Areva vows better communication on Nunavut uranium mine project

Areva Resources Canada’s Kiggavik uranium project is about 80 kilometres from Baker Lake. (FILE IMAGE)

Areva Canada Resources Inc. says it’s listening to the concerns of people in Baker Lake about its proposed Kiggavik uranium mine.

The company plans to act one on these concerns as well, said Barry McCallum, manager of Nunavut Affairs for the company, April 11 at the Nunavut Mining Symposium in Iqaluit.

Areva’s Kiggavik uranium project, located about 80 kilometres west of Baker Lake, also wants to “get feedback for people,” McCallum said.

So far, there have already been 18 public meetings held by Areva, he said. Areva has held youth forums, provided regular project updates to hamlets, facilitated Inuit Qaujimajatuqaangit interviews.

Areva also maintains a website to keep people informed about the project.

The company has hired a community liaison officer in Baker Lake, William Noah, who has been on the job since 2006, and it’s set up regional liaison committees since 2007.

But the critics of the uranium mine project continue to be outspoken:

• Baker Lake MLA Moses Aupaluktuq who complained in the Nunavut legislature last month that community consultations scheduled by the Nunavut Impact Review Board to take place this spring in Baker Lake come right at a time when most people in this Kivalliq community are out hunting; and,

• Nunavummiut Makitagunarningit, Nunavut’s uranium development watchdog, whixh said last week that “important documentation is not being translated into Inuktitut, and important meetings are being held during the height of Inuit hunting seasons.”

The scheduling of the meetings has been up to the NIRB.

But, citing this as an example of its efforts to accommodate hunters, McCallum said Areva has changed the access road options to the mine project because people did not want an all-season road.

As for the challenges of having uranium terminology translated into Inuktitut, “there’s a lot of work in mining terminology, but not much in uranium,” McCallum said.

For Kiggavik’s draft Environmental Impact Statement, between 200 to 300 pages were translated from English into Inuktitut.

In the future, McCallum said Areva will continue to work with Nunavut’s language authorities to have documents published “into the words that locals use as opposed to what somebody put on a map.”

According to the company’s website for the Kiggavik project, 30 to 35 people from Baker Lake work on site or in Baker Lake during the summer.

Areva plans to submit its final EIS by the end of 2013, and if it obtains a project certificate from the Nunavut Impact Review Board in 2014, the company — depending on market conditions — plans to start operations at the mine, which would have four open pit mines and an underground mine, in 2018.