Feds urge speedy reconsideration of scaled-down Nunavut iron mine project

The new, scaled-down mining project that Baffinland Iron Mines Corp. wants to build would see the port at Steensby Inlet dropped in favour of a tote road to Milne Inlet and reduced shipping traffic from that site on the northeastern shore of Baffin Island. (FILE IMAGE)

The new minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development wants to see an “expeditious review process” for Baffinland Iron Mines Corp.’s scaled-down Mary River project.

Minister Bernard Valcourt said in a letter to Elizabeth Copland, the chair of the Nunavut Impact Review Board, that he agrees with the NIRB’s determination that the new version of the iron mine project needs to be reconsidered.

The gist of his March 28 letter: that his department would like to see an “expeditious and thorough” reconsideration of the project.

Valcourt’s letter comes after Baffinland’s January request that the regulator approve amendments to its initial project certificate.

That’s because the company now wants to build a scaled-down mining project — its “early revenue” phase of a much larger project at some point in the future.

This version of the project would see the port at Steensby Inlet and railway from the mine site dropped in favour of a tote road to Milne Inlet and reduced shipping traffic from that site on the northeastern shore of Baffin Island.

The NIRB then determined Feb. 11 that a reconsideration of Baffinland’s project certificate for the original, larger Mary River iron ore project, awarded last December, would be necessary.

In his letter to the NIRB, Valcourt suggested that, “in the interests of an expeditious review process,” the NIRB starts its reconsideration of the project right away, before receiving a go-ahead in the form of a “positive conformity determination” from the Nunavut Planning Commission.

Baffinland has already told the NIRB that the company hopes the reconsideration will be completed by early in 2014 “to enable the potential decision for ore shipments in the summer of 2014.”