Yukon First Nation calls for halt of mining on its traditional territory after Eagle gold mine accident

A Yukon First Nation is calling for a stop to all mining in its traditional territory as uncertainty swirls over the scale of environmental damage caused by the failure of a gold processing plant.

Giant piles of cyanide-laced rocks collapsed last week at a heap leach facility at the Eagle gold mine in central Yukon operated by Victoria Gold Corp., triggering a landslide that likely released toxic cyanide into the environment.

The rockslide, which satellite imagery shows to be about 1500 meters long up to 370 meters wide, caused widespread damage to mine infrastructure including the heap leach pad.

Heap leaching involves stacking mined ore into outdoor piles and then sprinkling it with water laced with cyanide. The facility at the Eagle mine was designed to hold as much as 92 million tonnes of ore.

Neither the company nor the Yukon government, which is investigating the accident, has revealed specifics around the extent of the damage.

The open pit mine is about 375 kilometres north of Whitehorse and 85 kilometres north of the village of Mayo, on the traditional territory of The First Nation of Na-Cho Nyak Dun (FNNND).

FNNND on Wednesday demanded “an immediate halt of all mining activity” in its traditional territory and called for an independent investigation of the accident in the face of what it called “negligent government oversight.”

Donna Hope, chief of FNNND, said in an interview that she had little faith in the government’s internal investigation and pointed to other mining disasters such as the Mount Polley tailings dam failure in British Columbia in 2014, which was investigated by the B.C. government in conjunction with external independent engineers and consultants.

FNNND members for generations have hunted, trapped and fished in the vicinity of the mine.

“We actually have a spring fishery that we are highly concerned about now,” said Ms. Hope. “Our elders were concerned about even putting the mine there above our fishery.”

The Yukon government last week said that Victoria Gold had built dams to hold back contaminated water from the heap leach failure which was being pumped into storage ponds. However, the government has not revealed how long it took the company to build the dams, how much of the contaminated water the company was able to capture, and the quantity of cyanide that may have escaped into the environment.

So far, government officials have said that the risk of water being contaminated by the deadly chemical is extremely low. Government workers have been monitoring water on-site, as well as water upstream and downstream of the mine.

“We remain committed to working with the First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun to determine a path forward,” Laura Seeley, a spokesperson with the Yukon government wrote in an email to the Globe and Mail. “Our top priority in the immediate term is safeguarding the health and wellbeing of people and the environment.”

The territory of FNNND covers an area of more than 160,000 square kilometers with roughly 130,000 square kilometers within the Yukon. Almost half of Yukon’s mining activity encompassing more than 80,000 claims occurs within the FNNND’s territory. Apart from the Eagle mine, Idaho-based Hecla Mining operates the Kino Hill silver mine in the Yukon, which is also situated on FNNND’s territory.

Shares in Victoria Gold have been decimated since the heap leach disaster with its market value down by nearly 90 per cent.

Investors are concerned that Victoria Gold won’t be able to generate enough cash to service its debt. The company was holding more than $230-million in debt at the end of March, with US$16.7-million due in September. A further US$119.9-million is due by the end of next year.

Whitehorse-based Victoria Gold has so far put out only one statement on the accident. John McConnell, chief executive of Victoria Gold, has not responded to multiple requests for comment.

In a heap leach, cyanide solution causes gold to leach from the stacked ore into a lined pond underneath. The solution is then pumped to an enclosed facility where the precious metal is collected and the cyanide is pumped back to the stacked pile of ore to be reused.

Cord Hamilton, a consulting engineer for Na-Cho Nyak Dun, said at a technical briefing hosted by the Yukon government on Friday that almost certainly there had been a significant release of cyanide into the environment of between 800,000 and a million cubic metres.