NIRB gives Areva failing grade on Kiggavik’s draft EIS

The Kiggavik uranium project, about 80 km from Baker Lake, would cost $2.1 billion to build and create hundreds of jobs over its 14-year lifespan. The Nunavut Impact Review Board has rejected Areva Canada’s draft environmental statement and said an environmental review cannot begin until the company fixes its work.

An environmental review of Nunavut’s first uranium mine is stalled for the time being, following a decision by the Nunavut Impact Review Board to reject an 11-volume draft environmental impact statement from Areva Canada on its proposed Kiggavik uranium extraction project near Baker Lake.

“Until the deficiencies in the submission as identified by the NIRB in this letter have been addressed and the NIRB subsequently determines that the DEIS conforms with the EIS Guidelines, the technical review of the submission will not commence,” Ryan Barry, the executive director of the NIRB, wrote Jan. 18 in a letter to Areva.

Areva submitted the massive document to the review board in late December. The board acknowledged receipt Jan. 3 and began an in-house review of the draft EIS.

The review board’s staff found Areva’s work did not conform to guidelines worked out in an earlier public process due to “deficiencies” in the statement.

For example, the draft EIS was supposed to state “Whether the project would unduly prejudice the ecosystemic integrity of the Nunavut Settlement Area.”

But the review board found Kiggavik did not include a statement about this in its draft EIS. A 59-page table attached to its letter describes numerous deficiencies.

“Barry McCallum [Areva’s manager of Nunavut affairs] from Areva has been boasting about how many thousands of pages long their draft environmental impact statement is. It appears that size isn’t everything,” said Jack Hicks, a member of Nunavummiut Makitagunarningit, in an email.

Nunavummiut Makitagunarningit has lobbied against the Kiggavik project for years and is opposed to uranium mining in Nunavut.

The Kiggavik project, about 80 kilometres from Baker Lake, would extract uranium ore from four open pits and one underground mine.

Areva estimates its capital cost at $2.1 billion and says up to 750 jobs would be created in the construction phase, and create up to 1,300 direct and indirect jobs during production.

The company claims that it would pay $1 billion in royalties and taxes to Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the Government of Nunavut and the Government of Canada over the 14-year life of the mine.

(More to follow)