Sabina’s Back River project goes into technical hearings in Cambridge Bay

Bathurst Inlet in Nunavut’s Kitikmeot region, shown here, was long proposed as a promising site for the BIPAR, a port project that would allow mining companies to bring in fuel more cheaply and cut the costs of shipping ore to market. A verson of it still survives in Sabina Gold and Silver’s Back River project proposal. (FILE PHOTO)

Sabina Gold and Silver Corporation’s Back River gold mine project is located in western Nunavut, 400 kilometres south of Cambridge Bay. (FILE PHOTO)

Sabina Gold and Silver Corp.’s Back River gold project will come under scrutiny this week when representatives from governments and Inuit organizations that submitted comments on the 12-volume Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the project gather in the western Nunavut community of Cambridge Bay.

This technical meeting, convened by the Nunavut Impact Review Board, is part of its environmental assessment of proposed projects in Nunavut, set out in Article 12 of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, and it’s intended to guide the Final EIS for the project.

Those at the meeting — which is open to the public at the Luke Novoligak Hall on Nov. 13 to Nov. 15 — will discuss their many detailed comments stemming from the Sabina’s draft EIS submitted earlier this year and the company’s.

Sabina’s 100-per-cent-owned Back River gold project comprises seven properties totaling 120,000 gold-rich acres, 400 kilometres south of Cambridge Bay on the mainland.

If it becomes operational, perhaps as soon as 2017, the mine would produce 300,000 to 400,000 ounces of gold a year.

The Back River proposal includes six open-pit mining areas within the Goose and George properties with one underground mine at Goose.

The project would include several roads: all-weather roads within the two properties, a winter road between the two properties, a winter road linking the properties to the marine laydown area at Bathurst Inlet and a short-term winter road to the Tibbett-Contwoyto winter road.

All the ore would be processed at the Goose property where gold bars would be poured and then flown out by air.

The Back River gold mine would take two years to build, operate for 10 to 15 years, and then take five years to close down, hiring 1,600 workers during the mine’s construction phase and 900 during the its operations.

At the technical hearing, discussion around the comments — which can be consulted — will focus on a wide variety of social and environmental concerns.

These include the impact of shipping for Sabina’s proposed Bathurst Inlet shipping area or “marine laydown area.” This would be used for annual sealifts during open water season and include a fuel storage tank farm to receive tanker shipments of fuel to be delivered to the mines over a winter road.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans, in its comments, said that the “proposed shipping activity and the construction and operation of the ice road in Bathurst Inlet have the potential to have negative impacts on marine mammals. Additional information will be required to ensure that the potential impacts are understood and mitigation and monitoring plans are developed.”

Many of the comments for Sabina, which were submitted to the NIRB, asked for more attention in the Final EIS to caribou and the impact of the Back River project on the dwindling Bathurst caribou herd, whose numbers are down from about 60,000 in 2006 to less than 10,000 in 2014.

Even the Government of the Northwest Territories weighed in on this in its comments:

“The GNWT is concerned that the caribou in the Bathurst herd are highly vulnerable and actions that pose risk of further decline and delayed recovery need to be very carefully considered.”

And the GNWT wants the Final EIS to consider its impact “in the context of this herd’s vulnerability.”

Sabina purchased the Back River project in late 2009 and, following the discovery of multiple new deposits in 2010 and 2011, made the decision to move ahead with the project.

In 2012, the preliminary economic assessment showed there was at least $1.1 billion worth of gold on the project’s properties.

A community roundtable to address the project will take place Nov. 17 to Nov. 18, with a pre-hearing conference scheduled for Nov. 19, also at the Luke Novoligak Hall, in Cambridge Bay.

At community consultations in the Kitikmeot region held earlier this year, residents mainly raised concerns about future job possibilities at the mine and its impacts on the environment centred around impacts on wildlife — particularly caribou, muskox and fish.