A mining expert working with the First Nation of Nacho Nyäk Dun says the response to the Eagle Gold Mine disaster has been inadequate.
Farzad Mohamm, who holds degrees relating to mining, including a PhD, spoke to The Yukon Star this morning about the disastrous heap leach pad landslide that occurred June 24.
“Things need to start happening on the ground,” he said. “We needed to do something right when it happened.”
Personally, he said, he believes the mine, about 90 kilometres northeast of Mayo, should permanently stop operating.
It will cost $50 million to $60 million just to move the material from the collapse back to the top of the valley where it originally sat – and that’s likely to be prohibitive for mine owner Victoria Gold Corp., Mohamm predicted.
He’s been a consultant with the First Nation for about two years, and has worked extensively on the Eagle Gold Mine file as it pertains to the site.
He said he was on-site almost immediately following the collapse of the heap leach pad and subsequent landslide that has shut the mine down and seen most of the employees laid off for an undetermined time.
Mohamm said the pumping equipment has been destroyed, and the piping damaged at the site.
He called the situation a near “worst-case scenario”.
Mohamm said tests over the last few days have shown that groundwater contamination is close to reaching the nearby Haggart Creek, where cyanide has previously been detected.
He said there’s a month’s worth of groundwater now hitting the environment, because it moves far more slowly than surface water.
It will take at least another month for Victoria Gold and/or the Yukon government to have anything in place to handle that contamination, Mohamm said. That means another month’s worth of groundwater will contact the watershed before any countermeasures can be taken.
Mohamm bluntly said the response from Victoria Gold has been totally lacking.
“There’s no way the company’s response has been adequate,” he said.
Multiple plans and strategies are now in place to handle the crisis, Mohamm added – but little has actually been done on the ground to take action.
“There’s not a whole lot happening in terms of water treatment.”
The destruction of the cyanide being released by the mine should have been the priority from the start, Mohamm said.
Instead, a shortage of water storage capacity and a lack of reagent to neutralize the cyanide being released from the collapsed heap have hindered efforts to deal with the problem.
Not to mention the destruction of the cyanide would lead to the creation of ammonia – which the company has no means of handling either, Mohamm said.
The site is out of water storage, a problem which needs to be addressed immediately, he pointed out.
The company is currently pumping excess water back through the collapsed heap leach mound – which effectively means the debris is being used as temporary storage.
However, that also means more cyanide-contaminated water is being released into the environment, since there is nothing to stop that from happening.
Much of the site is unsafe for workers, meaning the damage could be much worse than is currently known.
“All of this could have been handled better,” Mohamm said.
He said the Yukon government was “slow to react” for the first week, but has improved somewhat in the meantime.
It’s issued a series of orders to Victoria Gold in an attempt to make it step up its efforts.
Mohamm said, though, that he thinks the orders have been mostly ineffective, because the company hasn’t been living up to the imposed deadlines.
Unlike Mohamm, it seems as if the federal Department of Ocean and Fisheries (DFO) is shying away from the so-called disaster at the mine.
The DFO has a reputation for often aggressively inserting itself into any incidents involving fish habitat, but not in this instance.
The Star contacted department officials this morning to inquire why they haven’t been involved in the clean-up and investigation of the incident, which could potentially affect the endangered salmon runs in the watershed.
After that request passed through several hands, federal officials eventually said such questions must be directed to the Yukon government – as the DFO isn’t involved in the proceedings.