and the impacted communities informed,“ said Spenceley.

In 2004, the Nunavut Impact Review Board said no to an application from the Miramar Mining Corp. for permission to build and operate its Doris North gold mine, part of the Hope Bay complex..

In it, the board said Miramar has not provided enough information about how the Doris North mine would affect the endangered Victoria Island caribou herd, the quality of water at a nearby lake, and fish life near a proposed jetty.

The project finally did pass NIRB scrutiny.

But in March of 2007 the Nunavut Water Board voted to immediately dismiss their veteran executive director, Philippe di Pizzo.

Water board members voted to go ahead with public hearings on the Miramar’s water licence application for the proposed gold mine at Doris North.

That effectively countermanded a big, controversial decision that di Pizzo authorized in December of 2006.

In a 43-page letter to Miramar on Dec. 27, a water board employee told the company that their water licence application was full of holes and didn’t contain enough reliable information to support an informed judgment. Water board staff described it as “ambiguous, inconsistent, and convoluted.”

Water board staff then told Miramar that their application was rejected. They said that before public hearings could start, the company must hand in a brand-new licence application. They gave the company a long list of detailed questions. Most of those questions asked how the company plans to protect nearby water bodies from environmental poisons.

After water board members, most of them ordinary people from Nunavut communities, voted to dump di Pizzo, the 43-page letter to Miramar was dumped with him. The board’s entire technical staff quit in protest.

At that time, the Kitikmeot Inuit Association, which is closely associated with a network of Inuit-owned businesses that profit from the mine, attacked the decision by water board staff to reject Miramar’s application, saying many of their listed objections were “trivial.”

In 2007, Newmont the second largest gold producer in the world, paid Miramar $1.5 billion for Hope Bay’s three properties. This summer In 2011, Newmont will invest $300 million into ramping up its Hope Bay gold mine and plans to ship up a mill in 2012.

Newmont has planned to continue exploration and drilling around Hope Bay with the view of developing a mega-mine, which would have at least a 10-year lifespan and employ about 700.

The complex would include open pit and underground mines at its Doris North, Madrid and Boston properties with a processing mill in the middle.

Underground mining has already started up at Doris North where ore will remain stockpiled until the mill comes into operation.

Newmont is already planning its “Phase Two” of its Hope Bay mining project because its permits and authorization now only allow for a short period of operation.

That expansion will require a new environment impact statement and a new Inuit impact and benefits agreement.