NIRB issues amended project certificate for Meadowbank pit expansion

The site of Vault Pit and the proposed expansion into Phaser Lake is located eight kilonetres northeast of Meadowbank’s main mine site. (AEM IMAGE)

The Nunavut Impact Review Board has issued an amended project certificate to Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. for an expansion project at its Meadowbank gold mine near the Nunavut community of Baker Lake.

The certificate includes two revised terms to address any potential impacts of the Vault Pit expansion project, given the green light by Indigenous and Northern Affairs just last month.

Agnico Eagle first proposed the expansion at its Vault Pit operation in 2014, with plans to fish-out and de-water nearby Phaser Lake to form Phaser Pit and BB Phaser Pit.

Vault Pit, located about eight kilometres north of Meadowbank’s main site, is one off three pits currently being mined at the Kivalliq site.

Last April, the NIRB recommended that the expansion of the Vault Pit operation go ahead — a proposal to expand the open pit into nearby Phaser Lake.

Following federal approval, the NIRB hosted a July 26 workshop to discuss any amendments to the project certificate.

The revised certificate now includes two amended terms: Agnico Eagle must implement and report on its fish-out program in Phaser Lake, as it currently does with its three other dewatered lakes, in consultation with elders and local hunting organizations in the region.

The mining company must also expand its fish monitoring plan to include Phaser Lake.

The Vault Pit expansion is expected to produce 269,438 tonnes of ore out of Phaser Pit and 132,950 tonnes from BB Phaser Pit, the NIRB said in an Aug. 12 release.

Those amounts are in addition to the 29.8 million tonnes originally approved to be produced overall at the Meadowbank mine site and 10.7 million tonnes from Vault Pit alone.

Agnico Eagle has plans to construct and operate new haul roads connecting the new pits to its Vault Pit infrastructure, water diversion, de-watering and fish-out of Phaser Lake and then the eventual re-flooding of Phaser Pit and BB Phaser Pit.

Agnico Eagle,which has reported good earnings to date in 2016, plans to begin mining the new pits in 2017.