Multimillion-dollar plans for a tailings reprocessing plant in Snow Lake may be scrapped, the latest blow to hopes for a more diversified regional economy.
BacTech Environ-mental Corp. had spent years touting its proposal for a biotech plant that would purify mine waste in the Snow Lake area while at the same time extracting gold from it.But now Ross Orr, BacTech’s president and CEO, said his company simply doesn’t have the funding to proceed.
“It’s very, very tough to raise capital, not only for conventional mining [projects], but [also] when you want to try and do something a little bit…different,” Orr told The Reminder on Monday.
BacTech had planned to spend $18-$20 million on a bioleach plant that would neutralize a large mound of gold mine tailings in Snow Lake colloquially known as “Toke Mountain.”
Through a process involving bacteria stored inside six large tanks, the plant would have cleansed the tailings of their arsenic toxicity while simultaneously removing valuable gold that was not extracted during the initial mining.
The plant would have employed about 30 people working around the clock. It was expected to take six to eight years to remediate Toke Mountain, but BacTech had hoped to also process tailings from other sites.
Orr said Toke Mountain’s gold grade and iron content turned out to be prohibitively low, meaning a secondary supply of tailings with sufficient gold and iron would need to be fed into the plant to make the project feasible.
A higher gold grade would boost revenue, he said, while additional iron would ensure the reprocessed tailings do not break down and pose further environmental concerns in the future.
“I don’t need to be hauled back in front of some tribunal in 10 years saying, ‘Why did you do this?’” Orr said.
Orr said secondary tailings that could be blended with the Toke Mountain tailings are available, but it would probably cost $500,000 for necessary test work – money BacTech doesn’t have.
He said he made a written pitch for provincial assistance for the test work but has not received a response other than an acknowledgment of his letter.
While Orr initially said “I guess that to me means it’s dead,” he later added that it’s possible a tailings-remediation project in Bolivia could eventually mean sufficient funds for the test work.
That said, gold and iron content aren’t the only issues with Toke Mountain. Orr said Snow Lake is also quite far away – about 300 kilometres – from a large supply of limestone needed for the bioleaching process.
In 2011, the Toronto-based BacTech signed a contract with the Manitoba government to remediate the Toke Mountain tailings, which date back to the 1950s and the long-defunct Nor-Acme gold mine.
The deal did not cost taxpayers, as BacTech planned to make its money by recovering gold from the tailings.
Orr said the government contract expires at the end of this year. At that point, the province can examine other alternatives for remediating the tailings.
As for BacTech’s Bolivia project, Orr said the tailings being looked at contain excellent silver and copper grades. He expects to finalize the terms soon.
“You’ve got to give them what they want, and they want cash flow,” he said of BacTech’s investors.
