Giant Mine team rejects criticism of evacuation planning

An official overseeing the cleanup of Giant Mine says the project wouldn’t change how last year’s evacuation of Yellowknife was handled.

In its latest annual report, the remediation project’s independent watchdog raised concern about a lack of security at the Giant site during the city’s three-week evacuation in August and September 2023.

That watchdog, the Giant Mine Oversight Board, said the project should be better prepared for large-scale emergencies.

Natalie Plato, the Giant Mine Remediation Project’s deputy director, told Cabin Radio if conditions were the same, the project would follow the same procedures as last year.

“We did do a full lessons-learned of what happened in 2023 and we were pretty happy with the outcome,” Plato said.

“We learned that we could probably improve our communications with the city and the GNWT to determine who is going to be essential if needed.”

Security staff normally patrol Giant, the site of a toxic former gold mine being remediated at a cost of more than $4 billion, at all hours.

Before they were told to evacuate last summer along with other Yellowknife residents, Plato said all access points to the site were secured. She added there were no reported security breaches during the evacuation, when the city was largely empty.

“There’s not a lot that could be vandalized on site and we did have our contractors periodically checking,” she said.

“We didn’t identify that we would change any of our actions.”

Perpetual care plan draft due in 2027

Plato said the project completed a risk assessment ahead of the evacuation that identified actions to minimize wildfire risk to the site and what to do if the city had to evacuate.

She said the highly toxic arsenic trioxide dust stored underground at the site – as well as the remains of the contaminated roaster building, stored in metal containers in a tailings pond – were each determined to be at extremely low risk from wildfire.

Plato said the project planned to follow any evacuation orders and staff cleared brush, moved critical equipment into tailing ponds, and completed water treatment early.

“At that time, we decided there was minimal risk on-site and that the … risk to people’s health was far superior [from a wildfire], so we followed the evacuation order,” she said.

While work on the remediation project was shut down during the evacuation, some contractors remained in Yellowknife to assist with wildfire defences. They still had access to the site to retrieve equipment, such as piping and water cannons.

Plato said since last year, staff have completed additional brush-clearing at the project site. She said vegetation has been tested for arsenic as the project plans to use it for future composting.

In its annual report, the Giant Mine Oversight Board also called for more research into the potential risk of arsenic release from forested areas during a fire.

Plato said while that’s not “a big concern” at the former mine site itself, the project is aware of arsenic in the surrounding area.

“We certainly look forward to seeing what that additional research could show,” she said.

Finally, both the oversight board and a recent independent audit highlighted concern with a delay in completion of the project’s perpetual care plan and lack of significant progress toward Indigenous and northern hiring targets.

Plato said the project plans to award a contract to develop phase one of the perpetual care plan in the coming month, with the first draft expected to be complete in 2027.

She said the project continues to work with Indigenous governments to develop training programs to prepare residents for employment at the remediation project, as well as look into other training opportunities and ways to support local Indigenous companies.

“We want to do better and we are looking at ways of doing better,” she said.

Plato said the project plans to publish a full response to the oversight board’s report.

“We look forward to responding to the GMOB report as usual,” she said. “We’re always looking for ways for continual improvement.”