Urgent Works — Stopgap Solutions? Pre-Remediation at Faro Mine
While official remediation efforts for the Yukon’s Faro mine are scheduled to begin in 2022, two specific concerns at the notoriously toxic site require a more timely response. As the Faro mine remediation project team, the Yukon and the federal government have announced two “urgent works” projects at the former open pit lead-zinc mine.
“While we’re doing care and maintenance we have a very extensive monitoring program — we monitor water, soil, air,” said Lou Spagnuolo, director of the Faro mine remediation project with Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada. ”If we notice any problems we have to deal with in advance of implementing [the] remediation plan, we call it ‘urgent works.”
Rerouting the northern fork of Faro’s Rose Creek is the highest priority urgent work, according to Spagnuolo. Work will begin in 2018 to channel clean water away from a mineral seep discovered in 2014. Elevated zinc levels in the water have been chasing fish away from a section of the creek’s north fork. Because the discharge has spread over a wide area, it’s been hard to pinpoint the source of the seep; rerouting clean water is the best option, Spagnuolo said.
“We installed a temporary system to try to collect as much of the contaminated water as we can… but it’s not 100 per cent efficient and that’s why we really need to implement this urgent work,” he explained.
The second pressing concern at the Faro site is the dam holding back the Down Valley tailings pond. Built when the mine was still operational — pre-1998 — the dam does not have the hydraulic capacity to withstand a major flood. This urgent work project will commence in 2019 with upgrades to the current intermediate dam and the spillway. Both will be reinforced to withstand a large flood or earthquake.
While there are still months to go before the project gets underway, Spagnuolo said there’s no need for additional safeguards to mitigate the possibility of dam collapse — close monitoring according to the Canadian Dam Association guidelines and a recent earthquake proved that.
“It was actually a pretty large one and very close to the town of Faro. The dam withstood that no problem, and so we’ve been okay up until now,” he said.
But Lewis Rifkind, a mining analyst with the Yukon Conservation Society said he’s troubled by the rate at which the current dam at Down Valley is deteriorating as well as how rapidly the Rose Creek seep is changing water quality.
“These are meant to be geological times scales, and things are happening quickly,” Rifkind said. “The urgent works raises eyebrows. Whenever you see the word urgent on a mine site it’s usually bad news, and in this case it is.”
But even more concerning, according to Rifkin, is that the parties responsible for overseeing the Faro site appear preoccupied with stopgap fixes rather than genuine remediation. However, he concedes that he doesn’t know what else they can do.
“With all due respect, these guys actually are pretty clever. We’re talking well-trained engineers with a background in mining… And if this is the best they can come up with, that’s the best they can come up with,” Rifkin said. “It does show you how we’ve created this intractable problem and we don’t know how to deal with it.”
After being mined for nearly 30 years, the Faro site became a federal government responsibility in 1998 when its previous owners declared bankruptcy. While the Yukon government took over the site’s care and maintenance in 2009, Ottawa continues to finance its upkeep as well as future remediation.
Both urgent works projects at Faro are currently in the design phase. Once work begins, they are expected to take two to three years to complete at a cost of $50 million for each project.
According to Spagnuolo, the socioeconomic benefits associated with the urgent works — including 50 to 75 new jobs — will be shared with local Indigenous groups and other Yukoners whenever possible.
