Ottawa completes cleanup of derelict Nunavut mine

Here’s how part of the abandoned mine site at Roberts Bay looked before it was cleaned up. (PHOTO/INAC)

Here’s how this same site at Roberts Bay looked like after the clean-up was finished this year. (PHOTO/INAC)

CAMBRIDGE BAY — Now you see it, now you don’t.

If you were to go to the Roberts and Ida bays, about 115 kilometres southwest of Cambridge Bay on Melville Sound, you wouldn’t see much out of the ordinary today.

But not that long ago you would have found 30 derelict buildings, gaping mine shafts, waste rock dumps, a tailings pond, scattered debris such as tires and barrels, exploration trenches and other waste.

For years, the two 30-year old abandoned mining sites, located seven kilometres from each other, were a dangerous eyesore and public safety hazard due to the presence of health-threatening contaminants like PCBs and asbestos.

When the mining at the Roberts and Ida bays ended in the 1970s, the site underwent no treatment to bring it back to its natural state — the mining company just packed up and left.

In summer, buildings and junk rusted and decayed into the surrounding land, while in the winter, the snow-covered metal, open trenches and shafts were potentially lethal obstacles to unsuspecting travellers and wildlife.

In 2003, the two sites were listed priority sites for clean-up under the federal contaminated sites accelerated action plan.

In 2007, Quantum Murray LP, a decommissioning and environmental remediation firm based out of Burnaby, British Columbia, received the $7.8 million, two-year contract for the clean-up.

It was no easy job. Everything had to be taken apart, divided into hazardous and non-hazardous piles. All the gunk in the tailings pond at Roberts Bay— the worst of the two sites— had to be removed. Workers then laid down a new plastic bottom and filled it with compacted, non-hazardous material.

This past summer, the remediation work on the two sites wrapped up— and as a thank-you to the 36 Inuit beneficiaries from Cambridge Bay who helped with the clean-up effort, the crew from Quantum Murray and an Indian and Northern Affairs representative came Sept. 30 to recap the project and hand out t-shirts, caps, and other company paraphernalia to everyone there.

Janine Angohiatok, Brenden Greenlet and Luc-Paul Uvilluq turned up at the session to see some of their former supervisors.

The three worked on the site as high school students, who graduated from a training program that Quantum Murray provided as part of their contract.
As a part of the contract, Quantum Murray also agreed to hire Inuit for over 80 per cent of the project workforce and hand out most of sub-contracts for the project’s work to local, Inuit-owned companies.

Working on the clean-up was great, with everyone on site like a “humungous family,” said Angohiatok, who worked outside gathering junk as well as in the camp kitchen.
Uvilluq cut up metal in sections to be boxed up and sent out by barge, along with Greenley, who said he used his summer work experience on the crew to land a job at the nearby Doris North mine project operated by the Newmont Gold.

The Roberts Mining Company first staked the mineral-rich area around Roberts Bay in 1964 and a silver deposit was discovered there in 1965. The following year, gold and silver deposits were staked at Ida Bay.

From 1967 until 1972, the Hope Bay Mining Company (later called Hope Bay Mines Ltd.) explored the area and started mining in 1973.

In 1974, Hope Bay entered into a joint venture with Van Silver Explorations and Recko Explorations, upgrading the Roberts Bay Mine and building a small mill.
When operations stopped in 1975, the mine had processed 74,500 ounces of silver.

While you can’t see any sign of that activity today, thanks to the clean-up, monitoring on site will continue for 25 years, to make sure the clean-up caught all potential sources of contamination.