With Plan A likely to fizzle, the provincial government is standing by its pledge to clean up one of northern Manitoba’s most notorious mine-waste stockpiles.
BacTech Environmental Corp. says there is now only a small chance it will build a special plant to neutralize the toxic mound of tailings in Snow Lake nicknamed “Toke Mountain.”
Both BacTech and the province once had high hopes for the plant. For provincial officials, it was a way to decontaminate Toke Mountain at no cost to taxpayers.
A government spokesperson said the province’s Mineral Resources department will still ensure that Toke Mountain is “appropriately rehabilitated” as it has done at other abandoned tailings sites in the Snow Lake area.
The province continues to hold discussions with BacTech about the company’s plans, the spokesperson added.
BacTech previously signed a contract with the province to
purify the tailings mound, but
the company says the deal
expires at the end of this year.
Low odds
BacTech says it has informed both the province and the Town of Snow Lake that the odds are low of its previously announced bioleach plant proceeding in the northern community.
The plant would have not only purified Toke Mountain’s estimated 250,000 tonnes of tailings, but also allowed BacTech to extract valuable gold that remains trapped in the waste.
Ross Orr, president and
CEO of the Toronto-based BacTech, told The Reminder last week that his company simply doesn’t have the funding to
proceed with the $18- to $20-million project.
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.
