Nunavut board says yes to six-year Doris North gold mine plan
TMAC proposes more mining at other Hope Bay deposits
An aerial view of the Hope Bay project. (PHOTO COURTESY OF TMAC)
The Doris North project in the western Kitikmeot region could become Nunavut’s second operating gold mine next year, following recommendations released June 13 by the Nunavut Impact Review Board.
TMAC Resources Inc., owner of Doris North since 2013, had asked the NIRB for changes to a project certificate issued in 2006 to a previous owner of the operation, Miramar Mining Corp.
Following a three-day public hearing held this past April 12 to April 14 in Cambridge Bay, the NIRB said yes to TMAC’s requests.
In their June 13 letter to Carolyn Bennett, the minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs, the NIRB recommends that Doris North’s 2006 project certificate be amended through revisions to 35 old terms and conditions and the addition of 14 new ones.
Doris North is part of a larger gold field called Hope Bay, which straddles an 80-kilometre-long greenstone belt that runs north-south east of Bathurst Inlet.
Since a large amount of infrastructure already exists at the Doris North site, located on the mainland about 125 km south of Cambridge Bay, TMAC may be able to start operations in early 2017, a TMAC official told Nunatsiaq News last month.
And those mining operations will continue for six years, an expansion from the two-year lifespan the earlier owner, Miramar Mining Corp., proposed 10 years ago.
Other changes that TMAC proposed, now accepted by the NIRB, subject to the 49 new and revised terms and conditions, include:
• expansion of the on-site camp to accommodate 280 workers, up from 180;
• expansion of mining and milling rates from 720 tonnes per day to 2,000 tonnes per day;
• expansion of total estimated tailings to be stored in an impoundment area from 458,000 tonnes to 2.5 million tonnes;
• a change in the method used to destroy cyanide, a chemical used to extract gold from ore, to the “Inco method,” rather than a previously proposed method that uses sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide; and,
• use of a pipeline that would run 5.6 km on land and 2.3 km under water into Roberts Bay, to discharge 3,000 cubic metres per day of saline groundwater and 4,000 cubic metres per day, during the summer, of effluent from the tailings area.
That effluent discharge plan prompted the NIRB to issue new terms and conditions aimed at mitigating the impact of those discharges into Roberts Bay.
The NIRB also set new terms and conditions that call for regular monitoring of water in nearby Doris Lake and require that TMAC develop a “detailed groundwater management plan.”
Other changes include measures aimed at strengthening the way socio-economic effects are measured and new conditions that deal with the effects of temporary mine closures and the potential impact of in-migration to the region.
Under Miramar’s original plan, dating back more than 10 years, the small, high-grade mine at Doris North would have produced about 300,000 ounces over two years.
The Kitikmeot Inuit Association already has an Inuit impact and benefit agreement with TMAC, under which the company would pay the KIA a net smelter royalty of about $69.5 million over six years.
The company is also expected to pay out millions of dollars a year in contracts with the Kitikmeot Corp. and its affiliated companies, along with other Inuit-owned businesses.
But Doris North represents the beginning of a much bigger process that in the future will include the development of promising deposits to the south, at locations called “Madrid” and “Boston.”
Last year, in a pre-feasibility study, TMAC estimated that these deposits, combined, could produce 3.2 million ounces of gold over 20 years, with an average annual rate of production of 160,000 ounces.
That study estimates that the Madrid deposit could be developed in 2018 and 2019 and that the Boston deposit could be developed by 2020.
But they still require permits and licences to do all that.
“TMAC has plans for additional mining and exploration activities along the Hope Bay belt and has submitted project descriptions to the Board for the assessment of several additional proposed activities, works and undertakings in future,” the NIRB said in its public hearing report for the Doris North project certificate amendment application.
But those proposals fall outside the scope of the Doris North application process, NIRB said.
That means the NIRB will deal with the other Hope Bay proposals later.
“Consequently, the Board will assess any of TMAC’s applications for changes to the Project or new project proposals under the appropriate provisions of the NLCA and the Nunavut Planning and Project Assessment Act in future,” NIRB said.
TMAC now awaits the federal government’s response to the NIRB’s recommendations, which have been sent to various federal cabinet ministers, to Nunavut Premier Peter Taptuna, to the Nunavut Water Board and to Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. and the Kitikmeot Inuit Association.
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