Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year to anyone still out there. I think you will have to find another stock for the prosperity part. This is from the Yukon News via a poster at the Stochhouse forums.
BYG told to act responsively
by John McHutchion
News reporter
BYG Natural Resources Inc. faces renewed pressure from the federal government to clean up its act.
The Whitehorse office of Northern Affairs also says the company is late paying hundreds of thousands
of dollars in deposits to
cover environmental cleanup at its mine.
In a seven-page letter to BYG president Graham Dickson dated December 2, Northern Affairs
demanded the company
immediately stop mining sulphide ore at its Mount Nansen gold mine near Carmacks.
Under the conditions of its water licence, BYG had permission to mine and mill oxide ore from a body
known as the Brown
McDade deposit.
However, the company was supposed to stop mining the deposit when it hit the sulphide ore.
It didn't, and that's a problem because sulphide in tailings can generate environmentally unfriendly
acids, said David Sherstone,
Northern Affairs' regional manager for water resources.
Those acids can pollute nearby rivers and streams, killing fish and other aquatic life.
And BYG's tailings are moderate to strong potential acid generators, said a consultant's report about
samples taken from its
compound.
The Yukon Conservation Society wants BYG to quit mining sulphide ore until the company makes
some design changes to its
operations and puts up money as a security against future environmental treatment.
"We are already footing a multimillion-dollar bill for the Faro mine and risking long-term damage to the
water right down to the
Pelly River," Sue Moodie wrote in a recent letter to the editor.
"It is time for the regulators to learn from their mistakes, enforce the laws they are supposed to and
take action," she added.
BYG can ask the Yukon Territory Water Board for an amendment to its water licence, but the company
will have to show
how it proposes to neutralize the tailings now and at the time of abandonment, said Sherstone.
The mining of sulphide ore is not the only thing the feds have challenged at the BYG mine.
Sherstone's letter contains other instructions to the company.
It must lower the level of cyanide in its tailings pond to a concentration of no more than 25 milligram per
litre.
Between November, 1997, and May, 1998, the company was able to keep the cyanide level within its
permit.
However, Ottawa says the amount of cyanide in the tailings pond water has been creeping upwards and
is now four times the
permitted level.
The most recent samples showed levels of cyanide in the pond between 100 and 112 milligrams per
litre, said Sherstone.
The company has also been ordered to move tailings that had been "beached" too high above the
tailings pond and control
contaminated water escaping into a nearby stream.
BYG has until December 31 to come up with a plan to deal with these concerns.
It ran afoul of its environmental regulators earlier this year when effluent from the mine failed a
fish-toxicity test.
The company was also forced to release water from its tailings pond earlier than predicted in order to
bleed off spring runoff
that threatened to destroy one of its dams.
The federal government is also asking BYG to pay up $225,000 it says it owns as a security payment
against future
environmental work.
For its part, BYG says it has taken tests of the sulphide ore at its tailings pond but hasn't been able to
reproduce the same
figures found by the federal government.
The acid-causing ore came out of one shoot the company was digging, said acting mine manager
Robert Stroshein, adding
BYG has ceased mining that rock.
The cyanide level in the tailing pond is also currently high right now, and the company is waiting for
supplies of hydrogen
peroxide to arrive to begin treating the water, he said.
The company has used the chemical periodically in the past to lower the level of cyanide in the pond.
As for the $225,000 owed in environmental security deposits, Stroshein has indicated that he doesn't
know anything about the
late payment. |
