Cost of cleaning up Yellowknife's Giant Mine now pegged at $4.38B, up from $1B
CBC
The remediation of Giant Mine in Yellowknife is expected to cost the federal government $4.38 billion — more than four times the initial estimate.
This makes the cleanup of the former gold mine the most expensive remediation project in Canada's Northern Abandoned Mine Reclamation Program.
The previous cost estimate of $1 billion was developed in 2010, and that was a "pure construction cost estimate," Natalie Plato, deputy director of the Giant Mine Remediation Project, said Thursday, after revealing the new estimate.
The project has changed significantly since then, she said.
The remediation of Giant Mine is an extraordinarily complicated undertaking that includes containing 237,000 tonnes of highly toxic arsenic trioxide dust deep underground.
When asked why the initial estimate was so much lower than today's, Plato said "when we went in, we went in wanting to get this project done, and we didn't do extensive consultation."
Plato, who said she wasn't involved at the project's outset, said they got referred to an environmental assessment and heard Yellowknife-area residents wanted more consultation, more involvement and more work done on the site.
"All of those things do come at a cost," she said.
The remediation project's budget is not publicly available.
Plato said that's because their work is done through competitive bids and requests for proposals, and "those are protected so contractors don't get our costs, because that can compromise the contracting process."
The $4.38-billion estimate was drawn up by the remediation project team and approved by the Treasury Board of Canada. It includes all the project's costs from 2005 until 2038, when remediation is set to finish.
Plato said the updated price tag takes into account contingency (i.e. potential unforeseen expenses), inflation, GST values and the $710 million that has been spent on the remediation project so far.
Plato said a lot has changed since the initial cleanup cost came out.
For one thing, the environmental assessment led to 26 legally binding measures meant to minimize the negative environmental impacts of the project and resulting public concerns.
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