The Diavik Diamond Mine says it is investigating “potential damage” to special equipment designed to reinvigorate a Yellowknife lake.
The NWT mine installed a deep-water aerator in the city’s Frame Lake last year. The aerator works by increasing the amount of oxygen in the lake each winter.
Over decades of nutrient build-up, Frame Lake has become a “dead lake” that normally undergoes a die-off each winter. The aerator attempts to provide enough oxygen to avoid that outcome, gradually helping to restore the lake to health.
However, a resident contacted Cabin Radio at the end of May to report that the aerator “appears to be floating sideways and not working.”
In an email last week, a Diavik spokesperson confirmed the company was “investigating some potential damage that may have occurred to the anchoring system for the aerator.”
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The cause of any possible damage wasn’t clear.
Diavik said the aerator’s current predicament has not affected its operations as it’s only designed to work in winter, beneath the ice.
“We are working with the contractor to tow the aerator back to its proper position,” the mine stated, “and to finalize a plan to address the issue once the investigation is complete.”
From 2024: Cleaning up Yellowknife’s Frame Lake takes more than one approach
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Frame Lake, at the heart of Yellowknife, was once a swimming destination and home of McNiven beach, where families would hold picnics with a lifeguard on duty.
For decades, though, there have been no fish and it hasn’t been safe to swim or harvest nearby edible plants. Signs around the lake warn of high arsenic levels.
Rio Tinto is required to remediate fish habitat as a regulatory condition of operating its mine, but that fish habitat doesn’t have to be at the mine site.
This project was previously characterized by staff as an “opportunity to rehabilitate Frame Lake as opposed to rehabilitating random fish habitat in Lac de Gras that nobody will use,” referring to the lake on which Diavik sits.
Emily Blake contributed reporting.
