kemess north copper-gold mine project · 30.10.2006 · 2 will resume on november 20th in...

KEMESS NORTH COPPER-GOLD MINE PROJECT

JOINT REVIEW PANEL HEARINGS CONDUCTED

PURSUANT TO THE CANADIAN ENVIRONMENTAL

ASSESSMENT ACT AND THE BRITISH COLUMBIA

ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT ACT

____________________________________

PROCEEDINGS AT HEARING

VOLUME I

____________________________________

Held at The Inn of The North

Prince George, British Columbia

On October 30th, 2006

Wayne Bilko/Penticton Reporting(250)492-4246

APPEARANCES

PANEL:

Carol Jones ChairpersonMark Duiven Panel MemberMalcolm Scoble Panel Member

PRESENTERS:

Peter MacPhail ) For NorthgateHarold Bent ) Minerals CorporationLinda Hodgson )Harvey McLeod )Laurence Turney )Michael Rousseau )Tom Watson )Debra Lamash )

INDEX

PAGE

Opening ceremony and remarks 1Presentation by Mr. MacPhail 8Presentation by Ms. Hodgson 22Presentation by Mr. Bent 25Presentation by Mr. McLeod 32Presentation by Mr. Nicholson 45Presentation by Mr. Watson 85Presentation by Mr. Turney 105Presentation by Mr. Rousseau 112Presentation by Ms. Lamash 134

Questions posed to Northgate 145


Opening Remarks

1

1 Prince George, B.C.

2 30 October 2006

3 [HEARING COMMENCED AT 1:00 PM]

4 THE CHAIR: Good afternoon, welcome.

5 We are going to begin our hearings this afternoon

6 with a welcoming ceremony. Chief French, will you

7 begin the ceremony?

8 CHIEF FRENCH: Yes, I will.

9 THE CHAIR: Thank you.

10 CHIEF FRENCH: Are you ready now?

11 THE CHAIR: Yes.

12 [OPENING CEREMONY]

13 OPENING REMARKS BY THE CHAIR

14 THE CHAIR: On behalf of the Panel, I'd like to

15 thank you very much for that welcoming ceremony.

16 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is

17 Carol Jones, and I've been appointed to chair this

18 Joint Review Panel for the Kemess North Copper-Gold

19 Mine Project. My fellow panel members are, on my

20 right, Mr. Mark Duiven and on my left Dr. Malcolm

21 Scoble.

22 My colleagues and I were appointed by Canada's

23 Minister of the Environment and British Columbia's

24 Minister of Sustainable Resource Management to conduct

25 a joint review that discharges the requirements set out


Opening Remarks

2

1 in the British Columbia Environmental Assessment Act

2 and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, and in

3 the terms of reference for this panel.

4 First, I would like to take an opportunity to

5 introduce you to the members of this Joint Review

6 Panel. Mark Duiven is a resource and community

7 development and management consultant. He has 20 years

8 of experience working in Northern B.C. and

9 internationally. His local experience includes

10 community development, fisheries management and

11 resource-use planning. Mark is very familiar with

12 Northern B.C. resource development issues and the

13 people who live here.

14 Dr. Malcolm Scoble is the head of Mining

15 Engineering at UBC. He is a member of the Association

16 of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of British

17 Columbia. Dr. Scoble has over 30 years of industrial

18 and academic experience in mining.

19 I am a professional agrologist with 30 years of

20 experience in environmental assessment and reclamation

21 of mining developments. My experience includes mining

22 developments in Western Canada, in Europe, and in South

23 America.

24 Information regarding our roles and

25 responsibilities are set out in the agreement to


Opening Remarks

3

1 establish this Joint Panel for the Kemess Project that

2 was made between the Minister of Environment, Canada,

3 and the Minister of Sustainable Resource Management,

4 British Columbia. That agreement and other documents

5 relating to this proceeding are available for viewing

6 on the public registry. Staff assisting us can provide

7 more information regarding the public registry if

8 anyone has any questions about it.

9 Our Joint Review Panel will be assisted in this

10 proceeding by our Secretariat. The Secretariat is

11 sitting to the right of us here. It is comprised of

12 two panel managers, Mr. Ray Crook and Ms. Marie-France

13 Therrien, and our panel analyst, Mr. Mel Falk.

14 Other Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency

15 staff members are also in attendance. Ms. Lucille

16 Jamault is providing communication support and

17 Mr. Simon Lemay is responsible for the public registry.

18 Britney Anderson is providing administrative support to

19 the Secretariat. If, in the course of this hearing,

20 anyone has any questions about the proceedings, please

21 feel free to approach any of these people during any of

22 the breaks, and they will be pleased to help you.

23 The subject of these hearings is the Kemess North

24 Copper-Gold Mine Project. This is a proposed expansion

25 of Northgate Minerals Corporation's operating Kemess


Opening Remarks

4

1 Mine. It's located approximately 300 kilometres

2 northwest of Mackenzie and 250 kilometres northeast of

3 Smithers, British Columbia. The proposed project would

4 be an open-pit mine with production of up to 120,000

5 tonnes per day and an 11-year mine life. The project

6 is designed to increase the Kemess Mine production

7 capacity from the current 55,000 tonnes per day up to

8 the 120,000 tonnes per day.

9 I would like to take a few moments to describe the

10 panel review process to date.

11 Based on the Joint Panel Agreement that I

12 mentioned earlier, the Ministers published draft

13 guidelines in June 2005. Public consultation were held

14 on these draft guidelines, and they were finalized by

15 the Panel in August 2005. In response to these

16 guidelines, Northgate filed an environmental impact

17 assessment in September 2005, which was accompanied by

18 14 appendices. The Panel then considered the written

19 comments from First Nations, the public and government

20 agencies, and in January 2006 requested some additional

21 information from Northgate. Northgate responded to

22 this request in March 2006, and the Panel again asked

23 for the reviewers to assess the completeness of this

24 information.

25 After considering the review responses, the Panel


Opening Remarks

5

1 requested in June 2006 that Northgate provide some

2 additional information, which they submitted to us

3 September 8th, 2006.

4 The Panel determined, on the 15th of September,

5 that we had sufficient information to proceed to public

6 hearings. The Panel requested that some remaining

7 additional information from Northgate be presented at

8 the hearings, and this information was provided to us

9 on October 20th.

10 In addition to the studies completed by Northgate,

11 the Panel has commissioned three studies on the

12 feasibility of alternative mine waste disposal. All of

13 the documents I have described today are available on

14 the public registry.

15 After the end of the hearing process on

16 December 14th, 2006, the Panel will prepare a report

17 of our recommendations. This report will be submitted

18 to both the Federal Minister of the Environment and the

19 Provincial Minister of the Environment. The Federal

20 and Provincial Governments will take this advice into

21 consideration in making the final decisions about the

22 proposed project. In our report, we will include a

23 description of this public review process, a summary of

24 the comments and recommendations that we have received,

25 and our conclusions and recommendations.


Opening Remarks

6

1 I would like to take a few minutes now to explain

2 the procedures that this Joint Review Panel intends to

3 use in this hearing.

4 In accordance with the Canada-British Columbia

5 Agreement on Environmental Assessment Cooperation,

6 which was completed in 2004, and with the Joint Review

7 Panel Agreement, as I've discussed with you earlier,

8 this Panel will conduct this hearing in accordance with

9 established procedures of the Canadian Environmental

10 Assessment Agency. These hearings will be

11 non-judicial, but will be structured. Time limits have

12 been developed for both presentations and questions.

13 It's the purpose of these hearings to allow

14 participation of all of the interested persons and to

15 ensure that all participants are treated with respect.

16 These proceedings are being recorded by a court

17 reporter, and copies of the previous day's proceedings

18 will be available from the court reporter at a cost in

19 the morning of the following day, and these will also

20 be posted on the registry. Audio recordings of the

21 proceedings on a CD will also be available from the

22 court reporter.

23 The proceedings are being webcast. Information on

24 this service can be obtained from Mr. Simon Lemay.

25 The hearings will continue throughout this week


Opening Remarks

7

1 here at this location in Prince George, and then they

2 will resume on November 20th in Smithers, B.C., for

3 an additional week. Additional hearings will be held

4 at Kwadacha, B.C., on December 5th through the 7th,

5 if arrangements can be made with the Tse Keh Nay.

6 Now, in terms of today's hearing schedule, we

7 propose to sit until about 6:00 p.m., with a break in

8 the mid-afternoon around 4:00. At 6:00 p.m., we'll

9 break for dinner, and reconvene at 7:30 p.m., and then

10 we expect to sit until about 9:00 p.m. Tomorrow, and

11 for the remaining days this week, we will begin in the

12 morning at 9:00 a.m., except on Wednesday, when we will

13 start at 8:30 a.m., and we will generally conclude

14 around 5:00 p.m., except on Wednesday and Thursday,

15 when we'll have additional evening sessions. We have

16 had to make a number of changes to our schedule, as

17 we've had a number of people interested in speaking

18 specifically at the Prince George sessions. However,

19 the daily schedules are posted on the registry, and

20 they're also available from the desk at the entrance to

21 the room.

22 To ensure the accuracy of the proceedings, I will

23 ask, when you are presenting or asking questions, that

24 you speak clearly into the microphone and that you

25 state your full name and spell it out when speaking for


Opening Remarks

8

1 the first time. Now, the mike will not be turned on,

2 so I will remind you also to turn on the mike before

3 you begin.

4 Two other small bits of information that I should

5 mention, we do have two exit locations from this room,

6 one that you entered through, and a second one to my

7 left here. And I would ask if everyone could please

8 ensure that their cellphones are turned off throughout

9 the proceedings.

10 So we will begin the hearings today with a

11 presentation from Northgate Minerals, and somewhere in

12 the presentation I'll call a break when it seems

13 appropriate sometime in the late afternoon.

14 So with that, I would ask if Northgate could begin

15 their presentation.

16 MR. MacPHAIL: We're going to need to set things

17 up.

18 THE CHAIR: If you could please introduce yourself

19 as you begin to speak, and as I mentioned, if you could

20 spell your name for the court reporter. Thank you.

21 PRESENTATION BY NORTHGATE MINERALS CORPORATION

22 MR. MacPHAIL: Thank you, Madam Chair.

23 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is

24 Peter MacPhail, that's M-a-c-P-h-a-i-l, vice-president

25 of operations for Northgate and Kemess. I would like


Presentation by Northgate

9

1 to welcome you here to participate in the public

2 hearings for the Kemess North project. I would also

3 like to thank the Tse Keh Nay for the opening ceremony.

4 I'm going to spend a bit of time introducing you

5 to our project, take you through Kemess North, also

6 Kemess South, and I'll hand the presentation over to a

7 number of others that are here with me today to take

8 you through it in more detail.

9 So who are we, who is Northgate Minerals? Well,

10 we've been around a long time. Our roots go back to

11 the Kirkland Lake gold camp in the early 1900s. In

12 1958 our name changed to Northgate Exploration. It's

13 now Northgate Minerals. Our head office is in

14 Vancouver. We also have an office in Toronto. We are

15 a widely-held public company with no single controlling

16 shareholder. Our major assets are the Kemess Mine in

17 the upper picture, the expansion project at Kemess

18 North in the middle, and the Young-Davidson advanced

19 exploration project in Ontario.

20 The Kemess Mine is located in North-Central B.C.,

21 with 250 kilometres north of Smithers and 450 northwest

22 of Prince George. We operate as a fly-in/fly-out camp

23 with a variety of schedules ranging from two weeks

24 in/two weeks out, to four days in/three days out. We

25 really can't talk about Kemess North without setting



10

1 the stage with a description of what we currently have

2 at Kemess South. The Kemess North really is a

3 continuation of our business at Kemess South.

4 I'll start with a bit of history on the Kemess

5 South Mine. The deposit was discovered in the early

6 1990s. It was put into production by Royal Oak in

7 1998, and their timing probably couldn't have been any

8 worse, as it coincided with a sharp downturn in metal

9 prices. In 1999, Royal Oak entered receivership and

10 Northgate stepped in in 2000, and since that time

11 Northgate has turned it into a very efficient and

12 profitable mine, the second-largest metal mine in B.C.

13 The Kemess Mine is located in the Toodoggone

14 District which has a long mining history. This table

15 shows the mines that have operated in the area,

16 including McConnell Creek, Baker and Cheni Gold

17 Mines. We're also located within the Resource

18 Management Zone 7 of the Mackenzie Land Resource

19 Management Plan. This zone has a special emphasis on

20 mineral development and recognizes the significance of

21 mineral potential in the area. Of course, it must be

22 done in conjunction with the conservation of

23 non-extractive values such as wildlife, fish, heritage

24 values and recreation and tourism.

25 On, now, specifically to Kemess South. This slide



11

1 indicates the reserves that were in place prior to

2 start-up and those remaining at the beginning of this

3 year. The original reserves totalled about 224 million

4 tonnes of ore, containing about a billion pounds of

5 copper and four and a half million ounces of gold. The

6 in situ grades were .22 percent copper, .62 grams per

7 tonne gold. After eight years of operation, we had

8 remaining at the beginning of this year about 68

9 million tonnes of ore at a similar grade. This reserve

10 will be depleted by mid-2009, and without Kemess North

11 the operation will be shut down.

12 I won't spend any time on this slide, but it

13 describes the details of the production history since

14 start-up. We've been averaging about 300,000 ounces of

15 gold and about 75 million pounds of copper over the

16 last several years.

17 Construction started at Kemess in 1996, and the

18 place was put into production for about $500 million of

19 capital. It takes significant infrastructure to

20 operate a large mine so far from major centres, and

21 that infrastructure was put in place at significant

22 expense. The mining business is very

23 capital-intensive. This infrastructure is what makes

24 Kemess North possible. The 380-kilometre power line,

25 the access road and the milling facility are already



12

1 there. Access to the site is via a series of Forest

2 Service roads and connecting into the Omineca Resource

3 Access Road, and the distance from Mackenzie is about

4 400 kilometres.

5 Power supplied to the site through a 380-kilometre

6 power line from the Kennedy substation, the 230 kV

7 power line will not require any upgrading for the

8 expansion project.

9 At Kemess, we have a state-of-the-art milling

10 facility. At 50,000 tonnes per day, it's one of the

11 largest in Canada. We recover the metal values into

12 the ore into a mineral concentrate which we then ship

13 to a smelter in Quebec. The process uses relatively

14 benign reagents such as carbon-based collectors, lime

15 and flocculent. No cyanide is used at Kemess.

16 The mine itself is a relatively large open-pit

17 operation. We move about 150,000 tonnes of rock per

18 day with modern mining fleet. The pit is about 1.7

19 kilometres long, 800 metres across, and will be about

20 375 metres deep when finished in 2009.

21 This is another view of the mine, a more recent

22 one, with the production drill in the lower foreground.

23 To give you an idea of the scale, 1.7 kilometres across

24 is about the distance between the two bridges in town

25 here that cross the Fraser.



13

1 Our employees are certainly one of our biggest

2 resources at Kemess. We provide direct employment for

3 about 475 people, made up of 350 Kemess employees, 125

4 permanent contractors. Our economic activity also

5 creates approximately 950 spin-off jobs through the

6 province and the country.

7 Just a few quick shots: Some of our trades,

8 machinists, heavy-duty mechanics, welders.

9 This one shows some of our equipment operators,

10 including the mill control room operator on the left

11 and a production drill operator on the right, and some

12 of our technical staff. And a few of our contractors

13 and suppliers, including Fountain Tire, NT Air, and

14 Flintstone Mining out of Houston.

15 As I mentioned, the mining business is very

16 capital- and operating-cost intensive. It costs us on

17 the order of $200 million a year to operate the mine.

18 In 2005, we put out 27 million in payroll, 144 million

19 to suppliers and service providers, and 35 million to

20 government and Crown corporations. Much of that

21 activity stayed right here in the North.

22 Just a quick look at our payroll by location. Our

23 employees come from all over the province. Of the

24 27 million payroll, our biggest employee base is in the

25 Bulkley Valley-Stikine District at five and a half



14

1 million a year, Prince George comes in at about

2 3.8 million a year. This slide does not break out our

3 First Nations and non-First Nations employment numbers.

4 Everyone is included here. We typically have between

5 12 and 15 percent First Nations employment.

6 With respect to our suppliers and service

7 providers, Prince George comes in on top with

8 27 million per year flowing through this community.

9 Mackenzie is a close second at about 26 million. And

10 just to round it out, our 35 million payments to

11 governments and Crown corporations are broken out here.

12 All mines have effects at the landscape level,

13 particularly large open-pit mines. The issue is

14 whether through design and management, as well as sound

15 reclamation planning, those effects can be managed.

16 Northgate has put a solid environmental program at

17 Kemess, and we are committed to managing the operation

18 to have a minimal impact on the surrounding

19 environment.

20 The Kemess South tailings are stored behind a

21 fairly large dam across the Kemess Creek Valley. The

22 dam is currently 125 metres high and 1.3 kilometres

23 long. This facility is managed as a zero water

24 discharge during operations, with water recycled back

25 to the mill. The tailings are stored underwater, which



15

1 provides the absolute best approach for long-term

2 environmental protection. This facility will

3 ultimately store on the order of 200 million tonnes.

4 Remember that number for later in the presentation.

5 The dam is designed to the highest international

6 standards and is monitored by an independent panel of

7 geotechnical experts. There are three panel members;

8 Dr. Peter Byrne, Chuck Brawner and Fred Matich.

9 Open pit mining involves the removal of waste rock

10 to expose oreic depth. At Kemess South, most of that

11 rock is benign or very low sulfide and can be stored on

12 the surface. The top picture shows the waste rock

13 storage in the upper right of the photo.

14 We do also have some potential loss of generating

15 material. Our operating permit and closure plan calls

16 for us to ultimately dispose of that material in a

17 flooded environment. The lower photo is a shot of us

18 putting some of that material back into an area of the

19 pit which has been mined out.

20 The purpose of all our efforts and careful

21 material characterization for final placement is, of

22 course, so that upon mine closure we don't have any

23 surprises. Today's modern mine is designed for

24 environmental closure. We're a highly-regulated

25 industry, and the government agencies, particularly the



16

1 Ministry of Energy and Mines and the Environment

2 registry, are vigilantly on top of this.

3 Switching gears to Kemess North now, I'll spend a

4 few minutes introducing the project and then the others

5 here with me will take you through it in detail. You

6 can get more information on the project description in

7 Appendix 1 of the EIA report.

8 Just on the slide here, I'll point out a few

9 things. Kemess South, here; Kemess North, about --

10 this thing is an early-warning indicator for

11 Parkinson's disease. Kemess North, about five and a

12 half kilometres to the north. Thutade Lake through

13 here extends down quite a long way off the picture.

14 Duncan Lake in here. The shaded area is our claim

15 boundaries.

16 The deposit is quite striking from the air. The

17 geological term for this rusty-coloured formation is

18 gossan, which is oxidized iron sulfides. You'll note

19 the lack of vegetation. This deposit has been

20 naturally generating acid runoff for thousands of

21 years.

22 Looking at a cut-away of the deposit at depth,

23 this slide shows that the best grade material

24 represented by the red in the cut-away section lies at

25 around 300 and 400 metres below surface, which is quite



17

1 deep for an open-pit mine.

2 This table shows the Kemess North reserves and

3 compares it to the original reserves at Kemess South.

4 Some things to note on this table are similar quantity

5 of metal both at Kemess North and Kemess South, a

6 similar sort of magnitude, anyway: Four million tonnes

7 -- four million ounces of gold, one and a half billion

8 pounds of copper, but about double the tonnage at

9 Kemess North, over 400 million tonnes versus just over

10 200 million tonnes at Kemess South, and that translate

11 into lower grade, about half the grade, and from an

12 economic point of view the low grade makes it a more

13 challenging material to make a profit on. In addition

14 to the ore, there's almost 300 million tonnes of waste

15 rock, so all together about 700 million tonnes of

16 material that needs to be safely stored long-term.

17 This is more than three times the material we need to

18 flood at Kemess South.

19 This is a general arrangement drawing showing the

20 proposed site development. Now, in this drawing, north

21 is to the right. Unconventional, but to fit it all in,

22 that's how we've done it. The Kemess South facility.

23 The mill is here. The Kemess South pit is here. The

24 Kemess South waste rock dump is here. The Kemess North

25 pit here. We would connect the two via a conveyorway,



18

1 8.7 kilometres, and through about a 2.7-kilometre

2 tunnel through the mountain in this area. This slide

3 shows the north dam across the north end of the Duncan

4 Lake Valley and the two smaller dams at the south end.

5 This next series of slides shows the phase

6 development of the pit, and I'll just play this through

7 and you'll be able to see how the pit is developed. It

8 shows year by year, the first few years preproduction.

9 The blue colours are lower-grade material, the yellow

10 is getting to be higher-grade material, orange is

11 better, and red is the best. So here we are in Period

12 8, 9, into the east end of the pit, and it really gets

13 down to the deepest part here in the east end and we

14 get some of the higher grades at the end. As you can

15 see, the best grades in the red are coming in in the

16 last few years.

17 This slide shows the concentrate production

18 profile, assuming a 2009 start, and it starts a bit

19 slow, but ends pretty strong. The mine will see an

20 average production of 200,000 ounces of gold and

21 100 million pounds of copper per year.

22 In the next few slides, I'll attempt to walk

23 everyone through the project economics. Our

24 feasibility study economics published two years ago

25 reported a rate of return on the project of 5 percent



19

1 on a capital expenditure of 275 million Canadian. In

2 that study, we used a metal price of US$375 per ounce

3 gold, $1 per pound copper, and an exchange rate of 1.45

4 Canadian to U.S. A number of things have changed in

5 the past two years. The metal prices have improved,

6 the Canadian dollar has strengthened, operating costs

7 have increased, capital costs have increased, and

8 through the passage of time, we've lost the synergies

9 of milling ore from both pits at the same time.

10 We've recently updated our economic analysis, and

11 we see the project something like this now. We use

12 fairly aggressive metal price assumptions: 2.50 copper

13 in 2009, dropping gradually to a $1.50 by 2013 and

14 holding there, and an aggressive gold price at $600 an

15 ounce, basically where it is today. I might add that

16 these prices are higher than the banks would allow us

17 to use to secure project financing. We also used

18 20 percent cost increases in capital and operating

19 costs, which is what we've experienced over the last

20 couple of years. The net effect is a better rate of

21 return at 8 percent than we would have seen two years

22 ago.

23 This slide shows the cumulative cashflow that

24 Northgate would realize. So what does 8 percent rate

25 of return mean? Well, in the first few years, you put



20

1 out your capital, you spend the 300-and-some million

2 dollars and you continue to spend into 2009. You start

3 to get some ore coming in in 2009, start to make a bit

4 of money, and we start to climb up. We have a few

5 rough years in the middle where the grade is fairly low

6 as we transition over to the east end of the pit. And

7 we get into the east end of the pit, and that's where

8 we start to make money on it, and ultimately at those

9 assumptions that I listed on the previous slide, this

10 project would pay back after ten years and generate

11 just over $200 million profit to Northgate after tax.

12 This slide shows the employment levels we are

13 facing going forward. We are currently at about 475

14 employees, so right about in this area [indicating].

15 It will drop to very few by the end of 2009 without

16 approval of the project. With that approval, we'll

17 maintain that 475 number, plus roughly 175, so you

18 could add those guys on, 175 construction jobs for two

19 years. We will need to start construction in 2007 to

20 avoid a shutdown.

21 I'd like to say a few words now regarding our

22 relationship with First Nations. Northgate has been

23 open and inclusive with First Nations with respect to

24 the project. We made it a point to visit the

25 individual communities back in mid-2003, prior to



21

1 initiating the permitting process. We've had

2 discussions at the leadership level and at the

3 community level, and have admittedly had mixed success,

4 although we have made progress. We signed agreements

5 at different levels including a statement of

6 understanding at the leadership level and an agreement

7 with the trapline holders, and an historic cooperation

8 agreement with regards to the ongoing Kemess South

9 operation providing $1 million per year to be used to

10 the benefit of the Tse Keh Nay communities.

11 For Kemess North, we made significant progress and

12 had a draft agreement which provided a good framework

13 for sharing of information, identification of benefits

14 should the project proceed, and agreeing to disagree on

15 Duncan Lake for the time being. Further discussions on

16 that agreement were suspended by the First Nations,

17 pending an agreement between themselves and government.

18 One of our biggest successes, however, is the First

19 Nations employment and training program that we've

20 instituted at the mine. Linda Hodgson will provide an

21 overview of our efforts there in a moment.

22 In summary, this project has been designed and

23 will be operated in an environmentally-responsible

24 manner. The use of the Duncan Lake Valley is the only

25 feasible alternative that allows the project to proceed



22

1 while protecting the long-term water quality. The

2 project will continue to provide high-wage, long-term

3 employment for a substantial workforce, and Kemess

4 North will continue to be an economic engine of the

5 north.

6 Thank you.

7 MS. HODGSON: Good afternoon, everyone.

8 My name is Linda Hodgson, H-o-d-g-s-o-n. I'm the

9 Superintendent of Human Resources at the Kemess Mine.

10 I've been there now for seven years.

11 As Peter indicated in his presentation, Northgate

12 is committed to maximizing employment of First Nations

13 people. As such, First Nations are given preference

14 for all job openings at Kemess for which they have the

15 skill and ability. Kemess has initiated an innovative

16 training program to build that skill and ability.

17 Presently, there are 51 First Nations employees, and 30

18 of these are from local First Nations communities.

19 There are also indirect employment opportunities

20 through catering and other Kemess contractors, bringing

21 the total First Nations workforce to 70 people.

22 The training program was put into place in 2004 to

23 provide a vehicle for communities to build capacity in

24 order for them to be employed at the mine. The

25 training program is for a three-month period and on a



23

1 rotational basis, and there are five trainee positions

2 available at any time. There is a potential for 20

3 First Nations to be trained each year. To date, 31

4 people have enrolled in the program, 20 people have

5 completed the program, 10 have been hired into

6 full-time jobs, and two have been called back for

7 temporary assignments on a regular basis.

8 This slide shows the demographics of the First

9 Nations employees at the Kemess Mine.

10 This is a map showing the location of the First

11 Nations communities relative to the Kemess Mine. As

12 you can see, Kemess is at the top of the map, and then

13 if you go to the west, you'll see Fort Ware -- or to

14 the east, sorry. Thanks, Peter. Fort Ware is 70

15 kilometres by air from the mine, but 417 kilometres to

16 the Kemess Mine by road. Tse Keh is just further south

17 from Fort Ware. It is 120 kilometres by air to the

18 mine and 343 kilometres by road. And then if we go

19 further south, you'll see the community of Blackpine,

20 and then just west and south of that is Takla Landing.

21 Takla Landing is 180 kilometres by air and 320

22 kilometres by road to the mine. And then further --

23 just west of Takla Landing is the community of

24 Hazelton, which is 200 kilometres by air and 991

25 kilometres from Kemess by road. The distance from Fort



24

1 Ware and Tse Keh, down to Prince George, where our

2 charter aircraft lands, has impacted the recruiting and

3 retention of employees in these communities.

4 Therefore, Northgate is committed to providing air

5 transportation for employees from these communities to

6 the Kemess Mine should the Kemess North project

7 proceed.

8 This slide demonstrates the success of our efforts

9 with First Nations employment over the past few years.

10 The two bars indicate the number of First Nations

11 employees in each year, both as the total number of

12 employees and person years, since not all positions are

13 full time. The black line at the top shows the total

14 annual earnings paid to First Nations employees. Since

15 2004, our First Nations payroll has increased to

16 $2.5 million per year from $1.5 million per year. We

17 are beginning to build capacity in the communities.

18 The text across the bottom of the slide shows the

19 average earnings per person year is about $60,000 per

20 year. All Kemess employees, including First Nations,

21 are paid on the same wage scale. We do not have

22 separate pay rates for First Nations employees, as has

23 been recently suggested.

24 Northgate is committed to providing full-time

25 employment to the successful graduates of the training



25

1 program and other First Nations. We have been

2 relatively successful in doing this, in spite of the

3 fact that the turnover at the mine has been and

4 continues to be relatively low at just over 6 percent

5 year-to-date. We often have temporary positions

6 available, and in keeping with our commitment, we fill

7 these positions with local First Nations people

8 whenever possible.

9 We realize we can't change our world in a day, but

10 we are making progress, and in keeping with our

11 commitment we are changing lives one job at a time.

12 MR. BENT: Thanks, Linda.

13 My name is Harold Bent, B-e-n-t. I'm the

14 Environmental Manager for Northgate Minerals. I've

15 been with Northgate now since 1999, initially working

16 at the Kemess Mine site as Environmental Manager,

17 overseeing the day-to-day environmental programs at

18 Kemess South. For the last three years, I've been

19 focusing primarily on the Kemess North project, on the

20 environmental baseline programs and also the submission

21 of the environmental impact assessment for the Kemess

22 North project.

23 What I want to do this afternoon is give you an

24 overview of the project review process. It will be a

25 little bit of duplication from what you heard from the



26

1 Chair. I'll walk you through the environmental

2 baseline programs, the existing management programs we

3 have in place at the Kemess Mine, and also a comparison

4 of the Kemess Mine and the Kemess North expansion

5 project. Then I'll also introduce to you the remaining

6 presenters for the afternoon.

7 The photograph on the left at the Kemess Creek at

8 Kemess Mine is an open-arch culvert spanning the entire

9 creek. I think it's the second-largest open-arch

10 crossing in North America.

11 This photo is showing the Kemess North project,

12 and you see in the center of the photo there reddish --

13 the orangey-brown colour. That is the alteration of

14 the Kemess North deposit. You're looking southward.

15 Five kilometres, near the top of the photograph,

16 approximately where the "s" is in the word "Kemess", is

17 the operating Kemess Mine.

18 So as mentioned earlier, the development of the

19 Kemess North project required a project review under

20 the British Columbia Environmental Assessment Act and

21 the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. It was

22 determined to be a joint panel review developed by the

23 provincial and the federal governments, primarily to

24 focus on the environmental and the social impacts of

25 the project. Some of the project design items I want



27

1 to point out to you is, you know, to avoid and mitigate

2 acid drainage and metal leaching, minimize downstream

3 water quality impacts, minimize impacts on fish and

4 wildlife, and develop compensation projects and

5 mitigation plans for unavoidable impacts.

6 I just want to point out some of the highlights --

7 or some of the milestones over the last three years.

8 You can see that the project was initiated in 2003,

9 when we submitted our project description report, and

10 here we are in October 2006 at the public hearings.

11 I just want to point out to you some of the major

12 submissions. In September 2005, we submitted our

13 environmental impact assessment report for agency and

14 public review. Following comments back, we submitted

15 in March of 2006 a response to review comments report.

16 September of this year, we also submitted the panel

17 review response report. Based upon that, the Panel

18 announced that the hearings would go forward, and since

19 then we've provided an updated tracking table and a

20 submission in October of 2006.

21 I just want to touch upon some of the

22 environmental programs at Kemess North. We initiated

23 the programs in 2002, and they are ongoing, and they

24 are listed here, from fish habitat, to wildlife, to a

25 variety of other programs that we've undertaken. All



28

1 this information has been presented in the

2 environmental impact assessment report that was

3 submitted in September of 2005, and some of this

4 information is re-presented in the following

5 submissions.

6 So what do we do with this environmental baseline

7 data that we collect? Well, a number of things. It

8 helps us to characterize the area prior to development.

9 It also allows us to develop mitigation and

10 compensation strategies. It also allows us to prepare

11 reclamation and closure plans, and that's Appendix 12

12 of our September 2005 submission. And it also allows

13 us to determine cumulative effects, which was also

14 submitted in the September 2006 submission.

15 So I just want to show you where we are on a

16 regional basis with watersheds. This is a watershed

17 map. This is Thutade Lake, which is the long -- about

18 50 kilometres long. Kemess South is circled here for

19 you, and Kemess North is approximately five kilometres

20 due north. I have the same shaky pointer, Peter.

21 We are in the Arctic watershed. The Pacific

22 watershed is approximately down here, and we're in the

23 Arctic watershed. I just want to zoom in on the

24 watersheds here. So as you can see, the Kemess South

25 Mine operation is in the Attichika and the Kemess



29

1 drainage. The Kemess North deposit is in the next

2 watershed to the north in the Duncan Lake and

3 Attycelley, so we're in two separate watersheds. So

4 that long list of environmental programs - I showed a

5 few slides - concentrated in this area, so the water

6 quality, hydrology, wildlife, terrestrial mapping, it

7 was all concentrated -- primarily concentrated in that

8 area.

9 When we're looking for fisheries compensation,

10 this is a rather busy map. It's a topographic map, and

11 for reference, Thutade Lake is down here at the bottom,

12 that 50-kilometre-long lake, Kemess South is the red

13 star, and Kemess North is the red box above it. So for

14 compensation, you know, we looked immediately in the

15 Kemess North area in the Attycelley. We also looked

16 within the greater Finlay River watershed area, and we

17 also examined opportunities in the Toodoggone watershed

18 area. And just for your information, the Kemess

19 South -- our compensation programs were primarily in

20 the Thutade watershed area nearby Kemess South, but

21 also further down some of the tributaries of Thutade

22 Lake.

23 So this information that we have collected over

24 the last three-plus years are in the September 2005 EIA

25 report, the baseline data, but also the project



30

1 engineering information. I mentioned earlier we've had

2 three submissions since that time. I just want to

3 point out that September of this year that submission

4 brought forward some key information and updates

5 regarding water quality modelling and revised

6 understanding, water management plan, and fisheries

7 compensation proposals. We've also had the opportunity

8 over the -- from 2004 and 2005 to conduct open --

9 community open houses. We are in Mackenzie, Prince

10 George, Smithers, Hazelton and Terrace. We also, you

11 know, attend trade shows in Northern B.C. It allows

12 the general public to come in and ask any question they

13 may have regarding the project. And we've also held

14 technical workshops with the agencies, and this

15 communication is ongoing. They really are technical

16 workshops, and a good example would be geochemistry as

17 it pertains to acid rock drainage would be one example

18 of a technical workshop.

19 I have a list here of the -- this is the existing

20 environmental management programs at Kemess South, so

21 this list here is all provided in the EIA submission of

22 last September, Appendix 14. These programs are well

23 established at Kemess South, and what we would do with

24 Kemess North, given the opportunity, we would continue

25 with these programs and we would add to them as



31

1 necessary to accommodate the Kemess North development.

2 I just want to give you a quick sort of comparison

3 between Kemess North and Kemess South. The two

4 photographs are the operating mine, the pit in the

5 background, the mill, and the accommodation, looking

6 westerly. The lower photograph, also looking westerly

7 across the open pit. As Peter mentioned earlier, the

8 Kemess Mine is approximately 200 million tonnes of ore

9 and about 200 million tonnes of waste rock. The second

10 bullet is key. About 80 percent of that material is

11 non-acid generating, 100 percent of the tailings is

12 potentially acid generating, and at Kemess South our

13 long-term management program is underwater disposal.

14 For Kemess North, it's approximately twice the volume

15 of material, but what's critical is the second bullet.

16 Only 20 percent of this material is non-acid

17 generating, as compared to 80 percent at Kemess South,

18 and 100 percent of material is acid generating. So our

19 proposal for Kemess North is consistent with Kemess

20 South in that we prefer it be underwater disposal for

21 all waste rock that's acid generating or potentially

22 acid generating.

23 This is a view of Kemess North. We're now looking

24 easterly, and that orangey-brown in the center is the

25 Kemess North deposit.



32

1 So our key project strategies is underwater

2 storage for acid generation and potentially

3 acid-generating material. We certainly prefer

4 prevention over mitigation, which is collection and

5 treatment, which is on-line with the Province of

6 British Columbia's preferred choices, develop a

7 fisheries compensation program to achieve no net loss

8 of habitat and preserve genetic integrity, and this

9 will build upon our success at Kemess South, and to

10 develop closure and reclamation programs to mitigate

11 the on-land disturbances as we have done for Kemess

12 South.

13 The rest of the session, we have a number of

14 presenters who will go into detail on some of the items

15 of our project. Harvey McLeod will talk to waste

16 alternatives, dam engineering, water and waste

17 management. Ron Nicholson will talk to the review of

18 our water quality model and use of underwater disposal

19 in Canada. Tom Watson will talk to our fish habitat

20 compensation proposal. Lawrence Turney will talk to

21 our terrestrial studies program. Michael Rousseau will

22 talk to our archaeology program. And Debra Lamash will

23 finish with our social-economics.

24 So I would like to have Harvey continue on.

25 MR. McLEOD: Testing, testing. Is that high



33

1 enough? Is that okay now?

2 I decided I'd stand up. I need to get a little

3 bit of blood in my legs here, sitting down.

4 My name is Harvey McLeod. I'm a principal with

5 Klohn Crippen Berger Limited in Vancouver. I'm a

6 geotechnical/geological engineer with about 30 years'

7 experience with mine waste management, mining projects,

8 tailing dams, and I've worked on about 100 tailing dams

9 and water dams around the world, and currently I'm the

10 Canadian representative on the tailings subcommittee

11 for the International Congress on Large Dams, and we

12 meet annually to review guidelines and develop

13 guidelines for tailing dams for worldwide practice.

14 I forgot to spell my name. It's H-a-r-v-e-y and

15 M-c-L-e-o-d.

16 This work was principally carried out -- what I'm

17 going to do is cover -- I'll put it up higher -- I'm

18 going to cover the waste alternatives that we looked

19 at, the process we went through, and the conclusions

20 that we came to with it.

21 It started in 2003, when we were contacted to look

22 at alternatives, and the basic mandate was to look at

23 any and all alternatives in the project area, with the

24 main issue of preventing environmental effects.

25 So the first step, we had a screening process --



34

1 this is just the general area. The Kemess South Mine

2 would be in this area here -- sorry, the Kemess mill is

3 right here, Thutade Lake here, Duncan Lake here,

4 Attycelley Creek here and Kemess Creek. So we had a

5 screening level where we ruled out sort of main sites

6 had that flaws like major dams in the Kemess Valley or

7 Attycelley Valley or dams on the other side of Thutade

8 Lake, and we narrowed it down to about ten

9 alternatives. And we looked at, you know, could we

10 store tailings there, could we store waste rock there,

11 could we store tailings and waste rock, so there's a

12 lot of combinations of alternatives that we looked at.

13 So the prime ones that we'll zero in on: There's

14 the existing tailings facility. We looked at, well,

15 how much more could we raise that to get more in there.

16 There was a Site M and L that were looked at in the

17 original feasibility site study. Site L was actually

18 -- is now the waste dump, so it drops out. We looked

19 at filling in the open pit. We looked at a dam here on

20 Kemess Lake, Duncan Lake as I mentioned, a north dump

21 and a northeast dump, and also a Site C which is in a

22 valley about five kilometres to the east of the open

23 pit.

24 Now, for each one of those, for all these

25 alternatives, and as I say, we started in 2003 and over



35

1 the years it narrowed down to selected alternatives,

2 but for each one we would develop a conceptual design,

3 conceptual layout, develop quantities and comparison

4 cost estimates for them. We also carried out a

5 comparative risk assessment for them all just to

6 quantify what are the potential problems, potential

7 effects, of these different alternatives. The risk

8 assessment methodology that we used, it's an originally

9 developed modes and effects analysis with the Bhopal

10 and Challenger disasters. We more recently updated

11 that to have it semi-quantified, and this was for the

12 U.S. Forest Service for a controversial mine there that

13 we looked at, a comprehensive risk assessment of all

14 the different alternatives. So what we have is a

15 semi-quantitative methodology where we quantify what is

16 the likelihood in terms of annual probability and

17 quantify the consequence in a variety of we call them

18 multiple accounts. We have the effects on water

19 quality, social, biophysical, closure and costs. You

20 can break all these out separately and see what they're

21 influencing.

22 And that's just the chart. At the end of the day,

23 they get plotted on the risk chart with high risks

24 here, low risks here, and for comparison purposes you

25 can look at the different risks for different



36

1 alternatives to get an idea of which ones carry a bit

2 more risk or less risk.

3 Now, as a comprehensive consultation process, I

4 mentioned we started in 2003, and we issued a project

5 description in late 2003 and had our first agency

6 meeting. In January 2004, we had a stakeholders

7 meeting here in Prince George and went through all the

8 alternatives, and from that we got feedback from people

9 and the agencies. We went back and looked at more

10 alternatives and variations of alternatives, had

11 another workshop in Vancouver, and developed an

12 alternatives summary report that fed into alternatives

13 complete -- we were running out of names to call these

14 because we kept updating them, so they have various

15 names. And the final one went into the EIA in

16 September 2005, and since then the Panel has had

17 several peer reviews of the alternatives assessment.

18 That's just an example of how you could break it

19 out with respect to multiple accounts for different

20 areas. This would be, say, the total risk of the site,

21 this would be the water quality risk, the biophysical

22 risk, social risk, et cetera, so you can use it as a

23 method to compare them.

24 Now, out of this first workshop in Prince George,

25 you know, one of the key areas was acid rock drainage,



37

1 and so we set up an acid rock drainage subcommittee

2 that met on an ongoing basis to develop the water

3 quality model and to look at acid rock drainage, and

4 specifically we were requested to look at other

5 technologies for tailings management.

6 Now, tailings management is, you know, it's

7 developing on an annual basis. We learn more and more

8 every year. You know, certainly dam design started

9 about 100 years ago in terms of geotechnical

10 engineering, and good tailing dam practice started

11 about 50 years ago, so there's been a lot of

12 development in tailing dam design. The latest ones are

13 called thickening and paste tailings. This is where

14 you squeeze the water out of the tailings. We do this

15 at Myra Falls on Vancouver Island. There's about two

16 -- only about two paste plants that I'm aware of. But

17 you still produce tailings that are saturated. That

18 material can still liquefy, so you still have to build

19 a dam to store it. And with the tonnages for Kemess,

20 you still have to build a major dam to store that

21 material.

22 The water tailings - this is at Greens Creek in

23 Alaska - that's where you vacuum filter it, pressure

24 filter it, and produce almost a sand product. That

25 material still has to be compacted for seismic



38

1 stability, and it's prohibitively expensive to de-water

2 it.

3 Desulphurized tailings, and that's -- they do it

4 right now at Kemess South to make construction

5 material. That's where you take the sulfide out of the

6 tailings and store it separately. And that's one of

7 the alternatives.

8 Alternative technologies for acid rock drainage:

9 We've talked today that acid rock drainage is one of

10 the biggest issues the mining industry faces. How do

11 we control and manage acid rock drainage? Alternative

12 ways are soil covers at Equity Silver with a placed

13 soil cover. And soil covers do not stop oxidation,

14 they just reduce the amount of water that might go in

15 there, and so they're referred to as a mitigation, not

16 a control measure. At Equity Silver, they're treating

17 water, and they'll do that forever or for a long time.

18 And water treatment, as I mentioned, is basically the

19 backup system, water treatment for acid drainage.

20 Control of acid rock drainage, and I'll just touch

21 briefly on this, but right now at Albino Lake, at

22 Eskay, they're putting acid rock under water. This is

23 a photo at Elliot Lake in Ontario. The uranium acid

24 sulfide mines were -- these used to all be oxidized

25 tailings, leaching acid drainage. They've gone back in



39

1 there over the last 10 years and raised the dams and

2 saturated everything to reduce drainage.

3 Other alternatives: There's commingling, that's

4 where you mix the tailings in with the waste rock, and

5 this is a project we're doing in Papua New Guinea where

6 we're doing experiments with mixing tailings in with

7 the waste rock to try and get it as a method of

8 disposal. One significant issue with Kemess is that we

9 have almost twice as much tailings as waste rock and we

10 would not get all of our tailings into the voids.

11 There's also the practical issue of how do you

12 physically mix that material together.

13 Rehandling of rock into the open pit. You can

14 take acid-generating waste rock out, on closure put it

15 back in. It's expensive, but you can do that. In this

16 case, we can get -- I'd have to refer to the number,

17 but you can get a certain amount of tonnage back,

18 because you can't get it all back because you get

19 bulking of it, and the pit design is such that the

20 outlet is lower than a lot of the rock, so you wouldn't

21 get all of the rock back in, but you would get some

22 back in.

23 The other option is limestone mixing, mixing

24 limestone in with the potentially acid-generating waste

25 rock, and that has concerns with physically how do you



40

1 mix it, geochemically is the availability of the lime

2 in the limestone going to mix properly with the

3 potentially acid-generating waste rock, and so there's

4 concerns both with the technical feasibility, let alone

5 the practical feasibility.

6 So we ended up with the, you know, final agency

7 workshop in 2004, and as the feasibility study went

8 along we developed how many tonnes of material, as

9 Carol mentioned. You know, we have about 400 million

10 tonnes of potentially acid-generating material. Almost

11 100 million tonnes of that is already acid-generating.

12 This is the material that's sitting up there on the

13 mountain right now leaching and releasing acid drainage

14 both to Duncan Lake and to Attycelley Creek. We have

15 about 170 million tonnes of potentially

16 acid-generating - that's material that if we bring it

17 out and expose it, it will become acid-generating - 60

18 of neutral material, and then the tailings.

19 Out of the workshops, we basically concluded we

20 had two basic options: It's Duncan Lake or it's what

21 we call multiple storage sites, because we're storing

22 something like 700 million tonnes.

23 So just a brief summary of Duncan Lake, and then

24 we'll go into it in more detail later. A 90-metre-high

25 dam at the north end, 35-metre-high here, about a



41

1 10-metre-high dam. The lake would change from about

2 three square kilometres to six square kilometres on

3 closure. The loss of fish and fish habitat in the

4 lake, and we would close it as a reclaim lake. The key

5 issues with it are dam safety management and water

6 management, and these are the two key issues which I'm

7 sure is on everybody's mind here as well.

8 Just to give you a general idea, this is an

9 exaggerated schematic, 10 times. These dams are not

10 that steep. This is the south end of the lake. This

11 is the north end of the lake. The waste rock would

12 primarily go in the north end of the lake, and the

13 tailings in the south end of the lake. Highly

14 acid-generating material. This is waste rock that's

15 already acid-generating with very low pHs would go in

16 the deeper portions of the lake farther upstream.

17 The multi-storage site requires a number of sites

18 to store and manage everything. For the tailings

19 alone, we would put about 100 million tonnes in the

20 existing tailings facility, that means raising it about

21 another 25 metres. We would put about 100 million

22 tonnes in what we call Site M, and about 100 million

23 tonnes into the open pit.

24 The waste rock, you know, the basic premise we've

25 used throughout this whole assessment is that we are



42

1 going to keep the waste rock saturated for closure.

2 We're not going to go the equity way of putting on

3 covers and having a long-term treatment plant. So the

4 proposal for waste rock was to store the highly

5 acid-generating material within a water storage dam in

6 the northeast cirque and keep that with a saturated

7 soil cover on top. The potentially acid-generating

8 material we'd place in the north dump, and we'd pick

9 that up and put it back in the open pit on closure. I

10 won't get into details. There's the Kemess South. The

11 Site M would require relocation of the airstrip, and a

12 power line goes through here. Potential issues here

13 might be there are soft clays identified in the mill

14 site here, so geotechnical stability, that would have

15 to be assessed with it. The potential issue of neutral

16 metal leaching, because we are going to be milling

17 potentially acid-generating rock to get the ore, and so

18 there's a potential issue of neutral metal leaching

19 from it.

20 The tailings to put in the open pit, it's a base

21 case for all of them; it makes the most sense.

22 Basically all alternatives will look at filling in the

23 open pit, so it'd be a small dam at the outlet here and

24 we'd store the sulfide tailings in there.

25 This is the northeast cirque, as I mentioned, a



43

1 water storage dam across there, and the northeast dump.

2 In terms of risk comparison, and this we looked

3 at. You know, the main risk with Duncan is the loss of

4 fish habitat, dam safety and water management. The

5 water storage or the multi-storage sites, it is a bit

6 more risk primarily because we have more sites.

7 Instead of one facility, we now have three facilities,

8 and so each facility carries a set of risk, and so a

9 lot of these risks you see are a function of just how

10 many sites you have.

11 This is just a comparison. This is during

12 operations and during closure. The left is Duncan and

13 the right is the multi-storage sites. And this is more

14 just for comparison so you get an idea of what is, on a

15 comparison basis, the difference between the two.

16 We also looked at in general what is the

17 environmental effects of the single Duncan storage site

18 or the multi-storage site. Certainly on aquatic,

19 Duncan has the higher effect; it's taking out the lake.

20 The multi-storage site lower, sort of terrestrial and

21 footprint. The multi-storage site will affect more

22 areas. It will affect wildlife and footprint habitat

23 more, so it's classed as a moderate effect versus the

24 low effect. ARD prevention and seepage control, the

25 multi-storage sites have a bit higher risk because they



44

1 do have more sites. Dam stability, again, because

2 there's more dams with this one, it has a higher risk.

3 And closure, we see it as a higher risk as well. So in

4 general, apart from the aquatic effects, we see the

5 single side as a better alternative than trying to put

6 them into three or four different sites.

7 Cost-wise, Duncan is in the order of a couple

8 hundred million. The multi-storage sites is in the

9 order of up to a billion.

10 So in conclusion, we see it as it's the lowest

11 risk alternative, it's the site that will have the

12 lowest effect on the environment and on water quality,

13 and there is a comprehensive compensation program for

14 the loss of habitat, and it's our preferred for

15 long-term closure of the facility.

16 Thank you.

17 THE CHAIR: Thank you. I'm wondering if this

18 might be an opportunity to take a quick break. Perhaps

19 15 minutes, and we'll reconvene here at about 10 after,

20 quarter after 3:00. Thank you.

21 [SHORT RECESS AT 2:55 PM]

22 [HEARING RESUMED AT 3:18 PM]

23 THE CHAIR: Okay. Let's resume our session. Who

24 is presenting now? Mr. McLeod?

25 MR. McLEOD: Ron Nicholson is going to present,



45

1 but just before he does, there is a model of the Kemess

2 area up here at the front, and it shows all the

3 different alternatives. You can see, with the model,

4 just where these different sites were that I was

5 talking about and just the general geography of the

6 area, so you can look at that after the presentations.

7 THE CHAIR: Is the model going to remain here for

8 the duration of the hearing?

9 MR. McLEOD: Yes.

10 THE CHAIR: Thank you very much.

11 Yes, please go ahead.

12 MR. NICHOLSON: For the record, my name is Ron

13 Nicholson. I'm a senior scientist with --

14 THE CHAIR: Could you spell that, please, sir?

15 MR. NICHOLSON: I'm sorry, spelled

16 N-i-c-h-o-l-s-o-n. I'm a senior scientist with a

17 company called EcoMetrix Incorporated.

18 I'm going to be talking about two things today.

19 One is to put into context why we look at putting

20 reactive mine waste underwater, and the other is to

21 present my summary of conclusions on the review of the

22 water quality model that was produced for the Kemess

23 North project.

24 My role here is really as a third-party,

25 independent reviewer for the waste management plan and



46

1 the water quality model. I reviewed the test program

2 results that were presented, model components and

3 assumptions, the model results, and I completed

4 independent bounding calculations to verify the

5 reasonableness of the calculated loadings and water

6 quality concentrations.

7 My credentials: I have a Bachelor's degree in

8 Geology, a master's and PhD degrees in Geosciences,

9 specializing in hydrogeology and geochemistry. There

10 was a slight typo for the record on Mr. Bent's last

11 slide that had me as a P.Eng. I am not; I'm a

12 scientist. I have 25 years combined experience as a

13 practicing consultant and a researcher and also a

14 university professor in the field of mine waste and

15 water quality management. And I was a member of the

16 predictions subcommittee during the mine environment

17 neutral drainage program, which I'll talk about in a

18 little bit more detail, but this was a major

19 federal-provincial industry program that looked into

20 the whole issue of acid drainage and mine waste

21 management, and I was in that program when it was run

22 between '89 and '97.

23 I have assessed mine waste effects and water

24 quality at numerous mine sites, developed and addressed

25 underwater management plans for mine waste at other



47

1 mines, and I've acted as a third-party reviewer for

2 many other mining operations and waste management

3 programs, and I was responsible for the material

4 testing at Voisey's Bay that at the time had planned to

5 put waste rock and tailings underwater in a lake, and

6 is now doing that.

7 The purpose of this presentation is really

8 twofold: To provide a context for underwater

9 management of sulfide mine waste and why it is the best

10 option for long-term environmental protection, and also

11 to present the conclusions of my review on the water

12 quality model for the North Kemess project.

13 The water quality model results and the model

14 itself are presented in a document entitled "Updated

15 Water Quality Report", and that was submitted to the

16 Panel on September 6th, 2006, by Northgate Minerals.

17 By way of background, I think this has been said,

18 but it's not -- we can't say this too much, I don't

19 think, that mine waste management is by far the most

20 important environmental issue for mining projects after

21 operations cease, in the post-closure period, and the

22 importance of this issue is really reflected by the

23 significant efforts that have been taken to identify

24 the most appropriate and best option available for mine

25 waste management for the Kemess North project. In



48

1 general, we know that oxidation of sulfide minerals and

2 tailings and waste rock can produce significant

3 quantities of oxidation products and deliver those to

4 the environment if those are stored on land, and

5 underwater storage of sulfide waste really prevents

6 acid generation and prevents significant water quality

7 impacts.

8 What I'd like to do is provide a little bit of

9 background for those of you who may not be aware of why

10 we are talk so much about acid drainage and

11 water-quality issues associated with mine waste. In

12 Canada, the problem with acid generation from sulfide

13 mine waste was really only recognized in the early

14 1970s for mine sites that had typical on-land storage

15 of waste rock and tailings. There were early

16 government programs that recognized this and were set

17 out to research solutions to the problem. Some of

18 these early programs started in the late '70s, went

19 through 1980 to 1989. The more recent program is

20 called "MEND" or the Mine Environmental Neutral

21 Drainage program, and this is the major program that

22 was set up by the Federal Government which NRCan or

23 Natural Resource Canada was a part of, by the provinces

24 and by the industry, to look for solutions to the

25 problem of acid drainage, metal leaching and so on



49

1 associated with sulfide mine wastes. And the focus of

2 that program, over a period of ten years, and there's

3 still some ongoing activity as part of the MEND

4 initiative, was looking at the idea of prediction, can

5 we predict acid drainage and metal leaching, can we

6 prevent it, and we're referring to that as prevention,

7 and there were other aspects of control, of treatment,

8 and monitoring.

9 It was estimated in the 1980s that we really

10 had, as a nation, about $5 billion in liability

11 associated with acid-generating mine wastes that had

12 accumulated in Canada due to historic practices, and

13 when we didn't recognize the importance of this

14 process. And after 20 years of research and activity,

15 and over 200 reports, more than 30 workshops, and we

16 have identified some of the solutions to the problem,

17 but we also know that from this program the prevention

18 of oxidation and acid generation is recognized as a

19 better approach than control, mitigation or treatment.

20 So prevention is really the key here.

21 Underwater management was found to be the

22 cornerstone of all the technologies that were

23 identified in those 20 years of research into this

24 issue. As recently -- in their most recent submission,

25 Natural Resources Canada or NRCan, was quoted as saying



50

1 they believe that underwater disposal is one of the

2 best available options for long-term management of

3 reactive mine wastes.

4 From historic processes, or historic practices,

5 excuse me, we see what effects there have been on the

6 environment. So when there's so much concern placed

7 about mining and its effects on the environment, much

8 of this concern is generated from historic practices

9 when we didn't know better, we didn't know what we were

10 quite doing and we didn't know the extent of the issue

11 associated with acid drainage. And here is an example

12 of a mine site up here with the mine waste tailings and

13 waste rock in this area, and the drainage that was

14 produced from that mine waste was acidic and contained

15 metals, and it's leached down here to a lake. And all

16 this area here that you're looking at here is just

17 vegetation kill-off from that drainage. And this was

18 an older mining operation where wastes were not stored

19 properly and they were stored on land.

20 Just to give you a little bit of background, I

21 don't mean to give you a chemistry lesson here, but

22 I think it's important to look at the very basics of

23 what's happening when we talk about things like acid

24 drainage. First of all, there's a lot of different

25 terms. There's acid mine drainage, and we have the



51

1 acronyms, AMD, acid rock drainage, ARD, or just acid

2 drainage and AD. And all of these things are nothing

3 more than the reaction of metal sulfides, things like

4 pyrite, which is an iron sulfide, combined with oxygen

5 in the presence of water, and when that happens we get

6 acidic drainage, we get dissolved metals, we get

7 sulfate in the water, and we get acid forming. And

8 this is what we mean by acid drainage, and this is the

9 main process that we're looking at for the oxidation of

10 sulfide wastes.

11 What's really important here is the reaction

12 rates, and the rates of reaction and how fast those

13 reactions take place really govern how much acid is

14 going to be generated or how much metal leaching can

15 occur in the presence of these wastes. The oxidation

16 rate is controlled by a number of things: How much --

17 the amount of sulfide we have, temperature, bacteria,

18 pH, but overwhelmingly it's controlled by the

19 availability of oxygen in the atmosphere. We have

20 20 percent oxygen in our atmosphere that we're

21 breathing right now, and it's that oxygen and access to

22 that oxygen that controls the oxidation rate overall.

23 Just so we have our terms straight, we're going to

24 hear a lot of technical terms here, and I just want to

25 make sure that everybody is thinking on the same line



52

1 here. We're talking tailings and waste rock as the two

2 different byproducts of a mining operation. Tailings

3 are nothing more than the fine-grained

4 sand-to-silt-sized material and it's a byproduct of

5 crushing the ore and removing the metals. So we crush

6 and mill the ore, and we're left with a sandy,

7 silty-sized material called tailings. Waste rock is

8 the rock or material that's removed to get access to

9 the ore, and this material can be from Ski-doo-sized

10 material down to dust-sized material, and it's just

11 removed to gain access.

12 These are just two pictures showing the tailings

13 on the left-hand side here, and it just shows as a

14 grey, sandy material. It's wet, very innocuous

15 looking. And this is waste rock on the side of a

16 roadway here, and when it's not reactive waste rock or

17 not potentially acid-generating, it can be put on

18 stockpiles on the land surface here.

19 One of the reasons why I like to stand is because

20 the pointer doesn't shake as much when you're really

21 close to the screen, if you'll notice that.

22 When we look at on-land disposal of reactive

23 waste, we know that the materials, the sulfide

24 materials, has unlimited supply of oxygen, and that's

25 really the cause, when we have an unlimited supply of



53

1 oxygen with these reactive wastes, there lies the cause

2 of acid generation and metal leaching. The on-land

3 disposal causes poor quality when that oxidation takes

4 place with low pH that's acidic, something like

5 vinegar, the pH of vinegar, very acidic, and we get

6 high dissolved metal concentrations, and this water

7 quality that's generated, if we cannot release it to

8 the environment, it may require perpetual treatment,

9 treatment forever, just to allow release of that water

10 to the environment. And we know, from experience, by

11 looking at many older sites, and even from natural

12 situations, as we saw with the gossan and the rusty

13 rock on the surface, that these materials can generate

14 acid over decades to centuries, so they can continue on

15 into the future, and that's what we're really trying to

16 prevent here.

17 There are other mitigation strategies, such as

18 soil covers, and I think Harvey talked a little bit

19 about that, but in my view soil covers don't stop

20 oxidation. They slow it down, but often not enough to

21 prevent acid generation.

22 Here's a picture of some historic operations for

23 mining. These activities go back into the past. This

24 is a tailings impoundment here. This is a high-sulfide

25 tailings material, and this water that you see down



54

1 near the bottom of the picture is a rusty, orange-brown

2 colour because it has lots of iron oxides in it.

3 That's a telltale sign that you've had sulfide

4 oxidation occurring. And this water was acidic, also a

5 low pH, a pH less than 3, much more acidic than

6 vinegar, and it had other metals in it such as zinc and

7 other things. This is the type of thing we're trying

8 to avoid, because this is what forms when oxygen gets

9 into these tailings in the presence of water and this

10 water runs off.

11 Getting back to chemistry a little bit here, I'm

12 going to show this table as an example of the water

13 quality that can form when we expose these materials,

14 sulfide materials, to air and water, to oxygen and

15 water, on the land surface. These concentrations are

16 in milligrams per litre, most of them, but I don't

17 think you need to pay attention to the units. What I

18 would like you to see is this: If we look at the first

19 parameter here, its pH, that's an indication of

20 acidity. If the number is low, this is acidic; if the

21 number is around 7, it's neutral; and if it's high, 8

22 or 9, it's alkaline. So these numbers are acidic.

23 They're less than 4, and again something similar to

24 what you would see if you measured the pH of vinegar.

25 The sulfate concentrations are high, in the thousands



55

1 of milligrams per litre, and there's a bunch of metals

2 listed down here that I just wanted to show you, and

3 the important thing is not to remember any of these

4 numbers, but to see that these numbers are in the

5 hundreds or in the thousands. And I'll show you

6 another table later for materials that were stored

7 underwater where these numbers are thousands of times

8 lower. So that's all I want to point out to you.

9 So what does storage of this reactive waste

10 material do? What does underwater storage do for us?

11 Well, first of all, the wastes are insulated from

12 atmospheric oxygen, so we're getting these materials

13 away from the oxygen that is one of the main causes of

14 the oxidation reaction. So we can prevent significant

15 oxidation. We're shutting down the reaction rates. I

16 told you before that the rate is really important.

17 Well, this shutting down the reaction rates by putting

18 water on top of these waste materials is like closing

19 the flue on a wood stove, on an air-tight stove, and if

20 you close that flue on an air-tight stove, you put out

21 the fire because you don't have any access to oxygen.

22 The wood doesn't -- it's starved of oxygen and the fire

23 goes out. That's what we're doing by putting these

24 wastes under water. We prevent acid conditions from

25 forming. We see that we get low concentrations of



56

1 reaction products like sulfate and metal. And we get

2 negligible quantities of oxidation products transferred

3 to the environment. Again, environmental protection is

4 the key here.

5 Here's a cartoon of the components of storing

6 reactive wastes under water. So you can see that this

7 is meant to be the air above the water. The dark blue

8 is the water here. And below the water are potentially

9 reactive tailings. And we have a couple of very

10 important processes that are going on here. Some are

11 more important than others, but we have -- in this

12 case, we have high oxygen concentrations in the air,

13 but those oxygen concentrations transfer to very low

14 oxygen concentrations in the water. So even though

15 this water can be very well mixed and we can have

16 oxygen going throughout it, there is still not a lot of

17 oxygen to oxidize the materials underneath. And

18 secondly and very most important here is that we can't

19 get that oxygen into the tailings because they're

20 saturated with water themselves. So the process that

21 controls oxygen getting into those tailings under water

22 is known as diffusion, and diffusion through water is a

23 very, very, very slow process compared to diffusion in

24 air. We're talking about factors of 10,000 or more.

25 So we end up with negligible rates of oxidation



57

1 occurring at the tailings surface here.

2 In the case of the proposed storage of tailings

3 under water for the Kemess North project, we're also

4 going to have some processed water that came from the

5 mill, and it's going to be alkaline, it will have a

6 high pH, and there's going to be, over time, diffusion

7 of this alkaline high pH water into the water cover

8 over time. And of course this is not a static process

9 either. We have flow going on. We have natural inflow

10 of water coming in, as shown by this arrow on the left,

11 and outflow of water here.

12 Some examples of tailings being stored under

13 water. The South Kemess project stores tailings under

14 water, and here's is the water here. You see it's not

15 brown. It doesn't have those telltale signs of

16 oxidation. We have materials under water in that case.

17 At Eskay Creek in Northern B.C., we have reactive

18 materials going under water as well. At Voisey's Bay,

19 this project just started about a year ago, a little

20 bit more than a year ago, and in this case I was

21 personally involved with the assessment of these wastes

22 going under water and performed the assessment to look

23 at these issues. And here this is showing the

24 operation of a lake for underwater storage at Voisey's

25 Bay.



58

1 Now, I told you I was going to show you some

2 chemistry associated with materials that were stored

3 under water, and here is some examples. First of all,

4 it's important to look at the tailings porewater and

5 waste rock drainage. Both of these pH values are in

6 the neutral to slightly alkaline range, and so we don't

7 have acidity being formed here. Sulfate concentrations

8 are relatively low compared to the many thousands we

9 saw for above-ground storage of these same wastes, and

10 if we look at the metal concentrations, we see instead

11 of hundreds to thousands of milligrams per litre, we

12 see very small fractions of the milligrams per litre in

13 this case.

14 But one of the more important questions here is

15 what happens after closure of the mine, after we stop

16 placing materials. What we want to do is make sure

17 that we have good water quality indefinitely, in other

18 words, through all time, and that's why this is such an

19 important question. First of all, the tailings and the

20 waste rock remain under water. We know that lakes are

21 depositional environments. As a geoscientist, this is

22 one of the things you learn, that in a low elevation

23 location, everything goes into those lakes, so we get

24 deposition into those lakes, and there's a build-up --

25 there will be a build-up of natural sediments and



59

1 organic material that will accumulate over the surface

2 of the tailings. The upstream waters will continue to

3 flow into the lake and will flush the lake with fresh

4 alkaline water. We know what the alkalinity of the

5 natural water is coming into that lake right now. It

6 will stay like that for geologic time. And we know

7 that the accumulating sediment will develop a physical

8 barrier. This is a good thing. It will develop a

9 physical barrier over the tailings that will further

10 attenuate the movement of oxygen into the tailings and

11 any concentrations of metals and other constituents

12 that may have a potential for being released from the

13 tailings. And we know that the water will maintain a

14 neutral pH and good quality over time.

15 Harvey showed you an example of Elliot Lake.

16 Elliot Lake was a uranium mining district. They have

17 sulfide materials in the tailings, and in these cases

18 they didn't plan to put the tailings under water during

19 the operation. They operated like a typical operation,

20 with on-land disposal, but at the end of the day, they

21 recognized that if they were going to stop acid

22 generation from occurring over the long term, they

23 wanted this material to be under water. Now, as we

24 look out here, we see these paddocks with water

25 covering, and underneath you wouldn't recognize it, but



60

1 there's tailings underneath the water here, and those

2 tailings look brown and look very much like the picture

3 I showed you of the brown-stained tailings that existed

4 at another site where no mitigation was taking place.

5 So what looks like now just lakes were surface tailings

6 at one time. Not only that, but these tailings were

7 also acidic, and at the time of flooding these had low

8 pH values, and now the pHs are coming up to neutral

9 values, the metal concentrations are decreasing, and so

10 there's been a marked improvement by flooding these

11 tailings after the fact. So these were tailings areas

12 again showing flooding here and covering once

13 acid-generating tailings; not potentially, they were

14 acid.

15 So I think I've tried to explain what the issue is

16 in getting these materials under water, and I think

17 you'll find most government agencies agree with this

18 approach, to put these materials under water to prevent

19 acid generation, to prevent metal leaching.

20 I was then quite deeply involved in reviewing the

21 water quality modelling that took place to estimate

22 water quality during the operation and after closure.

23 I provided an independent third-party review of that

24 information. I confirmed the sound basis of water

25 quality modelling. I confirmed that all important



61

1 components were considered in the model. I reviewed

2 the assumptions, I reviewed the processes that were

3 involved, and if you look at the document you'll find

4 it quite complex, and I felt quite comfortable in

5 reviewing this material based on my experience. I also

6 confirm that the objectives of the modelling exercise

7 were successfully met.

8 And just to go a little bit further on this, I'm

9 placing this cartoon up here to show some of the

10 processes that were considered in the water quality

11 model after closure, because if you remember what I

12 said before, it's really after closure that's very,

13 very important in terms of understanding or predicting

14 the water quality and the water quality that will be

15 affected downstream. So if we look at this cartoon, we

16 see this would be the Duncan Impoundment, the blue

17 would be the water overlying the grey tailings. The

18 waste rock would be covered by tailings as well as by

19 the water, and so this is the waste rock, the yellow

20 and the orange here, and they're also covered by

21 tailings. Now, the processes that are occurring here

22 that are important are upward diffusion of tailings

23 porewater that are changing the quality in this water

24 cover. There is upward flow of tailings porewater that

25 was considered. This is important because there is



62

1 groundwater seepage that comes into the impoundment,

2 and it will move up some of the porewater into the

3 impoundment water. And in this case there were also

4 some -- in the original plan, there was some plan to

5 have desulphurized tailings along the beaches, and --

6 but there will be some residual sulfide in that

7 material, and the oxidation of that sulfide was taken

8 into account and showing that we have tailings

9 oxidation products going into the water over time.

10 And also a very important issue here is that this

11 is not a static system. This will become a lake again,

12 and there will be natural inflow of water. So there's

13 the natural inflow of alkaline water coming in as

14 runoff from the surrounding area, and then there's

15 outflow of water down Attycelley Creek. So these are

16 the major components that were taken into account in

17 the water quality model. They were appropriate, and

18 I think this was done properly.

19 There was one component that was not considered in

20 the model, and this was the underwater tailings

21 oxidation. And what happens here is that even though

22 we have very low concentrations of oxygen dissolved in

23 the water, some of this oxygen will get into the

24 tailings and at the very surface of the tailings will

25 cause some oxidation to occur. Now, normally you



63

1 wouldn't consider this because it would be such a small

2 component of the oxidation going on, but there was a

3 comment from one of the government agencies that we

4 should have taken this into account, and I, in my

5 review, I took -- I made some independent calculations

6 and verified that this was not an important process.

7 In other words, we know that that takes place

8 theoretically, but in practical terms it has no

9 material consequence.

10 So my conclusions from the review of the model are

11 that the modelling approach overall was reasonable and

12 provides realistic estimates of water quality in the

13 Duncan Impoundment and downstream during the operation

14 and, more importantly, during the post-closure period,

15 once the operation stops. All important components and

16 processes were included in the model, in my opinion.

17 And in addition to that, during the operation there

18 will not be any discharge to the environment at all,

19 and during that period the model will be able to be

20 updated, to be validated, in other words, give the

21 model even more strength than it has now during that

22 period of operation. And, finally, in my opinion, that

23 model represents a tool that provides an opportunity to

24 refine the water quality management of the impoundment

25 overall. I think from the conclusions we see that we



64

1 conclude good water quality from that impoundment, but

2 we can even use this model to further refine water

3 quality.

4 My overall conclusions are that after -- after 20

5 years of research and intense study, that underwater

6 storage of sulfide was clearly the preferred choice for

7 the prevention of acid generation and protection of the

8 environment. In-lake storage of sulfide mine material

9 is beneficial in the long term to provide chemical and

10 physical stability and also to protect the environment.

11 And the Duncan Impoundment is expected to accumulate

12 sediments and maintain neutral pH after closure. This

13 is very important.

14 And finally, the model, in my opinion, provides

15 conservative estimates of the water quality in the

16 impoundment and downstream after closure.

17 Thank you very much for your attention.

18 MR. McLEOD: My name is Harvey McLeod. I was

19 introduced earlier, and I will cover off the subject of

20 the Duncan Impoundment, the water tailings and waste

21 rock. So this is the management plan for operations

22 and closure. And I've moved the microphone to the

23 right place this time so you can hear me when I turn my

24 head.

25 There was a lot of important studies that went



65

1 into it. I was lead director for most of the studies,

2 but there was a lot of people involved in putting all

3 the components together in developing the best

4 mine-waste and water-management plan. There was a

5 number of reports, the feasibility study, the EIA

6 supplementary responses, the September reports and the

7 October reports that we've issued.

8 I'll just summarize briefly the existing

9 conditions. In terms of water management, currently

10 the potable water supply and camp water supply for the

11 Kemess South Mine would be maintained and used for

12 Kemess North, so there would be no changes to those

13 components. The existing Kemess South tailings

14 facility would be decommissioned and all the water

15 management works associated with that facility would be

16 decommissioned. We also have a number of hydrometric

17 stations, water quality stations around the property,

18 so we've been gathering water quality data and

19 hydrological data since the mine has been in operation.

20 In general, this is the Kemess North pit, this is

21 Duncan Lake here. The catchment area for Duncan Lake

22 is about 25 square kilometres, and this lake is a

23 deep-water lake with limited shallow habitat, shallow

24 sections around the perimeter of the lake, and all the

25 drainage is northward towards the Attycelley.



66

1 In general, it's a fairly high precipitation area,

2 about 700 millimetres a year, evaporation about 300.

3 The flows we're looking at in Attycelley, a couple of

4 cumecs, though I didn't fill them in. Kemess Creek

5 would be about the same. Finlay River's average is

6 about 50 cubic metres a second.

7 We're in a low-to-moderate seismic area, so the

8 seismicity of the area is not that high. I think the

9 closest potential fault is about 30 kilometres away.

10 The maximum credible earthquake, in other words,

11 the earthquake that -- the maximum possible which you

12 could say has a return period in the order of 10,000,

13 is an acceleration of .25, and it would be at Magnitude

14 7, and that's what we've used for the design of the

15 facility.

16 There's an extensive waste characterization,

17 acid-based accounting tests and kinetic tests to

18 characterize what is the geochemical characterization

19 of the material. As I mentioned, we have 95 million

20 tonnes of already acid-generating material, 170

21 potential and neutral material, and 400 million tonnes

22 of tailings.

23 Right now, the drainage off of Kemess North, as we

24 mentioned before, it's low pH, high metal content

25 coming out of the drainage, and that drainage right now



67

1 goes into Duncan Lake and also into Attycelley Creek.

2 And to give you an idea, right now Duncan Lake is

3 acting as a natural filter. You know, for example,

4 I think copper and cadmium, with the loads that are

5 going into Duncan Lake, about half the loads come out

6 of Duncan Lake and the rest is precipitated in the lake

7 partly with the high alkaline water that comes in off a

8 limestone bluff on the west side of the lake.

9 I'll just give you a general arrangement here.

10 That was the planned section you've seen before. This

11 is the impoundment in natural scale, and here is the

12 north dam, and this yellow here is the waste rock. The

13 red is the higher -- the lower pH waste rock and the

14 grey is the tailings. So you can see most of this --

15 you know, primarily the north dam, it's -- you know,

16 it's storing primarily waste rock as opposed to

17 tailings, and the main bulk of the tailings would be in

18 the southern side of the impoundment. The main dam is

19 the north, a 90-metre-high dam, southwest dam, 35, and

20 the southeast dam.

21 Now, what are going to be the effects? Well,

22 during construction we're going to lower the lake by

23 about 10 or 15 metres and pump out about 30 million

24 cubic metres, and that's primarily so we're not

25 carrying all this water during operations on closure.



68

1 So we would pump it out probably over a period of six

2 to eight months, and we have designed a flow of two

3 cubic metres a second, and that flow is designed to

4 have minimal impact on the morphology of Duncan Creek.

5 In other words, we don't want to tear out the stream

6 bed because we want to have Duncan Creek available for

7 future reclamation after the mine closes.

8 At Attycelley Creek, it would increase the natural

9 flows by about 25 percent in the creek during this

10 period of time, and that's within the natural variation

11 of the flows in Attycelley Creek. So we don't see any

12 major changes to the morphology. And the fish people

13 tell us that, you know, the Dolly Varden spawning is

14 mostly outside the area, and there's a minimal effect

15 on the aquatic habitat during that period.

16 I'll give you a summary of the geology. We've

17 done drilling test pits, geophysical surveys to

18 characterize the area. It's a complex glacial history

19 of moraines, basal tills, ablation tills, overlying

20 bedrock. The groundwater gradients, in general, are

21 towards the north, towards Attycelley Creek.

22 This is the main dam section, and we'll have an

23 impervious low-permeability core zone which will be

24 keyed into the rock abutments on the side and into the

25 lakebed sediments. We have a structural fill zone,



69

1 which in the feasibility study was borrow material, but

2 now that we've actually confirmed that we have

3 non-acid-generating waste rock, we'll probably use

4 waste rock for that, which is even more robust.

5 We have a zone upstream of the dam of a minimum of

6 100 metres wide of tailings, and the reason we're

7 placing those tailings there is twofold. One is for

8 dam safety purposes. It will reduce the hydraulic

9 gradients through the dam, which reduces the risk of

10 piping and provides longer-term security. It also acts

11 as another seepage control barrier, in that the

12 tailings has a very low permeability. Upstream, we'll

13 have the mine waste rock, and on closure we'll have a

14 beach above water zone. We'll have a 300-metre-wide

15 zone adjacent to the dam which will be above lake

16 level.

17 Factors of safety, there are two. Factors of

18 safety, in other words, the total resisting force is

19 twice the potential driving force. So we have factors

20 of safety of two for the north dam. And our seepage

21 analysis, we're looking at -- the main seepage comes

22 out of the north dam, up to 20 litres a second. The

23 southwest dam is a smaller flow, and the southeast dam

24 is in between at about 7 litres a second.

25 In terms of follow-up program for construction, we



70

1 can adjust the -- you know, when we're de-watering the

2 lake, we will be monitoring the effects on the

3 downstream streams and receiving waters. We can stop

4 pumping, we can reduce pumping, we can monitor for

5 sediment discharge, and during the winter we'll have to

6 manage it so we prevent icing up in Attycelley.

7 The dam -- sorry, I'll just summarize. The dam

8 construction, additional detail studies to finalize

9 construction specifications and optimize with the PAG

10 rock and also -- or non-PAG, and there would be a

11 quality control/quality assurance program during

12 construction.

13 During operations, and it's a busy slide, but I'll

14 just summarize the main components, the three dams,

15 each will have a seepage recovery system and return any

16 seepage back to the impoundment. We have the ore

17 conveyor tunnel which will convey ore from the pit area

18 over to the south side here, and any drainage from

19 there will go into Duncan Impoundment, and that's

20 included in our water quality model. We have two

21 diversions of surface water, and this is primarily just

22 to divert a portion of the surface water to give us

23 more flexibility for water management. At the north

24 end here, we'll have a ditch that will divert a few

25 square kilometres into Duncan Creek, and at this end



71

1 we'll have another ditch which will divert similar

2 flows into Kemess Creek. In this case here, we've

3 opted to pipe the flow from here to Kemess Creek, and

4 in Kemess Creek it's about 3 percent of the flow, so it

5 would not be a measurable effect.

6 The two dams, the southwest and the southeast dam,

7 would be built during operations. As the impoundment

8 comes up, we'd be building those dams because they're

9 up higher. The southwest dam, it would be a

10 homogeneous earth-filled dam with a filter at the toe

11 and it would be keyed into the low-permeability bedrock

12 and a glacial till in the foundation. The southeast

13 dam, there's barely a dam there; in fact, it's more the

14 ridge that forms the dam, it will be up to 10 metres

15 high, and there we'll have a seepage control blanket on

16 the upstream side to reduce seepage through this

17 material.

18 Now, we've heard a little bit about the water

19 quality model, and Ron touched on it. You know, we

20 updated the latest model in September, and that's out

21 there now, and certainly in this ARD work it's being

22 developed over the last few years, so it's certainly

23 not something that was just put together. It's been a

24 long process understanding how this model works and

25 optimizing it, and I'll just summarize briefly the



72

1 model.

2 Basically, during operations it assumes that we

3 put everything -- it's like putting it into a big

4 bathtub. The waste rock will go in, the tailings will

5 go in, all of the waste rock that's been already acid

6 generating will be washed of all of its precipitates,

7 and all that gets mixed into the model and we come up

8 with predictions of water quality. We then apply a

9 solubility correction because there's some parameters

10 like copper which are limited by the pH, and so we

11 apply that to come up with our water quality.

12 We then look at a dilution model of what happens

13 on closure when we're discharging this water, what will

14 be the affect on Attycelley and Finlay River and Kemess

15 Creek and Attichika Creek.

16 That's just that schematic again showing the

17 components Ron mentioned. We have runoff from the --

18 some from the alkaline areas on the west side. We have

19 porewater displacement, diffusion, we have groundwater

20 seepage and return. And the way we've handled

21 groundwater seepage in the model is we've assumed that

22 all groundwater seepage would get mixed with the water

23 and report directly to the receiving environment. So

24 in effect, we're assuming that our groundwater is mixed

25 with the water quality in Attycelley and downstream.



73

1 Now, this is a busy table, but what I've done here

2 is this is the water quality of Duncan Impoundment

3 during operations. The yellow is drinking water

4 standards, green is B.C. wildlife guidelines, and the

5 blue is B.C. water quality for aquatic guidelines. And

6 during operations, you can see for drinking water it

7 meets all parameters except for slightly elevated lead

8 and manganese. So this is water that during operations

9 you can drink. It's not, you know, it's not a toxic

10 material, it's a drink -- you could have a drink of it.

11 In terms of wildlife, the two elements that show

12 up in terms of exceeding the guidelines is

13 molybdenum, .07 versus .05, and molybdenum is -- the

14 limits were primarily developed for livestock, and

15 certainly for caribou or for larger animals who would

16 visit this periodically and drink. The kinds of metal

17 loadings we're looking at would not have an effect on

18 those animals. And selenium, again that was developed

19 for birds who are feeding on fish in Duncan Lake, but

20 during operations we don't plan to have fish in Duncan

21 Lake. They'll be relocated.

22 And just for comparison, this is the water quality

23 in Kemess South. This has a similar water quality, it

24 actually meets drinking water standards, the Kemess

25 South, and in terms of wildlife it's similar in terms



74

1 of -- has a little higher modelling.

2 Now, during operations and post-closure, we'll be

3 looking at -- and we have our seepage recovery system,

4 we'll have compliance monitoring stations, monitoring

5 wells and pumping back to the impoundment. We'll have

6 this influence zone which is into Attycelley. The

7 closure we're predicting that we will have slightly

8 elevated parameters for several, and we'll be looking

9 at developing water quality criteria for Attycelley.

10 This is just a slide of the elevation versus time.

11 These are the solids going in, this is the water, and

12 the red is the dam construction. So we're keeping the

13 dam construction ahead of the placement of materials.

14 And this extra height here provides for, for example,

15 storage of the probable maximum precipitation on snow,

16 so we looked at a one-month thing, so that's a very

17 high return period, and we can store all that water in

18 the impoundments, and that's basically a dam safety

19 concern.

20 The operating effects on the stream ecology:

21 Duncan Creek, we will reduce the flows in Duncan Creek

22 to virtually about 5 percent of what they are now,

23 because we're stopping the discharge from Duncan Lake.

24 The flows in Attycelley would be reduced by about 20,

25 25 percent. And we have a compensation plan for the



75

1 reduction in the fish habitat in Attycelley, and that's

2 part of our compensation plan. The effects in Kemess

3 Creek during operations would be negligible.

4 Now, during operations we would be looking at

5 maintaining zero discharge, minimizing potential for

6 groundwater seepage. We have a low-grade stockpile

7 where the mine will be stockpiling low-grade ore during

8 operations for milling later. That will be monitored,

9 and if necessary that will either be milled or put into

10 the tailings pond. There'd be stream morphology

11 mapping in Attycelley Creek and just monitoring if

12 there's any changes to the environment, and there'd be

13 an ongoing program, as there is now, of continual

14 testing of acid rock drainage parameters, updating of

15 the water quality model, and vegetation testing so we

16 can look at what vegetation we're going to use for the

17 final reclamation.

18 So on closure, what are our main components?

19 Well, the big issue is water management; how are we

20 going to manage the water coming out of here, and dam

21 safety is a concern in terms of handling extreme flood

22 events safely. So we have two approaches. One is

23 we'll have a regular low-flow channel through the north

24 dam which will pass sort of your average flows, up to

25 five cubic metres a second, up to about the five-year



76

1 flows that would be going out the north channel.

2 Extreme flows, greater than five years, and so a

3 probable maximum flood, if it happened, would go out

4 the southwest dam into an engineered channel to

5 Attichika. And the reason for this is that the

6 southwest dam here is -- it has -- the abutments are

7 bedrock. We can put in a large spillway in bedrock

8 which will give it long-term security. The issue with

9 the north dam, it's a much higher dam, and so we want

10 to have our spillways located where we have less

11 hydraulic head to pass, and that's a dam safety issue.

12 The open pit, it will fill up with water over a

13 period of 80 years or so. At that time, we're

14 predicting that the water in there will be acidic

15 drainage, similar to what it is now, and we will treat

16 that material and store the sludge in an on-land

17 disposal area located here.

18 The tunnel, this is the ore conveyor tunnel, it

19 goes through potentially acid-generating waste rock,

20 and during operations we could be getting acid drainage

21 out of there. We will construct an engineered plug in

22 the tunnel. It will re-saturate the rock in the tunnel

23 and it will flow out the addit here and into Duncan

24 Impoundment, and if that water is contaminated in the

25 future, we would include it with the open pit and treat



77

1 it as part of the open-pit water.

2 I won't run through that.

3 Now, the water quality on closure -- and what I've

4 presented here, you know, we've done this model and

5 we've gone through upper bound and 7Q10s and high flows

6 and low flows, and all I'm presenting here is the base

7 case, our best assessment of what the water quality

8 will be on closure. And again with the three

9 parameters there, aquatic, wildlife and Canadian

10 drinking water standards. That was the impoundment.

11 This is the closure water quality in Duncan

12 Impoundment, the closure water quality in Attycelley,

13 and in the Finlay River.

14 Now, what happens is when we close the facility,

15 you know, the day we close it, the water quality in

16 there is the same as what it was during operations, so

17 that will be the worst water quality, the day we close

18 it. And over about five years, it takes -- the water

19 that's in there will be flushed out by natural inflow.

20 We have about 15 million cubic metres a year water

21 comes in naturally each year. So after about five

22 years the water quality in the impoundment will

23 stabilize.

24 So the main issues, you know, in Duncan

25 Impoundment itself, it will exceed manganese and lead



78

1 again, and manganese is more of an odour thing. Again

2 with the -- that's during operations. On closure, for

3 wildlife, it would not be a concern at all, and even in

4 aquatic it would have some elevated selenium and

5 sulfate. In Attycelley, cadmium is showing up as a

6 potential element in Attycelley Creek, and that's where

7 we're looking at developing water quality objectives

8 which look at the possible range of water quality we

9 could get out of here and what would be the affect in

10 Attycelley. The effect in the Finlay has not been

11 measurable.

12 Now, the next big issue to discuss is dam safety.

13 You know, we're building a 90-metre-high dam. It has

14 to remain there for a long time, and we want it

15 designed to do that. It's conventional with all dams,

16 and they get regulated by the Ministry of Mines and

17 also the Canadian Dam Association. They have

18 guidelines for dams and dam construction.

19 Comprehensive operation maintenance and surveillance

20 manual, and we've actually prepared a draft of it

21 already, but it specifies how this dam will be

22 constructed, how it will be operated, what monitoring

23 we will do, what's the contingency, what will we do if,

24 so it identifies all those programs. And that's

25 supported with geotechnical monitoring and water



79

1 quality monitoring during construction, operation and

2 closure.

3 An emergency preparedness and response plan has

4 been prepared, and we have submitted that last -- I

5 guess that's this month, and that defines, you know,

6 what our trigger -- we will define what our trigger

7 levels are, like if our pore pressures get this high,

8 what do we do, and to support that we carry out what's

9 called a dam break analysis, and this has become a

10 requirement of all dams in Canada to assess, well, what

11 happens -- what would happen if the dam failed, what

12 could be the effect, and primarily that's used to

13 define, well, what emergency response plan do you want

14 to have in place and what communication plan would you

15 have to have?

16 Now, we have to remember our north dam is a very

17 unique structure. It's not a conventional water

18 storage dam. It stores mainly waste rock. We have

19 this zone of tailings to reduce gradients. We have the

20 southwest dam a metre lower, so if we have cases where

21 both spillways plug and nobody goes there for years,

22 the southwest dam will fail before the north dam fails.

23 And we have a 300-metre-wide zone here of beach above

24 water. In other words, the lake will always be out

25 here, and in fact the deep part of the lake is a couple



80

1 of kilometres upstream, so there's very little water

2 here to actually spill out in the event of something

3 happening.

4 Nonetheless, we looked at a dam breach analysis,

5 and we considered a very hypothetical case where we

6 said, well, let's assume both spillways get plugged by

7 landslides or something. Let's assume that nobody goes

8 there for several years and monitors it or checks the

9 spillways and cleans them out. And let's assume that

10 we have a piping failure of the dam. You can kind of

11 think, you know, the probability of all those happening

12 is extremely low, but that's what would have to happen

13 for this dam to fail. And we looked at, well, what

14 would happen then? We'd have something like, and I

15 forget the number, but say 39 cubic metres of water

16 going down, it would take a couple of hours for that to

17 start to erode through the dam, and it would develop a

18 flood wave that would move down the Finlay River. So

19 by the time you got to Fort Ware, it would be similar

20 to about a 200-year flood level, so it would flood most

21 of the community, as would a 200-year flood in that

22 area. By the time you get to Williston Lake, it's

23 nominal; it would be similar to about a two-year flood.

24 And, you know, in recognition of that, there will be a

25 long-term care and maintenance program for this. It's



81

1 a major structure. It has to be there for a long time.

2 There will be a program of annual inspections and

3 periodic maintenance.

4 So what happens on closure? I was told I have to

5 describe this to you, because it's a little bit

6 cryptic. This is the natural ground here. The grey is

7 the tailings. We'll be placing neutral waste rock over

8 areas where the water is less than -- where it's

9 shallow enough that wind could re-suspend the

10 materials, and right now we're assuming that's about

11 two and a half metres, so we would have neutral rock

12 over there. Around the perimeter, we would be placing

13 soils and we would be constructing wetlands around the

14 perimeter, and those are basically just to start to

15 create some habitat in the lake. The dam slopes in all

16 disturbed areas would be reclaimed, and we'd consider

17 the use of fertilization in here. I mean, there are

18 some reclamation programs that fertilize, then, and

19 just how we recreate over a period of time the

20 substrate in here is something that we'd be developing.

21 This just gives you a picture of what it looks

22 like today. This would be the north -- north dam would

23 be across here, so there's what it will look like on

24 closure, here's the north dam, there's the

25 300-metre-wide zone upstream of the north dam and just



82

1 shaded in the perimeter wetlands, and you see the

2 Kemess North pit in the background there. So if you're

3 standing over on here looking out, you'd have a view

4 like that. If you're looking at the dam, this would be

5 looking at the dam there, that's what you'd see. So

6 you'd see a fairly wide dam crest, you'd see basically

7 it'd look like a 300-metre-wide zone, and then you'd

8 see the lake behind it.

9 Now, there is experience with closure of porphyry

10 copper, and Kemess is just one of many porphyry copper

11 deposits in what's called the porphyry copper belt of

12 British Columbia. It goes down from Highland Valley up

13 north of here, and Highland Valley has been doing

14 reclamation work for a number of years, and these are

15 just two examples. The one is the Trojan Pond. It's

16 about 200 -- two square kilometres, so about a third of

17 the size of Kemess Lake or Duncan Lake, and they have

18 had a program for about ten years, and right now

19 they've stocked it with fish, and I think the last

20 estimate, there's about 10,000 fish in there. The

21 Highmont, which is located just across the road from

22 Trojan, it's a project I actually worked on in the

23 '70s, they're reclaiming that now with grasslands

24 around the interior of the impoundment and a wetland in

25 the center area of the impoundment. Farther afield,



83

1 these are massive sulfide mines, one in Sweden,

2 Stekenjokk, where they had acid drainage there. They

3 went back in there, raised the dams, flooded the areas,

4 and they're getting fish back in there. Solbec, in

5 Quebec, this was again an environmental disaster site,

6 acid drainage. They've gone back in there, reflooded

7 it, and it's now a park. Another example is Republic,

8 an iron ore mine in the States, and they've turned that

9 into a wetland preserve. So these are just examples of

10 what is possible, and you know it will take time to

11 develop that, but it will be a lake that can, over a

12 period of time, be used.

13 Follow-up plan, monitoring water quality. And,

14 you know, when we finish mining, as I say, the worst

15 water quality will be the day we stop mining, and our

16 options there are to -- if the water quality isn't

17 suitable for discharge, we can pump it up to the open

18 pit temporarily until it meets criteria for

19 discharging. We could divert some of the surface clean

20 water so we're not handling as much water. We could

21 raise the dams to store more water, but I don't really

22 recommend that. And we could treat portions of the

23 water. We also have opportunities, because we have

24 such a wide zone of one or two kilometres from the dam,

25 opportunities to build cells and have some secondary



84

1 polishing ponds if we're worried about suspended solids

2 or some components, so we could construct some

3 polishing-type ponds within the tailings facility on

4 closure to give us some extra security. Reclamation,

5 it's going to be mainly, you know, the normal stuff of

6 deciding what plants to use and that, but I think

7 looking at what we can do with the lake with respect to

8 creating the substrate in it or how we can get that

9 going faster will be a focus. And I think refinement

10 of the plan to get input from First Nations, from

11 everybody, as to what do we want to use this lake for

12 on closure? Should it be a park, should it be a

13 preserve, should it be -- what should it be in the long

14 term? And dam safety. You know, there will be bonding

15 for long-term responsibility of that. We're going to

16 have to have annual inspections. It's going to have to

17 be a properly-managed program.

18 So in summary, it's designed to high standards to

19 protect the environment. Ongoing monitoring programs

20 and refinement of the design will improve it. The

21 aquatic compensation is provided. We recognize that we

22 will lose aquatic habitat in Duncan Lake and Duncan

23 Creek, and that's what the compensation plan is for.

24 The changes to water flows are temporary and

25 reversible. On closure, they'll be similar to what



85

1 they were before. And over a period of time, it will

2 become a functioning ecosystem.

3 Thanks.

4 MR. WATSON: Good afternoon, everyone. Can you

5 hear me without the mike just for a second?

6 I just want to introduce myself, Tom Watson. I'm

7 with Triton Environmental Consultants, and we've been

8 working on the Kemess project now for about three

9 months -- four months, actually. And I'm here just to

10 talk about the fish, fish habitat, compensation plan,

11 but I'd like to acknowledge a number of people.

12 There's various contributors to this work; Hatfield

13 Consultants, Mark Davies is here, Dave Bustard &

14 Associates, and Dave is here, and Klohn Crippen

15 Berger --

16 THE CHAIR: Excuse me. I'm sorry, but we do

17 require you to use a microphone.

18 MR. WATSON: I'm going to sit down right away.

19 THE CHAIR: It's for the webcast and other -- we

20 have to use a microphone. I'm sorry.

21 MR. WATSON: My apologies. I'll sit down now,

22 then.

23 I just wanted to acknowledge those people and just

24 to indicate that I'm the messenger, and we'll be going

25 through quite a bit of material with respect to fish



86

1 and fish habitat.

2 THE CHAIR: Dr. Watson, could you please introduce

3 yourself again, through the microphone, and could you

4 please spell your name for the court reporter.

5 MR. WATSON: I'm being bad, aren't I? Tom Watson,

6 T-o-m, W-a-t-s-o-n.

7 This is the presentation outline. This is the

8 material that I'm going to cover this afternoon,

9 starting with baseline fish studies, the impacts from

10 the loss of Duncan Lake, mitigation strategies,

11 compensation planning, and then finally the

12 compensation that was undertaken at South Kemess and

13 some of the success stories that were realized at that

14 location.

15 I should add that I'm a fish biologist and

16 toxicologist with about 30 years' teaching, research

17 and consulting experience in metal mining and heavy

18 metal toxicity to fish.

19 This is an overview of site locations. The

20 coloured -- okay. Is it not coming up there, Harvey?

21 Oh, thank you.

22 The coloured areas in the center of this

23 particular visual show the Kemess Mine and the four

24 principal watersheds that were looked at as far as

25 compensation planning. This is just intended to be a



87

1 location diagram so that we can refer to it later when

2 we get to some of the concepts that were identified.

3 For baseline field studies in Duncan Lake, they

4 were conducted over the period 2002 and 2006 and

5 comprised of littoral or shallow shoreline habitat

6 surveys, deeper water hydroacoustic surveys. I'm not

7 intending to go through these in detail. These are

8 just to show you the range and type of work that was

9 done for collecting fisheries data.

10 In the creeks, there was physical habitat surveys,

11 electro-fishing, mineral trapping, angling, snorkel

12 surveys, and counting areas where fish had spawned.

13 Features about Duncan Lake that are relevant to

14 this discussion: It's about an average depth of 24

15 metres, with a maximum depth of 52 metres. It's

16 steep-sided and about six kilometres long, compromising

17 a total area of 269 hectares. The important point here

18 that I'd like to draw your attention to is of this

19 surface area, 7 percent of it is littoral or shallow

20 shoreline areas, and 93 percent pelagic is referring to

21 deeper portions of the lake. It's well oxygenated in

22 all seasons from the surface to the bottom, and

23 naturally high in metal concentrations, and "high" is

24 referring to comparing the levels that are in the lake

25 to CCME or the Federal Government's criteria for the



88

1 protection of aquatic life. It has very low nutrient

2 concentrations and plankton densities. To illustrate

3 this, this is a slide showing 70 lakes with

4 Chlorophyll-A values on the left ranging from zero to

5 five micrograms per litre, and Chlorophyll-A is the

6 compound that one uses to evaluate or estimate the

7 productivity of a body of water. Duncan Lake is

8 circled in red and it's considered very low

9 productivity, and its term is ultraoligotrophic.

10 "Oligotrophic" means low productivity. And Mulvaney

11 Lake and Whudzi Lake are two lakes that have been

12 identified for receiving transplanted fish from Duncan

13 Lake. They, too, are low-productivity lakes. And this

14 just gives you the range of the 70 lakes that were used

15 just to show this comparison, and it's a relative

16 comparison just to illustrate where Duncan Lake sits in

17 that spectrum.

18 The fisheries in Duncan Lake are comprised of

19 three primary species: Rainbow trout -- and you can

20 see in brackets that's the relative proportions of the

21 fish that represent the population. So rainbow trout

22 are about 74 percent, Dolly Varden 16 percent, and

23 mountain whitefish about 10 percent. The total

24 population size in all species considered is fairly

25 similar as resulting from studies that were done in



89

1 2004 and 2006. Total population size is about 3,200

2 animals, and this is reflective of similar estimates

3 over those two periods and suggestive of stable

4 populations.

5 Rainbow trout are the most abundant, and they grow

6 up to about 45 centimetres in length and nine years of

7 age, and this is an important thing I would like you to

8 also remember, that they're surface-oriented feeders

9 and their diet is almost entirely comprised of flying

10 insects. The adults spawn, and the juveniles rear in

11 Duncan Creek, and they re-enter the lake at about two

12 years of age. And only sub-adults and adults are found

13 in the lake.

14 Dolly Varden are also in the lake, and all life

15 stages are found. They grow to about 27 centimetres in

16 length and seven years of age, and another feature that

17 I'd ask you to keep in mind is that they're

18 bottom-oriented feeders. They spawn in two small inlet

19 creeks and one area of the lakeshore at one inlet. The

20 fry rear in inlet creeks and in the lake. There is no

21 char fry in Upper Duncan Creek.

22 Mountain whitefish -- pardon me, I seem to be

23 missing that mountain whitefish slide.

24 Before we get to that, hybrid char, this is an

25 example of a hybridization between a Dolly Varden and a



90

1 bull trout. And in Duncan Lake, most of them are pure

2 Dolly Varden. There's no pure bull trout, and there

3 are no first-generation hybrids between Dolly Varden

4 and bull trout. There is some historical bull trout

5 genes indicating a possible hybridization historically,

6 and the hybrids in the lake are indistinguishable from

7 the pure Dolly Varden by size, growth and condition.

8 There's my mountain whitefish slide. There's

9 small numbers in the lake and they grow up to about 37

10 centimetres and seven years of age, and like Dolly

11 Varden, they're bottom-oriented feeders. Some spawning

12 in the lake is suspected, and fry are rearing in

13 littoral areas of the lake, and none were found in the

14 inlets or in Duncan Creek.

15 This slide is reflecting what the niche separation

16 is between rainbow trout and Dolly Varden. The graph

17 on the left is the basin of the lake in cross-section

18 during the day, and at right at night. And if you look

19 to the surface that I'm highlighting now where it's

20 purple, that is the rainbow trout during the day, and

21 at night the rainbow trout are along the edges. But

22 the thing about rainbow trout is they live and reside

23 entirely in this upper zone above the thermocline, and

24 that's that temperature area that's warm water at top

25 and cooler below. Dolly Varden through the day are



91

1 feeding at the bottom and at night also move to

2 littoral areas. So this is a niche separation, if you

3 will, and different use of resources between the two

4 species.

5 Duncan Lake is limiting fish production from three

6 principal reasons. One is that it has that small

7 littoral zone, only 7 percent of it. Food

8 availability, its low productivity, limits the amount

9 of food resources, and there's limited Dolly Varden and

10 rainbow trout spawning habitat in the lake. Duncan

11 Lake has a series of inlets, and the water quality in

12 the eastern creeks, which is this side, is compromised

13 by the ore body, and there is low pH, higher metals and

14 sulfide in drainage from the ore body. On the southern

15 creeks and the western creek on this side, water

16 quality is much better for the reasons that Harvey

17 indicated -- it's more alkaline coming from that

18 limestone bluff. Fish are only found in the southern

19 creeks, and about 90 percent of the fish habitat is in

20 Inlet 1 down here. And Dolly Varden is the only

21 species in the inlet creeks.

22 Duncan Creek is about 2.8 kilometres in length

23 from Duncan Lake to its confluence with Attycelley.

24 The water quality is good and similar to Duncan Lake,

25 and it has two principal reaches. The longest is Reach



92

1 1, about 2.6 kilometres, and the other much shorter at

2 250 metres.

3 This is a view of Upper Duncan Creek looking

4 towards the lake. This is the shorter of the two

5 reaches, and this is where rainbow trout are spawning.

6 The lake is around the corner here, and you'll note the

7 slower water and some gravels.

8 This is a typical view of Lower Duncan Creek, the

9 longer portion of the creek, and this is where rainbow

10 trout, fry and parr are rearing, and they'll move back

11 into Duncan Lake when they get older.

12 Just a view showing Attycelley Creek in relation

13 to Duncan Creek. Attycelley Creek is being shown here

14 because this also was the subject of impacts and

15 compensation planning, so it's broken up into four

16 reaches; Reach 1 right here, 2, 3 and 4. And Reach 2

17 has inputs from Duncan Creek and Cirque Creek. There

18 is the proposed mine site, and this is where impacts

19 from Cirque Creek and Duncan Creek will occur in

20 Attycelley and downstream.

21 The characteristics of Reach 1 in Attycelley Creek

22 is flat, sinuous, with gravel and sand substrate. And

23 as you move further upstream, it becomes faster. It's

24 got larger substrate and more riffle habitat. And this

25 is where Cirque Creek enters Attycelley Creek, in that



93

1 second reach. And remember what Ron was talking about

2 was iron oxide. This is that orange precipitate on the

3 rocks that you can see here. And note also that the

4 water is noticeably turbid. It's got poor water

5 quality, and no fish were found in Cirque Creek.

6 Upper Attycelley Creek, this is the upper two

7 reaches, or Reaches 2 and 3, pardon me, and it starts

8 to get lower gradient through here. And this is the

9 headwaters of Attycelley Creek, and it's characterized

10 by these groundwater seepages that come into the

11 headwaters and forming Attycelley Creek.

12 Fish in Attycelley Creek are predominantly Dolly

13 Varden in all four of the reaches. In the lower two

14 reaches, slimy sculpin occurs, and bull trout in the

15 upper reaches. And Reaches 3 and 4 is providing the

16 best char habitat, as reflected by the highest parr

17 adult densities, and that's where most of the spawning

18 also occurs. The fish density surveys that have been

19 conducted over the last 11 years indicate that there is

20 stable parr and adult populations.

21 Bull trout in the Attycelley have limited

22 spawning, and there's been seven redds per year,

23 representing about 3 percent of the Thutade drainage

24 total. For example, in Kemess Creek, there were 65

25 redds per year observed for a similar area of



94

1 watershed. Most of the spawning occurs above Cirque

2 Creek, in Attycelley. And again this 1 to 2 percent

3 juvenile char are bull trout, so most of the char in

4 Attycelley are Dolly Varden.

5 The impacts to fish from the project are going to

6 occur from the loss of fish habitat in Duncan Lake and

7 Duncan Creek and reduced flows in Attycelley, Duncan

8 and Cirque Creeks.

9 The mitigation for the loss of habitat is going to

10 occur by transplanting fish from Duncan Lake to

11 Mulvaney and Whudzi Lakes. Those are the two lakes --

12 low-productivity lakes that I showed you on that graph.

13 There are two principal concerns about transplants, one

14 being genetics and the other parasites. The work

15 that's been done to date on samples taken from these

16 fish in Duncan Lake show that the rainbow trout in

17 Duncan Lake are similar to other Northern B.C.

18 populations and also that there is a minimal risk to

19 genetic integrity by transplanting the Dolly Varden to

20 the Toodoggone River system or Mulvaney Lake.

21 Similarly with parasites, the identified parasites are

22 not and will not pose a risk to humans, and the risk

23 posed by the transplants are minimal. Remember, there

24 is no fish in Mulvaney Lake, so hence there won't be

25 exposure to any fish coming from Duncan, and there's no



95

1 impact expected from parasites.

2 Compensation planning. This is the work that was

3 done in order to compensate for the lost habitat in

4 Duncan creek -- or Duncan Lake, pardon me, and Duncan

5 Creek and Attycelley Creek. The overall objective and

6 purpose was to achieve a no net loss of habitat, and

7 that was from Duncan Lake loss, and this would be

8 covered under -- that's the tailings impoundment area,

9 and that would be addressed under the tailings

10 impoundment authorization as to the third point below

11 and the reduced flows. And the compensation would be

12 reflective of the DFO habitat conservation and

13 protection guidelines.

14 There was quite a bit of work done in framing the

15 compensation concepts that you're about to see.

16 Initially, the work began on Duncan Lake and in the

17 upper Finlay watershed, but it was expanded to include

18 the headwater areas of Ingenika, Skeena and the Stikine

19 Rivers. This was necessary, given that transplants

20 were not considered compensation by DFO but rather

21 mitigation. This really meant that there was an

22 inadequate amount of concepts and ability to compensate

23 for habitat loss on site, so the search for suitable

24 habitat was conducted in these other drainages. There

25 was also consultation and several meetings with DFO to



96

1 discuss the principles by which we had applied to

2 identify concepts, and that led to four main areas of

3 compensation strategies for the loss of habitat in

4 Duncan Lake. One is removing barriers on barren fish

5 systems or fish systems -- systems that do not contain

6 fish, and out of the ones that we've identified,

7 there's four such concepts: Transplanting fish into

8 non-fish-bearing systems with subsequent enhancements,

9 and there's two of those; barrier removals in

10 fish-bearing systems, we have five of those; and

11 habitat enhancements in fish-bearing systems. And for

12 reduced flows, there's habitat enhancements to

13 Attycelley and Duncan Creek being proposed.

14 The underlying principles that we used in

15 compensation planning was the hierarchy of preferences

16 up here, and it's focusing on limiting factors, and it

17 improves access and enhances habitat. A systems

18 approach was adopted for enhancing productive capacity,

19 and productive capacity in this case was metres

20 squared. And the other thing that we had used as

21 principles, that it considers niche separation, and

22 I'll give you the example again of the rainbow trout

23 and Dolly Varden in Duncan Lake, and resource

24 utilization. They used different resources, they

25 occupy different areas of habitat.



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1 The other thing we did was to have a mix of plans

2 and alternatives. This is distributing the risk, and

3 by having diverse options, there's a greater chance of

4 success, and there was a selection from a range of

5 identified strategies, and these concepts are

6 fundamental and they have the following underlying

7 assumptions: One is that barrier removal, because it

8 is stopping upstream movement of fish, is the sole

9 limiting factor to fish production, and so we have

10 calculated and determined that there would be some

11 habitat compensated for by removing a barrier. Habitat

12 enhancement increases productive capacity, as does

13 beaver dam removal. And beaver dam removal would be a

14 strategy used for the life of the mine or that period

15 of time that the mine is in operation. Another thing

16 that was central to our work was that scientific

17 justification is required, and another one is that by

18 finding additional stream habitat, we can use that

19 stream habitat to compensate for the loss of the

20 pelagic or the lake habitat -- that deeper habitat

21 that's in the lake. And there was, finally, and this

22 is why we highlighted it, an overall 1-1 ratio of the

23 project was required for compensation and a minimum of

24 2-1 for littoral or the shallower portions of the lake.

25 One of the things that we have adopted into



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1 compensation planning has been adaptive management.

2 The concepts that we have are meant to provide a menu,

3 if we could call it that, of a range of concepts, not

4 all of which would be required to be completed, but

5 through adaptive management we define, if we go to that

6 top box right there, we are defining our management

7 objectives, and that's what I just told you about, was

8 the ratios that are required to satisfy no net loss for

9 this project. We identified the preferred strategies,

10 and that's been done. We identified the goals and

11 monitoring timelines. Admittedly, in our current

12 compensation plans, and they're here in the documents

13 if people would like to read them, and they are also on

14 the website, there is a time line, and some of the

15 targets have yet to be developed. Once they are and

16 the concept is implemented, it's monitored. And once

17 its effectiveness is assessed, it's a simple question:

18 Is it effective or not? If it's not, then you go down,

19 you determine why, you fix it, and then you go back up

20 to monitoring again. If it's effective, you go across

21 here. Have management objectives been achieved? This

22 is a simple question as well. Were we successful to

23 create 30 square metres of habitat for a particular

24 strategy? If it's "yes", the project is complete.

25 Adaptive management is an important feature to our



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1 work.

2 The compensation opportunities, concepts that

3 we've identified, and I'll again ask you to think back

4 to that first slide in the talk, the mine site is here,

5 and I don't know what happened to our scale, but you

6 can see that Duncan Creek -- or Duncan Lake right here

7 is six kilometres long, so some of these concepts and

8 strategies are in the order of 40 to 60 kilometres away

9 from the mine site, and they're in different drainages

10 and different regions.

11 Some examples of what we mean by barrier removals

12 on barren systems. This is on Midas Creek. We have a

13 2.5-metre falls above which there are no fish. In the

14 upper reaches there is two basins of the lake with a

15 talus slide here. A channel would be constructed to

16 open up habitat in both those basins. Once fish move

17 into the system, they'd have a lot more habitat to use.

18 It's fish transplants in a non-fish-bearing systems, so

19 this is Mulvaney Lake, and we view Mulvaney Lake as

20 something where a softer approach to habitat

21 enhancements and compensation could be done. A range

22 of opportunities here exist from removing barriers,

23 creating spawning habitat, enhancing cover, and

24 creating pool and overwintering habitat.

25 Third category is removing barriers and



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1 fish-bearing systems. Here we have fish above and

2 below the barrier, but by opening this barrier and

3 allowing additional species or more of the same species

4 into this other habitat, we can have increased

5 productive capacity.

6 And habitat enhancement in fish-bearing systems,

7 this is a lake, Chukachida Lake, and it has an outlet

8 that is providing some spawning habitat, but the lack

9 of spawning habitat is limiting production for rainbow

10 trout and bull trout.

11 In Attycelley and Duncan Creek, the decreased

12 flows will affect all types of fish habitat and the

13 lower winter flows may affect Attycelley Creek

14 overwintering habitat. Two compensation proposals or

15 two compensation concepts have been identified. One is

16 in a backchannel and the other is stabilization of a

17 former wetland/beaver pond area, and an additional four

18 sites were identified as part of some recent work.

19 Site 1 is the area that would be subject to creating a

20 berm, and I've got a slide coming up for that, and

21 Backchannel Area 2, right here. What do these areas

22 look like? This is Backchannel Area 2, and the idea

23 here is to create this backchannel area where some

24 groundwater can be intercepted. This would create

25 spawning and rearing sites for Dolly Varden. And



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1 Attycelley Creek Site 1, this is a previous outline of

2 a beaver impoundment. The concept would be to place a

3 berm here and a control structure allowing fish to

4 access this area. And this would provide quite a bit

5 of new habitat.

6 What does all this mean? This is a slide showing

7 the losses on the left and the concepts for

8 compensation on the right, and as long as this bar is

9 taller than that one, we are achieving more than 1-1.

10 And you can see also that we've broken the habitat out.

11 The lake littoral or this greeny colour is 7-1. The

12 target was 2-1. Here we have stream given by this

13 green, plus lake. Those two together provide a ratio

14 of .8-1. And this dark line at the top is

15 Attycelley-Duncan Creek compensation.

16 And again just giving you an idea of what this

17 means as far as the different types of compensation,

18 here is the losses again, here are the gains, but the

19 colours are now coded. Barrier removals for this

20 colour, blue is barrier removal, fish-bearing, et

21 cetera. And it shows that the aggregate concepts can

22 provide more than adequate compensation, and hence the

23 notion that not all compensation concepts would be

24 implemented. Those that would provide the target

25 compensation ratios would be.



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1 In summary, our work is suggesting to us that no

2 net loss can be achieved. Provincial goals of

3 conservation can be achieved. The strategies are

4 consistent with no net loss. There's a benefit for a

5 number of species. And risk is reduced with the

6 diverse concepts and geographic locations. Adaptive

7 management will provide the framework for monitoring

8 and measuring success and feedback, and the value of

9 all of this is shown with ongoing experience at South

10 Kemess.

11 For this work, the plan was developed in '96, and

12 the species of concern were bull trout and Dolly

13 Varden.

14 This is an example of an adfluvial bull trout from

15 Kemess Creek, and an example of a stream resident Dolly

16 Varden.

17 And this overview map shows Kemess Creek, and the

18 red dots that you see there are the spawning locations

19 for bull trout. And here is Attycelley Creek, and you

20 can see that there's quite a few -- much fewer or less

21 spawning areas.

22 The impacts from the South Kemess project resulted

23 in the loss of eight kilometres of Dolly Varden habitat

24 and four kilometres of bull trout habitat from

25 construction of the dam. And from the waste rock



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1 disposal area, about five kilometres of stream used by

2 resident Dolly Varden was lost. And for compensation,

3 there was Dolly Varden transplants to barren systems or

4 those areas where there were no fish, and this is an

5 example of the type of habitat that they were placed

6 in. And subsequent monitoring has shown that the

7 species has established itself and is reproducing.

8 Another strategy was to construct a fishway around

9 a barrier falls. This was a permanent barrier by these

10 falls, and now bull trout can ascend and have been

11 recorded as spawning upstream of this barrier.

12 Another strategy was constructing bull trout

13 spawning sites. This shows some shoreline complexing

14 with woody debris, placement of gravels here, and this

15 is an actual bull trout redd here.

16 Another thing that was done was to create spawning

17 downstream of the dam in South Kemess Creek, and

18 another strategy or concept that was implemented was

19 creation of side-channel habitat. This was an 80-metre

20 length of side-channel habitat that was constructed,

21 and it was mimicking the best habitat in another area

22 used by bull trout, and this has been very successful,

23 and they've had high returns in densities of fish in

24 that particular reach of that constructed channel.

25 Another one that we've mentioned before is beaver



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1 dam removal. This is a life-of-mine idea where this

2 beaver dam would be taken out to manage and improve

3 productive capacity and fish habitat during the life of

4 the mine.

5 Just to give an illustration of what some of this

6 has meant, keep in mind that the Kemess South Mine has

7 been sitting in the middle of the landscape of this

8 bull trout spawning/rearing habitat. Baseline

9 conditions, as referenced by the number of redds or the

10 number of areas where these fish have spawned, is

11 somewhere between 40 -- or between 50 and 60 redds

12 before construction. During construction, it's about

13 the same. And since '98, up until the present, and

14 this 2006 bar is September 2006, you can see that

15 there's been good returns as far as representation by

16 the number of redds. This doesn't mean that a mine has

17 necessarily contributed to the increase because there's

18 been good returns or good counts elsewhere in the

19 watershed. What it does say is that it is possible to

20 have functioning habitat with a mine.

21 Our overall conclusions, at least with respect to

22 work done at Kemess South and as it relates to this

23 project, is that the bull trout and Dolly Varden

24 compensation objectives were achieved at Kemess South.

25 There's been no evidence of a decline in fish



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1 populations in streams around the mine site, and

2 application of adaptive management based on detailed

3 monitoring. Keep in mind the monitoring has been

4 ongoing now for a period of 11 years, and there's been

5 rechecks, and there's been effectiveness checks, and

6 there's been implementation and root cause analysis and

7 adjustments to the strategies, and this is why we see

8 the success we do. And the South Kemess program has

9 really provided a strong basis for understanding what

10 can be done with fish compensation programs, and we're

11 looking forward to taking the good lessons learned at

12 South Kemess and applying them to Kemess North.

13 And thank you very much, everyone.

14 MR. TURNEY: Good afternoon.

15 My name is Laurence Turney. L-a-u-r-e-n-c-e,

16 T-u-r-n-e-y. I'm a wildlife biologist and owner of

17 Ardea Biological Consulting, a small ecological firm in

18 Smithers. In 2003, Ardea was engaged by Northgate to

19 assist Klohn Crippen in the completion of background

20 wildlife and vegetation assessments and aid in the

21 development of the Kemess North environmental impact

22 assessment.

23 As you can see outlined in this slide, a

24 multidisciplinary team was assembled from local

25 environmental consultants to help complete a wide range



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1 of ecological studies. All of the team members on this

2 team had ten or more years of experience working in

3 Northern B.C., and many of them have over 20 years of

4 field experience in boreal forest ecosystems.

5 In this short presentation, I will be presenting a

6 summary of some of the diverse programs our team was

7 involved with since 2003. Our findings were documented

8 primarily in Appendix 8 of the environmental impact

9 assessment which was completed in September 2005. As

10 you can see from this slide, additional evaluations and

11 information was provided as we continued to build upon

12 our initial work. Completed studies -- we completed

13 studies to answer questions regarding compensation

14 options and respond to agency questions and comments.

15 As previously outlined by Harold and Peter, this

16 slide shows the area of the original mapping studies

17 completed by Ardea and our team. The outlined areas

18 where we completed terrain, soils, ecosystems and

19 wildlife habitat mapping. These were completed between

20 2003 and 2005. This was a major search area for the

21 rare plants and ecosystems assessments, as well as the

22 area that the majority of the seasonal wildlife

23 assessments were completed. In this area, we looked

24 for evidence of use for species such as amphibians,

25 waterfowl, terrestrial birds, furbearers, moose,



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1 mountain goat, caribou, black and grizzly bears. The

2 extensive field work was also conducted in the lower

3 Attycelley Creek area for amphibians, waterfowl, moose

4 and caribou, especially in the area between Thutade and

5 Duncan Lakes along the Attycelley Creek and Attichika

6 Creek floodplains. Areas that we looked at for the

7 compensation lakes -- sorry, the information we worked

8 on for the compensation lakes included work on

9 dragonflies, amphibians and waterfowl.

10 A number of mapping products were completed by the

11 members of the terrestrial studies team to aid in the

12 environmental assessment process. These mapping

13 studies were completed using accepted standards in

14 B.C., as outlined in this slide. For those unfamiliar

15 with these mapping studies, the general methodology is

16 to use air photos to identify any outlying features and

17 then complete field assessments to confirm the

18 interpretations and refine polygon boundaries. For

19 wildlife habitat suitability mapping, we use the

20 information from the ecosystem mapping and ground

21 assessments of habitat use and suitability to rate

22 ecosystem map polygons. Other features, such as slope

23 aspect and proximity to other values can be used to

24 adjust these readings.

25 Some of the key findings from the mapping



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1 activities are as follows: We found that there were

2 very few concerns related to soils or terrain, and that

3 those that were there were mitigatable using current

4 technologies. Soils in the area are generally thin in

5 the alpine areas, deeper as you get into the lower

6 elevations. They're very limited productivity, being

7 primarily sands and gravels, and you can see this

8 outlined in the slide on the top.

9 Forested ecosystems were typical mountainous

10 subalpine forests of moderate productivity. There were

11 limited high-productivity wetland or rich forests in

12 the area, and very limited amounts of these ecosystems

13 were affected by the proposed development. Alpine

14 ecosystems as seen in the lower photo, and as you've

15 seen previously, are generally rocky, with -- and

16 unvegetated, very low productivity typical of alpine

17 sites.

18 Suitability mapping and habitat assessments found

19 limited high-value sites for many of the species in the

20 area. Limited wildlife use was also noted. Identified

21 high-value sites were found in certain parts of the

22 area, but were mitigated through avoidance of those

23 areas, primarily.

24 The ecosystems and habitats found in the Kemess

25 area are typical of similar ecosystems found



109

1 extensively within the region.

2 In the last four years, the number of seasonal

3 habitat and inventory assessments were completed on a

4 wide variety of species in the Kemess North and

5 surrounding areas, inventories and assessments used

6 accepted standards as outlined here, as well as

7 accepted methods from the scientific literature when

8 there were no standards available. The initial range

9 of studies became more focused on specific species or

10 species groups as the project progressed and

11 assessments suggested areas requiring additional study.

12 For example, caribou winter range and habitat use was

13 studied from 2003 to 2005 to help delineate high-value

14 winter areas and understand that seasonal use.

15 Within our assessments, we completed over a

16 thousand hours of dedicated searches for amphibian

17 species such as wood frogs, which are shown above -- in

18 the top slide, sorry, within the Kemess North and

19 surrounding areas. We spent over 100 hours conducting

20 seasonal aerial inventories for ungulates such as

21 moose, mountain goat and caribou to understand the

22 areas that they were using. We noted habitat and

23 habitat use information along with approximately 80

24 kilometres of ground and snow transects, as well as in

25 over 100 habitat plots. Other specialized studies



110

1 included monitoring to determine mountain goat kidding

2 areas and completion of breeding bird and waterfowl

3 inventories.

4 Some of the key findings of our wildlife habitat

5 assessments are outlined here. We found no evidence of

6 amphibians breeding in Duncan Lake or Kemess Lake

7 watersheds. Spotted frog, wood frog and western toad

8 use were found in the lower Attycelley region.

9 Breeding bird diversity and abundance was found to be

10 low in the Kemess North area, with no species at risk

11 found breeding in the Kemess North area. Waterfowl use

12 was limited in Duncan and Kemess Lakes area. There was

13 higher use in Lower Attycelley and Attichika Creek

14 areas, with the majority of fall migration occurring

15 along Thutade Lake and in the Lower Attichika. Based

16 on our available information and sightings from

17 ourselves and the local trapline-holder and guide

18 outfitter, we estimate there are approximately 20 to 30

19 caribou using the Kemess area. Kemess is not located

20 on a major migration area used by large numbers of

21 caribou. The high-value winter habitat located along

22 the mid Attycelley Creek area have been protected from

23 development, and use during development will be

24 monitored. Our mountain goat kidding habitat was --

25 some mountain goat kidding habitat was identified on



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1 ridges approximately three kilometres from the proposed

2 pit, in this area here, on a ridge that's east of

3 Cirque Creek, the south -- or the north end of that

4 ridge. Mitigation measures to protect that area are --

5 involve no-fly zones and monitoring.

6 Some other assessments of note in the Kemess area

7 was the completion of the rare plants and ecosystems

8 survey. This assessment found that a small population

9 of blue-listed plants, the Alpine Draba, will be

10 affected by the project. This species is pictured in

11 the above photo. It's a small mustard and is a very

12 difficult species to identify. It is more likely

13 widespread than thought, due to the difficulty in

14 identification, and we recommend that the most

15 appropriate study for -- strategy for this species

16 would be to participate in a review of the status. A

17 number of assessments were also conducted on the

18 fisheries compensation lakes, Whudzi and Mulvaney

19 Lakes, and included a review for dragonflies,

20 amphibians and waterfowl. Amphibian use was not

21 detected at Whudzi Lake, while 16 western toad tadpoles

22 were found in a wetland that was separated from

23 Mulvaney Lake, and an adult spotted frog was found

24 adjacent to one of the southern inlet streams at

25 Mulvaney Lake. The photos at the bottom show an adult



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1 spotted frog and a western toad tadpole. Dragonflies

2 were not detected at either site during our work in

3 2006, and the waterfowl diversity and abundance was

4 found to be higher at Mulvaney Lake than at Whudzi

5 Lake.

6 In conclusion, from a wildlife perspective, the

7 effects from Kemess North are expected to be limited,

8 due to the small footprint and low density of wildlife

9 that we found in the area. Potential affects on

10 important habitats that we did identify, such as

11 high-value winter ranges and mountain goat kidding

12 areas, were limited due to the distance to these

13 habitats from development and protection measures that

14 we have proposed to mitigate those effects. The

15 intension is to build upon the successful management

16 record of the existing Kemess fish and wildlife

17 programs to ensure that effects to wildlife from the

18 Kemess North project are minimized.

19 Thank you.

20 MR. ROUSSEAU: Good afternoon, folks. My name is

21 Mike Rousseau, spelling last name is R-o-u-s-s-e-a-u.

22 I'm with Antiquus Archaeological Consultants. I am the

23 senior researcher there and also I'm the company

24 president. I've been a professional archaeologist for

25 31 years. I have a master's degree from Simon Fraser



113

1 University from the Department of Archaeology. And

2 most of my research has been in the Southern part of

3 the province, although I have visited many areas in the

4 central part of the province related to mining programs

5 and also in the Yukon.

6 A couple of years ago, we were asked to do the

7 inspection for the various areas that were selected for

8 proposed impact or potential impact regarding the

9 various different projects in Kemess, so we were

10 charged with investigating areas where they wanted to

11 put in the waste rock dumps. There was three specific

12 locations, four actually, including Duncan Lake, but

13 these are the neighbouring valleys, and I'm just going

14 to touch on each one of these sites, see which is one

15 of the areas that we felt had fairly high

16 archaeological site potential based on the land forms

17 and just the fact that it's a very easy corridor to

18 walk through. These two valleys here, the northeast

19 dump, the north dump, fairly steep-sided valleys, very

20 low or very small areas in the actual valley bottoms,

21 and also Duncan Lake which of course is going to -- or

22 received the majority of our attention and also is

23 going to be the majority of this presentation. We also

24 looked at this corridor through here very quickly, but

25 it was just basically -- they were asking us just to



114

1 see what the potential was and they were going to

2 simply upgrade the existing road.

3 The team included eight folks, four of which are

4 Antiquus employees. Combined, we have over five, six

5 decades of experience. And we were assisted by four

6 First Nations field assistants who had had no previous

7 experience in archaeological field technique, and so

8 they kind of got a crash course from us on what to look

9 for, where to look for it, and how to go about doing

10 some of the methods that we use to identify or discover

11 sites.

12 The objectives of the project were pretty

13 straightforward, and they're pretty standard for most

14 archaeological studies. We're charged with identifying

15 and recording archaeological sites pre-dating A.D.

16 1846. This is the cut-off date that's recognized by

17 the government and by the Archaeology Branch as

18 being -- anything prior to that time is considered of

19 archaeological or heritage value and is automatically

20 protected by the Heritage Conservation Act. Anything

21 after that time period is not officially recognized or

22 automatically recognized as an archaeological or

23 heritage concern, although there are many sites that

24 have been recorded that do have very high historic or

25 public significance value that post-date 1846, and of



115

1 course they do enter and get registered on the

2 registry.

3 Once we've identified the sites, the next task was

4 to assess the overall heritage significance value, so

5 there is a number of criteria that you look at to

6 arrive at a value, usually ranked on a low/low-medium/

7 medium/medium-high/high sort of a ranking scheme that's

8 very subjective, and no two archaeologists would

9 probably give you the same results, but essentially the

10 idea is that anything with medium or higher

11 archaeological site significance value overall is

12 something that's worthy of additional management or

13 future management. Also, we were charged to assess the

14 potential of proposed adverse impacts, so what is the

15 proposed development in the area, is it going to have

16 an adverse impacting affect on the archaeological

17 resource, and what degree, what's the severity, the

18 intensity and all the rest of that. And in this case,

19 some of the areas that we looked at are no longer under

20 consideration, so there's obviously the impact

21 potential has been removed. And also once we've

22 collected all that information and assessed the site,

23 we were to formulate and present appropriate management

24 strategy options for the sites within the impact zone

25 so that they're properly managed, so that we can gather



116

1 information from them before they are -- the

2 development takes place, or can we do something to

3 avoid the site, by overfilling, by moving the

4 development over a little bit, whatever. The primary

5 aim always in archaeological site management is

6 avoidance. That is the ultimate option that you want,

7 and it kind of goes downhill from there. Avoidance is

8 the least expensive of them all, again, so it's very

9 favoured by the developer and the government, because

10 you've left it in the state that it's in and then you

11 don't have to spend a whole lot more money to deal with

12 it. And of course the final is to develop this

13 management strategy and implementation of it, so that

14 collectively the government, First Nations, the

15 development/proponent, the archaeologists, arrive at an

16 agreeable management plan such that the best interests

17 of the archaeological resource is being looked after.

18 So basically we are responsible for identifying and

19 assessing and managing or providing options for

20 management to the archaeological resource. That is our

21 primary interest and focus.

22 This is the Site C valley. We spent three days in

23 this valley, and again as you can see, it's open, the

24 valley bottom is open, it's very easy to travel through

25 this valley. In fact, the caribou wander through here



117

1 quite regularly. We noticed some while we were

2 working, and there's lots of antlers. So it tells us

3 that the game is there. There's also direct access --

4 there's Attycelley Creek here. The north end of the

5 valley here was of extreme interest to us. There's a

6 lot of geologic context here or environments that are

7 very classic locations where you typically find

8 archaeological sites. So in three days, basically,

9 what our job was was to go from one end of the valley

10 to the other with the crew, and what they would do is

11 they would follow me, and I would select judgmentally

12 areas within the valley bottom, particularly at the

13 valley wall-floor juncture, on raised terraces,

14 features overlooking small ponds, confluences of small

15 streams, small streams themselves, flat areas,

16 terraces, and particularly of interest to me and I

17 spent quite a bit of time personally in this area in

18 here, because you have a very -- you know, you have

19 everything going for it as far as where people would

20 have stayed. We spent considerable amount of time

21 shovel-testing especially this feature here, this point

22 feature which overlooks the creek, looking along the

23 edge of the creek embankment here, because typically

24 archaeological sites will erode out, so you'd have high

25 visibility in terms of ground surface visibility, and



118

1 also lots of shovel tests in areas, like particularly

2 this area in here where you have a natural jog where

3 game, people and other things migrate through.

4 Again, two basic methods are being used, the first

5 one being ground surface visual inspection, where you

6 look at the ground surface to determine whether or not

7 any evidence of pre-contact period utilization is

8 evident, and usually that's in the form of small flakes

9 of stone that are knocked off of pebbles and larger

10 cobbles to produce sharp-edged shards from the stone

11 that can be used as stone tools or modified into things

12 like scrapers and arrowheads and the things that most

13 people are familiar with.

14 Again, in this area we have a problem in the fact

15 that -- that as far as visibility of the surface

16 because there's so much vegetation, so you can only --

17 you know, the ground surface visibility is only

18 afforded in areas where there is instability along the

19 edge of the banks or in high, raised areas where you

20 may not have as much vegetation, so we target those

21 areas, we inspect them in great detail, and in those

22 cases where we find the context, for instance like in

23 this area or along the edge of this terrace here, where

24 we can see the ground surface, but it wasn't enough to

25 allow us to confidently determine whether there's



119

1 something there, we do something called shovel-testing.

2 And shovel-testing is physical digging of holes about

3 the size of a telephone pole. We remove the matrix, we

4 pass it through screens, we look at the gravels that

5 are left over, we inspect the gravels and paw through

6 them to see whether or not there is any artifacts.

7 Archaeological site visibility is a very complex thing,

8 and there's a lot of factors involved. People with a

9 lot of experience in archaeology are, of course, going

10 to be more likely to find archaeological sites. They

11 know where to look. They know what they're looking

12 for. They will go to extra efforts to locate specific

13 areas where sites, you know, may have been that other

14 people wouldn't look at. You're also covered --

15 hampered by vegetation cover, lighting conditions, the

16 time of the year. For example, if the ground is nice

17 and dry, you're a lot easier -- it's a lot easier for

18 you to screen, it's a lot easier to visually see what

19 you've got in your screen, it's not all covered in mud,

20 and when it's dry, it's so much easier, it goes

21 quicker, and so that has a lot to do with it as well.

22 Okay. The next waste rock dump over in this

23 location here, we started from the top of the valley,

24 and the whole crew was dropped off. Again, I'm taking

25 the lead. I'm going to various locations along the



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1 valley bottom here and looking for locations where

2 someone could have established a small camp. Planting

3 in flags, they would come along, they would dig the

4 holes. There was an archaeologist paired with one

5 First Nation member at all times to make sure that

6 these things are being looked at properly. This

7 particular valley, had -- most of it we considered to

8 have low-to-medium potential areas. They were looked

9 at, and we found nothing there.

10 The next valley system over, a very similar

11 environmental context. Even less valley bottom area.

12 We did actually find one site. It was located down

13 here, consisted of a single -- single stone tool. It

14 was a flake that we found, and the eroding out of the

15 creek channel bank, we tested extensively in that

16 specific location and failed to locate anything else,

17 much to my chagrin. I love to find sites. I get a

18 real charge out of it. And in this area, too, you have

19 a very good potential of finding something quite old.

20 This one flake that we found was very heavily

21 patinated. It had indications to me of the potential

22 to be fairly early. So we spent considerable time

23 there and again we failed to find anything else.

24 We also inspected the open-pit mine itself. This

25 is an excellent area that affords really good ground



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1 surface visibility because there's no vegetation.

2 Again, the whole -- the dynamic processes of air with

3 freeze, thaw, and everything else, it does contribute

4 to some burying of archaeological sites, but in most

5 cases if you're going to find something there, it will

6 have been weathered away and they should be sitting

7 fairly out in the open. You should be able to,

8 especially in locations, you know, along --

9 overlooking -- in prominent areas overlooking the creek

10 valley bottoms, and in this particular area as well

11 there was a series of large boulder clusters that we

12 spent a considerable amount of time looking at, because

13 they provide shelter from the wind. No doubt folks

14 used this area, and probably -- you know, when we were

15 up there, we saw evidence for lots of game. The trick

16 is for the hunters or whatever to be able to be up

17 there without the animals knowing it, and of course

18 these boulder clusters provide perfect, you know,

19 hunting blinds for that.

20 Here is an example here of one of the areas that

21 we did inspect with the boulder clusters. A little bit

22 of a shelter, sort of an enclave. And I had, you know,

23 very high -- I felt that this was a good place to look

24 for an archaeological site. We dug lots of holes. We

25 looked at the ground surface several times. We even



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1 went to the trouble of digging a one-by-two unit right

2 where I figured if I was going to camp there, that's

3 where it would be. And we failed to find anything.

4 By far, the most promising area for archaeological

5 sites is Duncan Lake, and we spent three days --

6 actually three and a half days working on the lake

7 itself. The greatest areas of site potential are the

8 north end of the lake and the south end of the lake. A

9 great amount of time was spent at the south end of the

10 lake. Most of that area included all of this in here,

11 all the way around where you can't see there's a bay in

12 here. The ground surface was inspected many times

13 over. I was convinced that this was going to be a

14 great place to find a fairly large site, because it's

15 got everything going for it. It's got, you know, it's

16 got the water, it's got the beach, it's got -- it's an

17 open area, you can see a lot, what's going on. In any

18 other context, you know, further to the south and the

19 southern part of the province, you would definitely

20 find a fairly large site here.

21 Now, other areas that we looked at on the lake

22 included a number of alluvial fans or fans that are

23 being -- continually forming here on the east side of

24 the lake. Again, these are very high-energy

25 environment areas, and you can have small sites being



123

1 either wiped out in one good seasonal flood, or be

2 capped over, or very, very difficult to find as well,

3 and of course the creeks meander all over these

4 formations and it makes it very difficult to find

5 anything that is there sometimes.

6 Lots of little locations along the south end of

7 the lake that are just beautiful camp spots. You would

8 think, "Man, that's where I would stay." Again, we

9 spent a lot of time, and typically -- and when you do

10 have a good site on a shoreline, you will always find

11 stuff incorporated in with the gravels along the beach.

12 Okay. I spent a lot of time looking along the

13 shoreline, continuing all the way from the far bay in

14 the east all the way to the very southwest corner, and

15 failed to find one single thing, which I found to be

16 very unusual. There's several locations like this.

17 Again, shovel-testing conducted as well, with very

18 little results.

19 The very south end of the lake, we spent two days

20 here, and I was really intrigued when I first -- when

21 we first got there because I noticed that not only was

22 it open and it had really good -- you could easily get

23 to this location, and it was a nice location to be at,

24 but there was a number of terraces that extended up the

25 side of the hill here, and I thought, well, this is



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1 great, this represents extinct shoreline levels of the

2 lake that potentially, by looking at these different

3 lakeshore levels, we should be able to find, you know,

4 sites that correspond with them. Hundreds of holes

5 were dug at the south end of the lake. In this

6 particular area here, over 100 shovel tests were dug,

7 again with a failure to find one single thing. And

8 then after spending a little more time on the lake, I

9 realized that these are not natural at all, these are

10 the products of placer mining activities that occurred

11 in the late '60s, early '70s. These terraces are

12 artificial. They were produced during the placer

13 mining process. There was a small camp that we found

14 here, a mining camp, that relates to that activity.

15 And then over here, on top of this terrace, they had --

16 a bulldozer had stripped a lot of the top of the

17 terrace off, and presumably that's what we're seeing is

18 a lot of the waste or the tailings ended up in this

19 area and being piled in terrace-like, successive,

20 step-like terraces up the side of the valley or of this

21 area.

22 These are the actual concerns that we did

23 identify, one being down here, the one I'll just show

24 you next. It's the camp that's associated with the

25 placer mining activity, and you can see this bit of a



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1 hump here on the lake. This is where a lot of the

2 upper layer was stripped off and then processed, and

3 then here is where the tailings were left. We also

4 found another historic mining camp, 1960s, 1970s,

5 located here. They are not archaeological sites, but

6 we did record them and we did take photos, and we do

7 mention them because they are of local interest and,

8 you know, if this area is going to be used, it's nice

9 to have knowledge of the fact that they were once

10 there. We also identified four pre-contact period

11 sites, three of which were -- this is the one I

12 mentioned where we found the single flake in the valley

13 that we looked for more additional deposits but didn't

14 find. These are two more what we call isolated lithic

15 waste flakes that we found along a route leading from

16 the top end of the lake and connecting with a road on

17 like a skidder trail or there was a drill rig that was

18 taken down there, so we know that this area here had

19 site potential, and this site here that we found,

20 HgSg-3, is a pre-contact period site which we did some

21 excavations on, and I'll go into that in a minute just

22 to give you some background on that.

23 So essentially the main things that are covered by

24 the Heritage Conservation Act are these four sites up

25 here. In each case, these flakes were collected.



126

1 Therefore, they are considered, quote/unquote,

2 "mitigated". There may be additional concerns in here,

3 but I'll get into that in a minute.

4 This is at the south end of the lake, again, the

5 mining camp that was established there. We just took

6 some photos. My partner, Mike Will, looked at some of

7 the artifacts in order to get the dates from them, and

8 that's how we figured out '60s and '70s.

9 Typically, you get tin can scatters, tent platforms,

10 industrial refuse relating to mining, things like that.

11 Also along the east side of the lake there is an

12 area there where a number of tent platforms had been

13 established all the way through in this area in the

14 trees, and also this area was subjected to a very

15 similar placer mining program similar to the south part

16 of the lake, where a lot of the ground surface was

17 stripped off and processed. We found very little --

18 only a few areas, and particularly this area along in

19 further down to the right, that had any appreciable

20 soil development on top. It was stripped right down to

21 the gravels.

22 This area also had high site potential. We spent

23 a lot of time there, dug a lot of holes. I looked at a

24 lot of ground, and that area it was hard for me to walk

25 away from, because I knew that the potential still was



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1 there. I'm not saying there's nothing there. I'm

2 saying that we just didn't find it at the time.

3 Here's some examples of some of the historic

4 things that we encountered at the mining camp there,

5 typically house or wall tent foundations and tin can

6 dumps and refuse.

7 At the north end of the lake, where we spent a

8 fair amount of time, particularly close to the actual

9 lake itself, again with many shovel tests being dug,

10 many continuous re-inspections of the shoreline, the

11 gravels along the shoreline, and quite an extensive

12 shovel-testing program along the areas immediately back

13 from the shoreline. Prior to our inspection, there was

14 a drill rig that was -- that pushed in a trail over to

15 the northwest corner of the lake, and I walked that

16 piece of road many times because I felt this was -- it

17 was a transect through an area that I felt had very

18 high site potential. And it wasn't -- it wasn't until

19 actually me spending more than about maybe an hour and

20 a half there, and I was getting pretty frustrated, I

21 knew we had to find something there because the chances

22 were very good that there was something there, I

23 managed to find one flake sitting on the surface of the

24 road, and so I was very happy. Subsequent to that, we

25 initiated a little bit of shovel-testing in that



128

1 location, and right away, bang, we started finding

2 things in that one specific location. I was very

3 excited.

4 As you can see here, this is a map here, a

5 planimetric map, showing the location of -- we dug one

6 shovel test. That's when it started, where I found the

7 flake. That's that little dot there. Then you have

8 these four excavation units here, they're one-by-one

9 metre units that were placed to recover the sample of

10 information that we had there on the road. Again, this

11 is all skimmed off. We looked at this area very, very

12 thoroughly. We also dug, you can see, a number of

13 shovel tests in the immediate area adjacent to where

14 this was. Every one of those tests failed to produce

15 anything else. So what it's telling us is that the

16 sites in the area, while they're there, they are very,

17 very small, and they are also very difficult to locate.

18 If you cannot see the ground surface and if you -- no

19 matter how many shovel tests you put in sometimes in a

20 specific spot, you may not nail the actual physical

21 deposits.

22 Here's a view showing where the site is located.

23 What had happened here is that the rocks in a certain

24 area had been pulled back to create an open area here,

25 and a fire was built inside of it. You can see another



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1 view here. Again, our excavation unit. All this

2 matrix was recovered in detail and passed through, and

3 you can see our back-dirt pile here where the things

4 were screened and we removed the artifacts. Again,

5 very little else was found anywhere peripheral to it,

6 this trail leading along going over to the other part

7 of the lake.

8 This is a closeup view here showing where the

9 hearth was. It had a fair amount of charcoal in it.

10 We were able to recover a nice, healthy charcoal sample

11 for radiocarbon dating. The radiocarbon date was about

12 1,400 years ago, 1,350 plus or minus seven years. So

13 it tells us about 1,300 or 1,400 years ago, a small

14 group of people used this specific location. They

15 built a fire, they processed what we can tell is it

16 looks like they processed some animals here. They also

17 probably produced some projectile points which we

18 managed to recover pieces of, so that we know that they

19 were at least a hunting-related trip. And also to

20 compound the problem is when we excavated this area we

21 found very high-density clusters which can only be

22 really probably referred to as like handfuls of flakes,

23 where they gathered up the flakes that they had knocked

24 off, probably while they were sitting around the fire,

25 and introducing them into the fire, which again that



130

1 reduces your visibility again, because if they were to

2 leave them all around in this area here, any shovel

3 test, you know, nailed in there would have probably

4 picked something up. So their neatness is like

5 contrary to what it is that -- to the site discovery

6 process.

7 Some of the tools that we recovered: A projectile

8 point here, which for the time that the radiocarbon

9 date that we got falls right in stylistically, and you

10 see there's a couple more examples here where tips were

11 broken off either while they were producing projectile

12 points or they were actually embedded in the meat that

13 they were processing. Flake knives, and this is a part

14 of a biface, it's probably a bifacial knife, and a

15 couple of scrapers which are typically used for

16 scraping sinew and fat from the inside of hides or also

17 removing meat from bone as well.

18 Nearby, we managed to find on this road cut

19 leading up there, we found a couple of those simple

20 chips of stone or flakes that someone had deposited,

21 and when we find them like that, we always think, well,

22 the possibility that there may be other things

23 associated with it. I personally spent a bit of time

24 on the road, and we also dug some shovel tests, and all

25 I can say is that you could spend a lot of time there



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1 digging an awful lot of holes before you can actually

2 find one of these small sites.

3 Another concern was the culturally-modified trees

4 or trees that have been bark-stripped. These were

5 initially -- we identified some of these when I was

6 doing the survey there. Most of them appeared to me to

7 be natural at the time, and those ones that we did see

8 that had obvious cutmarks in them, to me, my assessment

9 and my experience told me that the trees themselves

10 didn't even fall within the allowable time to be

11 recognized as archaeological concerns. And when you do

12 find a bark-stripped tree with clear indications of

13 cutmarks, and it post-dates 1846, that is more within

14 the realm of traditional use and not archaeology.

15 These trees that -- I was up there earlier this

16 month, the beginning of October. I went up by myself

17 to identify a bunch of trees with scars on them. This

18 was a follow-up from another group of archaeologists

19 who were in there, who identified six trees. I managed

20 to include several more, of which to me included both

21 naturally-removed bark, bark strips, and also there

22 were definitely some cultural ones.

23 The results of that study, I cored about 15 trees,

24 some of them successfully, some of them were rotten on

25 the inside so it was very difficult to get an age of



132

1 the tree, but in many cases we were able to determine

2 the age of the scar and the actual tree. What is

3 important is that for me, to be a real bona fide,

4 culturally-modified tree, you've got to have a cutmark,

5 and in this case where we have a cutmark here, the age

6 of the scarring event is 77 years, which is well short

7 of being recognized as an automatically-protected

8 heritage concern. Another one here. No cutmarks, 84

9 years old. One cutmark here, 126 years old. This is

10 getting to -- you know, we're getting pretty close, but

11 still not. Another one here, upper window cutmarks

12 observed, 113-year-old, 1893, so that's again not

13 close.

14 So in conclusion, for the amount of time and the

15 resources and the time of the year and all the rest of

16 the considerations, we feel that the sites that we

17 identified during our inspection have been mitigated,

18 and by that I mean that we have actually removed the

19 archaeological materials from the three isolated flake

20 sites and the site that we investigated. Therefore,

21 there's no conflict that exists with those identified

22 resources.

23 Again, the fact that there has to be more sites on

24 this lake is a certainty. Again, as you can see from

25 what I've described, the majority, at least from the



133

1 model that I see, is that the area was probably used by

2 groups of people that were on hunting pursuits,

3 primarily, or they could have visited here for other --

4 for plants and other resources as well, probably in

5 small groups of people, probably able-bodied people.

6 They travelled. They were well prepared. When they

7 went into the area, they left very little behind in

8 most cases, and what they do leave behind that's

9 obvious to us are the flakes that are left behind from

10 tools.

11 Now, you have to appreciate that if you are a

12 person making stone tools, that it usually happens

13 right in front of you, so you're looking at an area

14 that's fairly small. And if you've got an area where

15 you've only got one of those things on a nice big

16 terrace, how many holes are you going to dig before

17 you're actually going to find that? So there's a

18 sampling problem that's inherent to all archaeological

19 discovery techniques. Again, the more holes you dig,

20 the more time you spend digging them, the more

21 experienced the people are that you have, then you are

22 going to increase your chances to find sites. It's

23 compounded here because the sites are small.

24 Typically, I expected a much larger site at this end of

25 the lake, and again there may have been one there;



134

1 however, the nature of the disturbance precluded us

2 from being able to find it.

3 Thank you very much.

4 MS. LAMASH: Hello. My name is Debra Lamash,

5 D-e-b-r-a, L-a-m-a-s-h. I'm the manager of

6 socioeconomic assessment and consultation at Klohn

7 Crippen Berger, and I've been undertaking socioeconomic

8 and consultation studies for about the past 20 years.

9 And I'm here today to provide an overview of the

10 socioeconomic assessment that was undertaken for the

11 Kemess North project.

12 A socioeconomic assessment examines the

13 anticipated effects of a project on people and

14 communities in the area. For Kemess North, the

15 socioeconomic assessment was not a typical assessment

16 for a number of reasons. The project is an expansion

17 of an existing mine. The basic mining infrastructure

18 is already in place.

19 The project is based on a fly-in/fly-out camp in a

20 remote area of Northern B.C. with workers coming from

21 over 120 different communities. And, finally, after

22 construction, operations at Kemess North will be very

23 similar to those at Kemess South.

24 In undertaking the socioeconomic assessment, we

25 began by compiling some baseline data. After that, we



135

1 looked at the project features and superimposed them on

2 the baseline to determine areas of interaction between

3 the project and the assessment areas. And, finally, we

4 looked to identify enhancement and mitigation measures.

5 The study area for the project included local

6 communities, First Nations who'd expressed an interest

7 in the project, regional communities and zones of

8 influence, those being the broader areas where workers

9 were coming from or services or goods were being

10 procured.

11 This map shows the study area for the project.

12 Kemess is in the center. There's Fort Ware, the

13 community of Tse Keh, Mackenzie, Prince George,

14 Smithers, Hazelton, Takla Lake and Blackpine, or Takla

15 Landing, rather, for the Takla Lake First Nation.

16 This map shows the statement of intent areas of

17 the four First Nations who've expressed an interest in

18 the project. The four First Nations are Kwadacha, Tsay

19 Keh Dene, Takla Lake, and the Gitxsan House of Nii

20 Kyap. Kemess North is located right there, the little

21 red dot that I can't quite get on to. And the project

22 is just outside the bounds of the statement of intent

23 area of the Kaska Dena Council and the Gitxsan and

24 within the statement of intent areas of the Tsay Keh

25 Dene Band and the Carrier Sekani Tribunal Council of



136

1 which the Takla Lake First Nation are a member.

2 The areas examined in the socioeconomic assessment

3 ranged from land use to First Nations traditional use,

4 air quality, employment, government revenue, all of the

5 areas that are indicated on this slide. I'll now just

6 go briefly over the findings in each of the areas.

7 In resource use, hunting, trapping, guide

8 outfitting and fishing were examined, and it was

9 determined that some habitat would be affected by the

10 project, but hunting, trapping, guide outfitting will

11 continue as they have with Kemess South. And there are

12 agreements in place with the directly-affected trapper

13 and guide outfitter. And although fish will be removed

14 from Duncan Lake during project operations, fishing in

15 the area will continue.

16 First Nations traditional use. There was a

17 sustenance assessment completed for Kemess South, and

18 it found that use in the area was limited due to the

19 distance from communities and the remoteness of the

20 project site. The project itself is within the Patrick

21 family kayoh, and discussions have been held with the

22 Patrick family as part of the assessment through Kemess

23 North and confirmed the findings of the earlier

24 sustenance assessment. The main activities around the

25 project area are hunting, trapping, fishing and



137

1 berry-picking, and use of Duncan Lake and therefore

2 fishing in the lake will be lost for the project

3 duration. Some other activities on the site will be

4 affected, but they will be able to continue in the

5 broader area around the mine.

6 Recreation and tourism. Again, the area is

7 quite -- of the mine is quite remote, and the

8 activities that occur in the area are wilderness

9 activities. There are no tourist facilities in the

10 area, and activity is ongoing around Kemess South, and

11 it is expected to continue to -- continue with Kemess

12 North.

13 There was a noise survey completed in August of

14 2005 at Kemess South, and it found that noise levels

15 were high in certain areas of the project, particularly

16 at the mill, pumphouse and around the airport. It also

17 determined that noise levels of about 400 metres from

18 operations were low, and it was less than 40 dba, and

19 40 dba is about the noise level in a quiet office. The

20 effects for Kemess North are expected to be similar as

21 those above for Kemess South. And Kemess South meets

22 the health, safety and reclamation code for mines, and

23 Kemess North will do the same.

24 Air quality. Air quality modelling was undertaken

25 and found that all pollutants, except particulate



138

1 matter, would be below applicable ambient guidelines

2 and objectives. And the main factor affecting air

3 quality or particulate matter is fugitive dust coming

4 from the roads, stockpiles and the crusher. Given the

5 location of the area, ground moisture minimizes dust

6 dispersion the majority of the time, and roads will be

7 watered in dry times to reduce dust, and baghouse and

8 dust collection systems will be used at the crusher and

9 conveyor systems to reduce fugitive dust and thereby

10 helping to address the particulate in the area.

11 Country foods. A qualitative risk assessment was

12 undertaken for country foods in the area, and it looked

13 at contaminants, receptors and exposure pathways that

14 would link the two, and it was determined that

15 potential pathways were air and water. And the study

16 found that the metal concentrations in water and air

17 are low and within naturally-occurring levels, and that

18 there were no contaminant sources identified that could

19 lead to a risk of bioaccumulation. Therefore, it was

20 determined that the risk of exposure from Kemess North

21 was very low to negligible.

22 Health and wellness. As I've already mentioned,

23 air quality, water quality, noise and country foods

24 assessments were completed. The current health and

25 safety procedures and policies in place at Kemess South



139

1 will be followed for Kemess North. The ongoing tax

2 income from the project can be used to finance health

3 services throughout the province. The continuation of

4 jobs, education and support services with Kemess North

5 will help maintain and improve health determinants.

6 And, finally, meeting permit requirements and

7 implementing environment management programs will

8 prevent adverse effects in the area and downstream from

9 the mine.

10 Peter earlier mentioned or talked about the jobs

11 and the employment and income, government revenues,

12 that come from the project, and Kemess North will

13 continue those. But what does this specifically mean

14 for Prince George? There are 60 direct staff from

15 Prince George and area working at the mine currently.

16 They're expenditures of $27.5 million a year in Prince

17 George in 2005. There are also additional benefits for

18 the community from workers staying in the city prior to

19 flying to the mine site. This, as well as the mine,

20 help generate indirect and induced jobs serving the

21 mine and the employees. And without Kemess North, all

22 jobs and expenditures will end in 2009.

23 In summary, Kemess North will extend the economic

24 benefits of Kemess South: Employment, income and

25 government revenues. The operations will be similar to



140

1 Kemess South. The project is consistent with the area

2 land-use plan, and the local impacts on hunting,

3 trapping, fishing, guide/outfitting will be similar to

4 those for Kemess South.

5 Some traditional use will be affected, but the

6 activities will be able to continue in the broader

7 area. Country foods will not be adversely affected.

8 As I've already mentioned, the continuation of

9 jobs, education and support services will help maintain

10 and improve health determinants, and the positive

11 social benefits through continuation of employment

12 income will accrue to the communities.

13 In conclusion, Kemess North, after construction,

14 is essentially a continuation of Kemess South. Without

15 Kemess North, the mine will close in 2009, with

16 significant job and revenue loss for B.C. communities

17 and residents. And with Kemess North, the social and

18 economic benefits will continue to 2020.

19 Thank you.

20 THE CHAIR: Okay, thank you, Ms. Lamash.

21 I think that concludes the presentations from

22 Northgate?

23 MR. MacPHAIL: That's correct.

24 THE CHAIR: Okay. Well, I suggest that we break

25 for a dinner break. I think our schedule has us



141

1 breaking from now until 7:15, and we'd like to resume,

2 then, with a questioning period of the Northgate

3 presentation.

4 So thank you very much for your attention, and

5 we'll looked forward to seeing you back here at 7:15.

6 [DINNER RECESS AT 5:43 PM]

7 [HEARING RESUMED AT 7:13 PM]

8 THE CHAIR: Well, good evening. Welcome back to

9 our session.

10 I'm going to begin with just a couple of

11 housekeeping items here.

12 First, I need to pass along a message to all of

13 the people who are going to be presenting over the next

14 few days. We need to have your Powerpoint

15 presentations well ahead of time. They can go on the

16 webcast, if we have them, I think, 24 hours in advance,

17 but we need them in advance, anyways, to get them

18 loaded onto a computer. So as soon as you can, and you

19 can get those to anyone on the Secretariat, that would

20 be excellent.

21 Secondly, there is simultaneous translation

22 available from English to Gitxsan, so if anyone is

23 needing or wanting that translation, that is available.

24 There's receptors available at the back, and you should

25 see the sound technician.


Comments by the Chair

142

1 Now, as this is our first question period, I'm

2 going to go through a brief explanation of how we

3 propose to handle questioning.

4 We have a list of registered participants, and I'm

5 going to go through the list and ask if any of these

6 registered participants would like to ask questions of

7 Northgate. After all of the questions from the

8 registered participants have been asked, those people

9 here who are non-registered participants will be

10 encouraged to ask questions, and the Panel will ask

11 questions after all the other participants, although we

12 also reserve the right to ask questions at any time.

13 Now, when you do ask a question, I would ask you

14 to remember to introduce yourself and spell your name,

15 and please use the microphone in the center of the

16 room. And I will also remind the Northgate panel to

17 please identify themselves when they respond to the

18 question, because all of this has to go into our court

19 reporter's record of the questioning.

20 So I'll start by moving this closer. I'll start

21 with the B.C. Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum

22 Resources. Will you have questions of Northgate?

23 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yes, we have.

24 THE CHAIR: Okay. The B.C. Ministry of

25 Environment?



143

1 MR. STEWART: For the Environmental Stewardship

2 Division, no questions. Environmental Protection

3 Division, however?

4 MR. CARMICHAEL: Thank you. Sorry. Yes, I will.

5 THE CHAIR: Okay, thank you. B.C. Ministry of

6 Technology, Science and the Arts. He's not here?

7 MR. SCOBLE: That's Tourism, Sports and the Arts.

8 THE CHAIR: I don't type them. I just read them.

9 The B.C. Ministry of Tourism, Sport and the Arts.

10 No? The Department of Fisheries and Oceans? No

11 questions? Natural Resources Canada? Environment

12 Canada? Transport Canada? Tse Keh Nay? The Gitxsan

13 House of Nii Kyap?

14 MR. BURSEY: Madam Chair, my name is Bursey,

15 initial "D.", appearing on behalf of the Gitxsan House

16 of Nii Kyap.

17 At this time, we don't have any questions for the

18 Panel because the Gitxsan have not had funding and

19 don't have the capacity to prepare for asking questions

20 at this time.


22 THE REPORTER: Can you spell your name, please,

23 sir?

24 MR. BURSEY: It's Bursey, B-u-r-s-e-y. Who am I

25 talking to? This fellow here? Okay.



144

1 THE CHAIR: First Nations Summit? The Dena Kayeh

2 Institute? Teseko Mines? Northern B.C. Mining Action

3 Group? City of Prince George? Prince George Chamber

4 of Commerce? The Association for Mineral Exploration?

5 Mining Association of B.C.? MiningWatch? Omineca

6 Exploration Group? Western Keltic Mines? Larry's

7 Heavy Hauling? Lomak Bulk Carriers? Hoskins Ford

8 Sales Limited? Initiatives Prince George? Kaman

9 Industries? Northern Thunderbird Air? AMEBC?

10 Okay. And we have a couple of members of the

11 public. Sergio Petrucci? Thank you. Yes, thank you.

12 And Dave Read? No.

13 Okay. I have had a request from Sergio Petrucci

14 to speak earlier rather than later, but it doesn't

15 matter. No? Okay.

16 MR. KING: Doesn't matter, I'll wait.

17 THE CHAIR: Okay. If there are other people who

18 are not on the list that would like to ask questions,

19 there is a sign-up sheet, I believe at the back, and if

20 you could put your name on that, they will provide me

21 with your name, and we will call you in order once the

22 participant organizations have had an opportunity to

23 ask questions.

24 MR. KING: I put my name on the list earlier this

25 afternoon.



145

1 THE CHAIR: I'm sorry, I must have missed your

2 name.

3 MR. KING: Dave King.

4 THE CHAIR: Thank you. We'll put you on the list.

5 Okay, then. We will start with the questions from

6 the Ministry of Environment.

7 QUESTIONS POSED TO NORTHGATE MINERALS CORPORATION

8 MR. CARMICHAEL: Thank you, Madam Chair.

9 My name is Bruce Carmichael, C-a-r-m-i-c-h-a-e-l.

10 Madam Chair, my question, if I may direct it to

11 one person, is for Dr. Nicholson.

12 THE CHAIR: I believe you're supposed to direct

13 them to me, and I'm supposed to direct them to whoever,

14 but that will be fine.

15 MR. CARMICHAEL: Thank you, thank you.

16 Dr. Nicholson, you mentioned this afternoon that

17 within Duncan Impoundment, the development of an

18 organic layer is significant in terms of metal transfer

19 from the tailings up into the water column, or you made

20 that implication, that it's certainly a benefit to

21 metal concentrations. And certainly the reports, the

22 various reports that I've read, have made that same

23 implication, that over time the impoundment will

24 develop an organic layer naturally, after closure, and

25 that that will be a benefit to the water column.


Questions posed to Northgate

146

1 Now, from my reading, we know that the suspended

2 solids concentration baseline in the impoundment or in

3 the lake now is very low. I believe I read in the

4 issue-tracking document on October 3rd that the

5 tributary concentrations are generally quite low on

6 suspended solids. Now, we know right now that Duncan

7 Lake is ultraoligotrophic, and given the maximum depth

8 of 20 metres post-closure, the lake may well be

9 oligotrophic. Now, that means very low productivity.

10 Natural lake conditions, we may see a depositional rate

11 of perhaps one millimetre per year.

12 My question to you -- questions to you is: Just

13 how beneficial is this development of an organic layer,

14 and how many years do you think that's going to

15 become -- or going to take to become functional?

16 Thank you.

17 MR. NICHOLSON: Perhaps I could just use this

18 mobile mike. It's Ron Nicholson speaking.

19 First, if you thought I implied that the organic

20 layer would be required, that's incorrect. I think, in

21 my opinion, the water quality will be good without such

22 an organic layer developing. But the issue is correct

23 that any development of an organic layer or a sediment

24 layer that occurs naturally will be beneficial in the

25 long term. So that answers the first part of your



147

1 question.

2 The second part is: How long would it take for

3 such a layer to develop? And in my opinion, I think it

4 would be a long period of time. However, if it was

5 found to be very beneficial to have such a layer

6 develop, there are ways that are being looked at these

7 days to develop more productivity in the lake, such as

8 fertilization and so on. This is being done in open

9 pits for rehabilitation purposes, and I think that

10 there are methods of accelerating the rate of

11 development of those layers.

12 THE CHAIR: Does that answer your question?

13 MR. CARMICHAEL: Yes, thank you.

14 THE CHAIR: Are there any further questions from

15 the B.C. Ministry of Environment? Not at this time?

16 I'm very sorry. I should have first asked for the

17 B.C. Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources.

18 MR. POLSTER: Hi. My name is Dave Polster,

19 P-o-l-s-t-e-r. I'm a contractor working for the

20 Ministry of Mines.

21 I don't recall previously seeing the information

22 about shoreline restoration in the Duncan Impoundment,

23 and I wonder if that could be further elaborated on.

24 If you could describe whether it was going to be all

25 around the lake or just in certain areas, and how it



148

1 would be implemented.

2 THE CHAIR: Who from the Northgate team would like

3 to answer that one?

4 MR. MacPHAIL: We'll have Harvey McLeod answer

5 that one.

6 MR. McLEOD: I think maybe while I'm just -- it's

7 Harvey McLeod responding. I can describe in general

8 terms, and I think we should get the document that's in

9 the -- I think it's on the closure reclamation plan in

10 the -- I think it's in the supplementary information.

11 The plan, and it's always been in the plan, was

12 that we would round the perimeter of the lake, maybe

13 not all the perimeter, all depends on access, that we

14 would have a zone in the order of 20 metres wide, where

15 we would place soils within the shallow water zone. So

16 it would be a zone of, you know, just off the shoreline

17 about 20 metres, and part of the soil reclamation plan

18 is we'd have that material available to do that. And

19 within that zone, we would establish some wetland

20 species who could survive in the intermittent water

21 zone, because our water level will be going up and down

22 about one metre. So that's always been the general

23 principle, and the objective of those wetlands is to

24 start to provide some habitat. I know it's been

25 interpreted by some to be treatment of metals, but



149

1 that's not the objective. The objective is to start to

2 establish some habitat there. And I'd have to look in

3 the actual reclamation document how much we had in

4 terms of area, but it's in that order of about 20

5 metres around the main perimeter of the structure.

6 THE CHAIR: Does that answer your question?

7 MR. POLSTER: Yes, thank you.

8 THE CHAIR: Are there any further questions from

9 the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources?

10 MR. POLSTER: No, thank you.

11 THE CHAIR: I had forgotten to tell you, you have

12 20 minutes to ask questions of each Ministry. I didn't

13 need to tell you that.

14 We have a question from Mr. Sergio Petrucci,

15 please.

16 MR. PETRUCCI: Thank you, Madam Chair. Actually,

17 I have three quick questions. Is that acceptable?

18 I've got 20 minutes.

19 THE CHAIR: You have your 20 minutes.

20 MR. PETRUCCI: Okay. The first one is: In the

21 environmental assessment review done by Northgate, from

22 what I understand is that they had said, regarding

23 Duncan Lake or Amazay Lake, that during operations they

24 would decide whether the lake was actually recoverable

25 or not, so I'm a bit confused with where we are now in



150

1 regard to that. But according to the report, they

2 would look at it during the life of the mine to

3 determine whether they could reclaim the lake or not.

4 And in the same vein, the lake -- or, sorry, the

5 creek, Attycelley Creek, also in the report they refer

6 to having to ask -- or they will have to ask for a

7 site-specific criteria for that creek because there

8 will be high sulfates and cadmium in that creek due to

9 the operations, but again what I heard this afternoon

10 was not that. So that's my first question.

11 THE CHAIR: Okay. Why don't we answer these one

12 at a time, then, if that would be all right with you.

13 Okay. Who from Northgate is going to discuss the lake

14 reclamation?

15 MR. MacPHAIL: Harold Bent will talk about the

16 lake.


18 MR. BENT: My name is Harold Bent from Northgate

19 Minerals. Thanks for your question.

20 Right from the beginning, our objective with using

21 Duncan Lake was for underwater disposal for

22 acid-generating rock and for potentially

23 acid-generating rock, and our primary objective is to

24 prevent oxidation from occurring. And so our primary

25 objective is to have a facility that achieves the water



151

1 quality objectives, and we've always made the

2 commitment that once we've achieved water quality

3 objectives for this waste rock material, that then we

4 look at is there an opportunity to make it an aquatic

5 lake system secondly. But the first objective is water

6 quality.

7 MR. PETRUCCI: Thank you. I understand that. I

8 was just surprised at the way it was presented this

9 afternoon, because it seemed like there were plans. In

10 fact, I remember the gentleman's comment at the end

11 was, "We'll sit down and discuss it with First Nations,

12 as far as whether it's a park," et cetera, et cetera.

13 So that's why I'm confused about that.

14 MR. BENT: Sure. And like I said, there's always

15 been a commitment on our company to once we have

16 achieved water quality, would say, "What can we do to

17 make this an aquatic system upon closure?" And what

18 Mr. Mcleod was presenting today was some concepts on

19 how we would achieve that. But we still would include,

20 you know, input from other agencies and from First

21 Nations and other groups in those conceptual designs.

22 MR. PETRUCCI: Okay. Thanks very much. Yeah.

23 The second question, a very quick one. I'm just,

24 again, a little confused. I think it's Dr. Nicholson

25 that's the scientist and not the professional engineer?



152

1 Right. I'm just trying to -- I'd like to know who

2 retained Dr. Nicholson as a third party to this

3 project.

4 MR. BENT: It's Harold Bent. I'll answer that

5 question. I did, on Northgate Minerals. If you want

6 to know, basically I thought there was two really

7 important overall areas for when it comes to waste rock

8 disposal, and I also hired a Bill Price to look at our

9 up-front ARD metal leaching program to review that as a

10 third-party independent. Then when it came down to

11 applying that information to the water quality model, I

12 thought again it would be very valuable to have a

13 third-party reviewer of the water quality component.

14 MR. PETRUCCI: Okay. Thank you very much.

15 Last question, a quick one.

16 THE CHAIR: I think we've missed one question.

17 You had asked us earlier about Attycelley Creek with

18 site-specific water quality?

19 MR. PETRUCCI: Yeah. I'm just assuming that was

20 the same -- no, it wasn't, sorry. You're right, I'm

21 sorry, Chair.

22 MR. MacPHAIL: Harvey McLeod will answer that

23 question.

24 MR. McLEOD: What our modelling is showing is that

25 we have, in Attycelley Creek on closure, we will have



153

1 elevated sulfate and cadmium, and cadmium is naturally

2 high there, but it will be elevated above that. And,

3 you know, the concentrations we're looking at, they're

4 still within a range which, for fish habitat, they

5 could live in it, but we need to develop site-specific

6 criteria for that to ensure that the aquatic life will

7 be safeguarded in Attycelley, and that would be the

8 purpose of quantifying those water quality objectives

9 for Attycelley.

10 MR. PETRUCCI: Could I just refer to that? I'm

11 not sure if I understand you, sir. Thank you for that,

12 but let me just reiterate, then, a little bit here to

13 see if I understand what you're saying.

14 What I understood from the report was that you

15 would require site-specific criteria which would be not

16 in agreement with the present regulations regarding

17 permissible pollutants within the creek. Do I have

18 that wrong?

19 MR. McLEOD: Can you repeat that question?

20 MR. PETRUCCI: Okay. What I understood from the

21 report, the environmental assessment report, is that

22 you would require permission to have specific levels of

23 sulfate and cadmium in the creek because they are not

24 accepted -- because the levels will not be -- will not

25 fall within the Regulations?



154

1 MR. McLEOD: Yes, that is correct, and it's common

2 in the industry to -- water quality objectives are set

3 as a guideline, and for site-specific, you do your

4 testing to ensure that they meet the criteria of the

5 site, and that's the purpose of it. So it is a common

6 application in the industry, and that's what we would

7 be looking at.

8 MR. PETRUCCI: Last kick at this. Let me just ask

9 it one other way.

10 Are the sulfate and cadmium levels within the

11 permissible levels in the Regulations?

12 MR. McLEOD: I think I've answered that.

13 MR. PETRUCCI: Okay. That's fine. That's fine.

14 Last question. Maybe I'm looking for comments on

15 this, because it's a real concern I had this afternoon,

16 listening to this, is that if the scientists are saying

17 that the best way to handle sulfide rock from a mining

18 operation is to dump it into a lake, then does this

19 mean that every mining operation we have in Canada

20 which has got sulfide rocks in it in the waste rock

21 would require -- they would look for a lake to dump

22 this into, in which case I would be very concerned for

23 our lakes in Canada. I'll leave that to comments, and

24 then I'll sit down. Thank you, Madam Chair.

25 THE CHAIR: Oh, you're most welcome. We'll just



155

1 get a response from Northgate about lake disposal.

2 MR. MacPHAIL: Well, I'll start - it's Peter

3 MacPhail - by saying that our scientists have said that

4 the best way to handle this waste is to put it under

5 water, not necessarily dump it in a lake. In this

6 particular case, it's the putting it into a lake that

7 is the best solution for the volumes that we have, and

8 it's the only solution that both allows the project to

9 proceed and protects long-term water quality.

10 MR. BENT: If you don't mind me adding to it, it's

11 Harold Bent.

12 You know, just to add to what Peter provided as an

13 answer is that, you know, Kemess South is an example of

14 where we did not use a lake. In fact, we built an

15 artificial impoundment. So what we really are trying

16 to achieve is putting this material under water for

17 long-term storage, and, you know, the landscape is

18 different in different areas, and in Kemess South we

19 had an opportunity where we could build a dam, create

20 an artificial lake and put the rock into that, and

21 that's what we did. At Kemess North, the landscape --

22 the mountainous terrain is quite different. So, you

23 know, your options are not always the same, but the

24 objective is underwater disposal.

25 THE CHAIR: Are there any other questions for



156

1 Northgate at this time? Well, I think the Panel has a

2 few.

3 Oh, sorry, I apologize. We have Dave -- Mr. King.

4 Dave King, please.

5 MR. KING: Thank you, Chairman. Dave King,

6 K-i-n-g.

7 Just a little background. I was with the Ministry

8 of Environment for almost 30 years and was involved

9 with construction and exploration and mine development

10 up in the Kemess area, starting in 1973, right through

11 to 2000.

12 I was involved with the location, construction and

13 monitoring of the Omineca mining road from Johansen

14 Lake through to Moosevale and then later up to Sturdee.

15 The Lawyers Mine, the Baker Mine, Sable has been

16 mentioned, and I was involved with the Kemess South

17 project right from Day 1. I was on site when the

18 exploration team first found the ore body. I think it

19 was 1991, not '92 I think as was mentioned. And I was

20 involved with the review of all of our metal studies

21 and work that went on with the development of the

22 Kemess South project in my capacity with the Ministry

23 of Environment, and continued to monitor that project

24 until I retired in the year 2000.

25 And with regard to the Kemess North project, I was



157

1 on that site when Kennico still owned it and wandered

2 around up there with the Kennico staff and then later

3 with other Ministry of Mines staff and I've forgotten

4 whether it was Royal Oak or somebody else in between.

5 I was up there a number of times over the years.

6 Anyways, I do have a few questions to different

7 Panel people, and maybe I'll start with just one with

8 regard to the proposed dam and the Duncan Lake project.

9 One of the things that wasn't mentioned, and I'm

10 not clear on, anyways, is what access will be used to

11 the dam sites on -- that will contain the tailings pond

12 and waste rock dumps of Duncan Lake, should that be

13 used, I just wonder what access was there and whether

14 the access actually had any archaeological studies done

15 on it, too. So that's the first question.

16 THE CHAIR: Again, I think we'll do these one at a

17 time, so if Northgate can answer that.

18 MR. ROUSSEAU: Mike Rousseau, R-o-u-s-s-e-a-u.

19 The impact assessment that we conducted for the

20 Duncan Lake area essentially included the shoreline

21 area to approximately, in some locations, maybe 300

22 metres back from the shoreline, depending on the nature

23 of the topography. However, there was no specific road

24 that was designated or mentioned to us that we would

25 specifically have to inspect a right-of-way for it.



158

1 MR. KING: Perhaps somebody from Northgate could

2 tell me how the dam sites will be accessed. Will it be

3 accessed off the Omineca mining road down near Thutade

4 Lake or are they going to be entirely accessed from

5 over the mountaintops or around the lakeshore --

6 MR. McLEOD: It's Harvey McLeod.

7 The dams will be accessed from within the mine

8 property. There will be haul roads coming from the

9 open pit down to the lake, and that same main haul

10 roads would access the north dam and the southwest dam,

11 and then there will be a separate road that goes over

12 to the south -- or, sorry, the main roads would access

13 the southeast and north dams, and there would be a

14 separate road that would go around to the southeast

15 dam.

16 MR. KING: Okay. So the archaeological studies

17 perhaps did cover all the road accesses that will be

18 required for those dams?

19 MR. McLEOD: I think it would be close. I think

20 we'd have to get Mike to look at just the final detail.

21 I think he's probably better to answer, if it would

22 cover that far up, because it would be farther up the

23 hill.

24 MR. BENT: If I can add to that, Mr. King, the

25 road that's on the north end of the lake which connects



159

1 back to the Omineca Resource Road, I believe that road

2 was built in the late '70s, and the early '80s,

3 maybe by Kennicott, so that road, we have used that

4 road to access from the north, so we did not put in a

5 new road. And as Harvey mentioned, during operation it

6 will be the connecting road between the Kemess South

7 and Kemess North, which was part of Michael Rousseau's

8 work.

9 MR. KING: That road access that you just referred

10 to was there in '73. It was built before that, or

11 certainly before '74, I should say.

12 Okay. With regard to the wildlife work that was

13 done, as part of Kemess -- South Kemess and also as

14 part of the other mining projects, Lawyers and Baker

15 and so on, there was fairly extensive wildlife surveys

16 done in the area. Pre-construction of these other mine

17 projects and before South Kemess was started, there was

18 inventory work done. And I didn't hear any discussion

19 from Mr. Turney on what has happened in terms of

20 population trends of animal species, caribou, mountain

21 goat especially, perhaps moose, in the South Kemess

22 area during the time of their operations, and then

23 perhaps we could extrapolate the impacts that perhaps

24 might occur with North Kemess.

25 MR. MacPHAIL: Laurence, could you answer that?



160

1 MR. TURNEY: Yeah, Laurence Turney. When we were

2 tasked with looking at the information for this

3 project, we asked the Ministry of Environment for all

4 their available inventory data. We talked to a number

5 of people at the Ministry in Prince George, trying to

6 obtain that information. We reviewed the Kemess South

7 documentation and were unable to find any detailed

8 inventory information for this project. We did come

9 across one reference to a survey document by Brian

10 Fuhr, and I don't remember the year that that was

11 conducted, but we were unable to obtain a copy of that

12 document. We did make numerous attempts at trying to

13 find that background information, but nobody was able

14 to put that up for us to use.

15 THE CHAIR: Mr. King, is it your understanding

16 that that information exists?

17 MR. KING: It certainly did exist. I think

18 Mr. Bent here should be aware of it. Some of the

19 inventory that was done pre-South Kemess, it had a

20 bearing on some of the decisions made with regard to

21 the various tailings pond sites and so on that were

22 under consideration at that time.

23 MR. BENT: Harold Bent speaking. Mr. King, no,

24 I'm not aware of those programs that were done. Maybe

25 they were done prior to my involvement in the Kemess



161

1 South, during the permitting stage or the application

2 stage, which predates myself, but I know certainly that

3 Mr. Turney, on our behalf, tried to find what he could

4 at the Prince George offices. But if you are aware or

5 can give us the date or the author, I certainly would

6 appreciate it.

7 MR. KING: I'll do some thinking about that in

8 terms of people that were involved.

9 MR. BENT: Okay.

10 MR. KING: I certainly do know there was work

11 done.

12 MR. BENT: Okay. That would be great.

13 MR. TURNEY: Laurence Turney here.

14 There was work that we came across from 1991 that

15 we have included in our documentation from Chris

16 Ritchie, some surveys that were done for moose -- or,

17 sorry, caribou and mountain goat. Are those the

18 studies you're thinking of or they were more extensive?

19 MR. KING: There was some work done by the

20 Ministry of Environment, but there was also some done

21 by consultants for the mining company. I presume it

22 would have been Royal Oak or who owned the property

23 just before Royal Oak? There was somebody else in

24 there.

25 Okay. Another kind of question around this whole



162

1 issue again with wildlife. One of the key species, as

2 far as First Nations is concerned in the area, it was

3 certainly hoary marmots. I recall camps being set up

4 there, large numbers of First Nations from different

5 bands, Takla, Kaska Dena, having camps up there, and

6 one of the species that they certainly targeted was

7 hoary marmots, and I certainly recall camps where, you

8 know, 20 or more would be up on posts or on lines,

9 being either smoked or dried, and they weren't

10 mentioned. I'm just wondering, the Kemess South

11 project probably had, overall, a relatively small

12 impact on hoary marmots, but I can see where the North

13 Kemess project could have a much larger impact on them

14 because of the more mountainous area that that project

15 is in. I'm just wondering what, if anything, was done

16 with regard to hoary marmots and this work.

17 MR. TURNEY: Yeah, Laurence Turney.

18 When we were reviewing potential species for

19 review, hoary marmot was not considered. We did have

20 some incidental information on hoary marmot when we

21 were doing some of our transects and plots, but we have

22 no details about numbers that we could provide.

23 MR. KING: Going backwards, maybe just a further

24 comment in terms of the inventories, they certainly

25 targeted goat, caribou, moose, grizzly bear. You know,



163

1 those are probably the four key species, but anything

2 else that could be found. Further to the north, there

3 is also mountain sheep, and I know they've been seen

4 not too far away from South Kemess property in the

5 past, too, so they were also considered. So there was

6 a number of species that were of interest there.

7 I'll just continue on.

8 As I say, in terms of the perhaps the

9 socioeconomic side of things, I didn't hear any mention

10 again of sort of First Nations' use of the area, sort

11 of more traditional type use of wildlife and so on, and

12 how that sort of was assessed, either impacts of South

13 Kemess Mine and what that might have had on use,

14 enhanced use or impacted use, or how the North Kemess

15 project might affect First Nations' use of hunting for

16 caribou, hoary marmots, et cetera, and moose and other

17 animals there.

18 MR. MacPHAIL: Peter MacPhail.

19 Yeah, we certainly have considered the traditional

20 uses of the area by the First Nations, and a large part

21 of our information, in fact most of our information,

22 comes from interviews we've had with the local

23 trapline-holders, the Patrick family. Their use of the

24 area goes back probably to the turn of the century, at

25 least. Both the Kemess South and the Kemess North



164

1 projects are within that traditional -- or within that

2 trapline territory, and we've had about -- well, we've

3 had lots of discussions with them and have their

4 information. Now, they have used the area, but it's a

5 sporadic use of the Duncan Lake and the Kemess North

6 area itself, and we've taken -- we've taken note of

7 that.

8 MR. KING: I was, in a way, sort of referring more

9 to the natives that are coming up from Takla Lake and,

10 you know, other locations and setting up extensive

11 camps and then hunting during the fall, usually late

12 summer to fall, for, you know, a couple weeks or longer

13 at a time, and, you know, that type of use was,

14 I think, going on.

15 MR. BENT: It's Harold Bent. If I could just add

16 to it a little bit, Mr. King.

17 Yeah, in 1999, when Northgate first started to

18 acquire the project, one of the first things we did was

19 met with the First Nation groups, and shortly

20 thereafter we were able to come to a compensation

21 agreement with the trapline-holders, which is primarily

22 the Patrick family, and so we're very pleased to be

23 able to have reached that agreement with them. And

24 recently we have also expanded upon that, that if

25 Kemess North is to be approved and developed, that we



165

1 certainly have a framework already in place to continue

2 and expand our compensation in regards to that

3 potential impact. And you're right, you know, the Joe

4 Bob Patrick and his family certainly have had a number

5 of cabins down at Thorn Lake for a long time, and what

6 we've done recently, we've actually -- we replaced some

7 of those buildings for them because one of our

8 objectives when we reached our agreement was not only

9 to provide compensation for potential losses from their

10 trapline, but also to help provide better facilities

11 down at Thorn Lake. We understand that Joe Bob's

12 family, Louise and Lillian, bring their families up

13 there every fall, and so one way to help with their

14 summer trips up to Thorn Lake, which is just south of

15 Kemess about 30 kilometres.

16 MR. KING: I have another question.

17 THE CHAIR: Yes, go ahead.

18 MR. KING: Perhaps one you might even want to

19 comment on. I'm not sure, Madam Chair.

20 I would presume that the Panel will have a number

21 of options in terms of its decision after all of these

22 hearings, and I could see perhaps the Panel deciding

23 that there is some irreconcilable issues here that

24 haven't been addressed and recommending that the

25 project not go ahead for whatever reason. I'm thinking



166

1 in terms of like Thomas Berger with the Mackenzie

2 Pipeline line in years past. And I guess it's sort of

3 a question I have, that should that recommendation be

4 made and should government agree to that recommendation

5 that the project not go ahead for whatever reason,

6 would the project still be economic and feasible to

7 bring on-line 10 or 20 years down the road? That's a

8 question I sort of have.

9 Part of the reason I ask this question is that

10 certainly there are major issues around the use of

11 Duncan Lake, and perhaps in time some of the First

12 Nations' interest issues would be answered over a

13 longer period of time, and perhaps there would be new

14 technology for handling some of the problems with

15 handling acid -- ADR -- or with acid generation and the

16 sulphur issues and so on, so that perhaps 10 to 20

17 years from now there will be other technology that

18 would make that project less environmentally damaging

19 or whatever, and so I'm just wondering whether, if it

20 was shelved, whether or not the project would be

21 economical perhaps to bring back on-line say 10 or 20

22 years or 30 years from now if it didn't go ahead now.

23 THE CHAIR: Yes, I think that is a question that

24 Northgate should answer.

25 MR. MacPHAIL: It would be hard to see the project



167

1 being economic if it didn't go ahead in the near

2 future, and I guess the main reason for that would be

3 the reason it's economic now is the fact that the

4 infrastructure is there and in place, and should the

5 project not proceed for whatever reason, you know,

6 that's valuable infrastructure that would be moved to

7 another property somewhere.

8 Harvey is going to add something.

9 MR. McLEOD: It's Harvey McLeod.

10 I think in terms of technology, I mean, I've been

11 in this business for over 30 years, and you kind of see

12 how technology progresses with time, and certainly in

13 the last 30 years there have been advances in

14 technology. And as Ron mentioned, just the

15 identification of acid rock drainage, and that took --

16 that probably took at least a good ten years of pretty

17 hard assessment. And realistically in the next 10 or

18 20 years -- 20 years you're getting beyond what

19 I think, but certainly before I retire I don't see

20 major changes to technology that would allow us to put

21 700 million tonnes of sulfide material on land. So

22 I think that likelihood of new technology in that kind

23 of time frame is probably low.

24 MR. KING: Even if the existing mine, mill and so

25 on was removed and transferred somewhere else, there



168

1 are a number of other ore bodies in the area that have

2 been explored. I don't know if any of them are fully

3 economic, Two Creek and Sustut Mountain and others, so

4 it is possible that, you know, some other property up

5 there will be developed in the future, and so that, you

6 know, the ore, you know, from the North Kemess perhaps

7 could be utilized in conjunction with, you know, one of

8 these other properties that's up there and hasn't been

9 developed.

10 MR. BENT: Was there a question?

11 MR. KING: Not really. It's sort of a comment,

12 it's just as a follow-up to that comment, that, you

13 know, the answer you gave is not unsurprising to me;

14 that you're saying that if it isn't developed now, it

15 probably isn't economic. But I'm just saying that I'm

16 not sure that that would be fully the case because

17 there is other ore bodies there that, you know, have

18 only been partially explored and might be developed at

19 some time in the future.

20 Thank you.

21 THE CHAIR: Are those your questions, then?

22 MR. KING: Yeah.

23 THE CHAIR: Okay, thank you very much.

24 Are there any other questions from anyone at

25 the -- no.



169

1 Okay. Then there are some questions, I know, that

2 the Panel has, and since you have raised this question

3 about mountain goats, I think I'll start with that one.

4 I've been reading the most recent information, the

5 Panel review response, October 2006, a document

6 regarding -- from Gartner Lee regarding the possible

7 mountain goat population declines. Now, the Panel had

8 asked a question about this, and this relates to the

9 question you raised, Mr. King, regarding if there is

10 information that Ministry of Environment may have or

11 not have from previous years. And before I ask the

12 Ministry of Environment if they are aware of anything

13 else, I would like to point out that you do have

14 information here from a -- I believe this is from the

15 outfitter, that believes that the mountain goat

16 population has declined to approximately 30 percent of

17 the original numbers over the past 20 years, but it is

18 stated in your document that without inventory data

19 collected over the past 20 years using recognized

20 standards, it is not possible to determine if the

21 perceived decrease in populations has occurred or not.

22 This is exactly the question that we're asking:

23 Is there any other information out there? And if there

24 is not, is this not, although it's not perhaps western

25 science, it is information from a reputable source in



170

1 the area who should know populations of wildlife. And

2 our question was can you speculate as to what would

3 cause that?

4 MR. TURNEY: Yeah, Laurence Turney.

5 There's a number of questions you've posed there.

6 I was wondering maybe if we could get them in --

7 THE CHAIR: Well, certainly. There's the question

8 that I'm going to ask of the Ministry of Environment,

9 specifically after hearing from Mr. King that there may

10 be other additional information out there. But if

11 there is not additional information out there, there

12 still is a recognizable source of information

13 suggesting a significant loss in the mountain goat

14 population, and we have asked if it's possible for you

15 to speculate what may have caused that. It is only

16 over the past 20 years.

17 MR. TURNEY: Yes. I believe when we put together

18 our response - Laurence Turney here - we outlined a

19 number of potential possibilities for decline such as

20 was described by the guide/outfitter. One would be

21 weather events that are sometimes a cause of mountain

22 goat mortality, especially severe snow events, crusting

23 on snow. Those type of events can cause severe

24 mortalities locally and in larger areas. There are

25 potential affects due to increased harvest pressure



171

1 that have been documented in a number of areas. Those

2 are two possible options. Disease is also an option

3 for those kind of declines.

4 The concern or the issue for us was to try to

5 obtain any other corroborating or -- information, and

6 when I asked the Ministry if they had any information

7 on declines that were described by the guide/outfitter,

8 the people I talked to at the Ministry, Doug Hurd, had

9 no information that would suggest that those were

10 declines that he was seeing. He had no information to

11 answer the question.

12 MR. MacPHAIL: It's Peter MacPhail.

13 You know, the road access to that area, to my

14 knowledge, and I believe it's right, it goes back to

15 the early '80s, and certainly with increased road

16 access into that area, you could expect increased

17 hunting pressure. So, you know, you asked us to

18 speculate, and there's my speculation. And I think,

19 Laurence, we've discussed that as well as one of the

20 possibilities. If the population has declined

21 significantly, that's one potential reason.

22 THE CHAIR: Certainly. Can I just continue this

23 question one more step, and then I'll get back to you,

24 Mr. King.

25 I would like to ask if there's anyone from the



172

1 Ministry of Environment that can respond to this

2 question as to whether this data -- whether there would

3 be data from 20 years ago regarding populations,

4 specifically of caribou and mountain goat, in this

5 region.

6 MR. STEWART: Madam Chairperson, my name is Rodger

7 Stewart.

8 THE CHAIR: Rodger, could you please use the

9 microphone?

10 MR. STEWART: I'm going there. It's "Rodger" with

11 a "d", Stewart, S-t-e-w-a-r-t. I represent the

12 Ministry of Environment, Environmental Stewardship

13 Division. Matters of wildlife are within our mandate.

14 The person who may be able to best provide a

15 respond to your specific question will be with us here

16 on Wednesday when we make our representation regarding

17 wildlife issues. Mr. Hurd himself, a wildlife

18 biologist, will support us at that time, and I think it

19 would be best that that question be directed to him at

20 that time.

21 THE CHAIR: Thank you very much. We will

22 certainly bring that question forward at that time.

23 I'm sorry, Mr. King. You wanted to ask something

24 else?

25 MR. KING: I just wanted to comment on the



173

1 question you just asked.

2 My recollection, in the early '90s, is there was

3 about 35 or 40 goats in the North Kemess area. Then

4 the area was laced with roads during exploration of

5 what was referred to as the East Kemess property, the

6 West Kemess property and the North Kemess property, and

7 there was a number of roads put in at that time. And

8 there was considerable amount -- I would say

9 considerable amount, there was a certain amount of

10 helicopter exploration work in association with the

11 road access and the ground exploration that was going

12 on, and that did not exist before that exploration took

13 place. And I would say it was the early to mid '90s.

14 And so the comment here about access having improved

15 considerably and so on at that time, it wasn't early

16 '80s, it was at that time when that access improved.

17 THE CHAIR: Thank you for that. And thank you,

18 Mr. Stewart. We will ask Mr. Hurd when he is here on

19 Wednesday.

20 We have other questions. I think Mr. Duiven has

21 questions.

22 MR. DUIVEN: I'm going to ask a couple of

23 questions here. I'll start in the archaeological

24 ambit, and then we'll pass it around by rota.

25 At your Site HgSq-3, the materials in the lithic



174

1 scatter that you recovered and you had a slide of,

2 could you describe for the audience what those

3 materials were and whether or not they were locally

4 obtained or sourced or brought into the area?

5 MR. ROUSSEAU: Mike Rousseau.

6 The nature of the, as we call it, lithic raw

7 materials that are recovered from the site in question

8 are primarily siltstone and also what we call chert or

9 chalcedony, which are basically they're

10 micro-crystalline and crypto-crystalline silicates that

11 appear locally in some of the stream beds and exposed

12 glacial till deposits. These materials are fairly

13 common in the area, and they could have easily been

14 quarried from a local source close to the lake. Again,

15 they are not in any great concentration, and they are

16 generally found as float pebbles in glacial till

17 outwash features.

18 MR. DUIVEN: A question just in terms of field

19 methodology.

20 Generally speaking, when people are practicing a

21 traditional economy, a hunting-and-gathering economy,

22 they tend to learn hunting sites inter-generationally,

23 so I was wondering when folks were setting up to go

24 survey, whether or not you gave any consideration to

25 accessing folks, and not necessarily just the



175

1 trapline-holders, but people who had hunted in the

2 area, to guide you through and give you, at least from

3 their perspective, some direction as to where good

4 places might be to look for evidence of a pre-contact

5 use and occupation.

6 MR. ROUSSEAU: Our involvement with the mine,

7 basically, to conduct this work, the normal procedure

8 is to contact the local First Nations directly. The

9 archaeologist is usually responsible for doing that.

10 In this case, one of the conditions of the work was

11 that the First Nations would be contacted by Ms. Linda

12 Hodgson, who is the human resources superintendent for

13 the mine, and I agreed that this was an acceptable

14 procedure. I indicated to her that it would be

15 preferable to have people in the communities that would

16 come out with us that would have firsthand knowledge of

17 the area and the traditional use in the area so that it

18 would help us with the survey program. Unfortunately,

19 I had no control over who the communities sent as

20 representatives, so there was no direct -- to answer

21 your question, there was no direct attempt by myself

22 made to the local First Nation communities regarding

23 specific use, because again the mine had indicated to

24 me that they would take care of the contacting the

25 First Nations and getting them to provide somebody who



176

1 would have that knowledge that would be available to

2 us.

3 MR. DUIVEN: So the people that you then took out

4 in the field looked like fairly young folks?

5 MR. ROUSSEAU: Those folks were quite young. They

6 had no previous skills. It was difficult at times to

7 get them enthusiastic about it. Again, they had very

8 little knowledge of the area at all, and I could tell

9 that essentially this was an area that they had never

10 been in before.

11 MR. DUIVEN: Thanks. I'll just ask one more quick

12 question and then I'll pass it along.

13 Generally speaking, people do transit valley

14 bottoms, but especially in paleo times. It's been my

15 experience that you find a fair bit of lithic scatter

16 on the height of land, and I was wondering whether or

17 not you were asked to move in the area in sort of a

18 general outside parameter point of view and looked for

19 evidence of height of land, because as we know, early

20 hunters liked to sit on high ridges, make points and

21 look for critters to go chase. And I was just -- were

22 you given those instructions or were you asked

23 specifically to stay into the valley bottoms?

24 MR. ROUSSEAU: No, the actual areas that were

25 inspected, that decision was made up to myself to



177

1 select those areas, and most certainly what you just

2 described is any area that provides a vantage of valley

3 bottoms, or upper terrace levels, promontories, knolls.

4 Contexts like that were favourably sought by First

5 Nations people in pre-contact period times,

6 specifically, as you mentioned, for monitoring game.

7 You also -- usually those places afford a bit of wind,

8 and it keeps the bugs from bothering them. Again,

9 these locations were looked at. Again, a lot of them

10 had a varying degree of surface visibility, some of

11 them requiring more shovel-testing than others. But,

12 again, those are well within the range of the types of

13 environmental contexts that we favorably seek or we

14 consider to have medium or greater site potential.

15 And as far as the distance from the lake was

16 concerned, again I mentioned earlier that most of our

17 activities were focused within the first hundred metres

18 back from the shoreline, but there were several areas,

19 notably at the southeast end of the lake, where there

20 were some raised terrace features there that were

21 briefly examined by myself, and again these areas are

22 targeted in our survey methodology.

23 MR. DUIVEN: Yeah. I was quite curious. You

24 showed a valley in one of your slides at I-7 that you

25 said you surveyed the valley floor and it had been



178

1 scraped out by glaciation. I was just wondering

2 whether or not you guys had the chance to get on top of

3 the ridge.

4 MR. ROUSSEAU: Well, in that particular area --

5 you're speaking of the large U-shaped valley with the

6 grassy bottom?

7 MR. DUIVEN: Yeah.

8 MR. ROUSSEAU: There were a number of terrace

9 features flanking the floor-wall juncture, again

10 probably outwash or kame terraces. Again, those

11 locations were inspected as well, where it was visually

12 possible to do so, and some areas were shovel-tested as

13 well.

14 MR. DUIVEN: But you didn't get on the height of

15 the land then?

16 MR. ROUSSEAU: Yes. But once you get, you know, a

17 little bit beyond the actual floor-wall juncture of the

18 valley, once you increase altitude, most of the valley

19 is fairly steep and it's not easily passable, and it

20 lacks any -- or any great number of, you know, flat

21 areas associated with streams that are typically

22 associated with sites that could have been inspected.

23 MR. DUIVEN: Okay. I'll leave it there. Thank

24 you.

25 MR. BENT: Excuse me. Could we possibly also add



179

1 to that answer?

2 THE CHAIR: Yes, of course.

3 MR. BENT: Okay, thank you. It's Harold Bent.

4 Of course, when we contracted Mike to help us with

5 our program, we certainly count upon Mike as a

6 professional to tell us how he's going to do his job,

7 and we don't tell Mike how to do his job, and my, you

8 know -- information I provided to Mike would be, "Well,

9 here's the project, here's the potential scope of the

10 project, here's the potential areas that we may impact

11 or may look at for development," and certainly let Mike

12 use his expertise on how to evaluate those areas within

13 that potential area.

14 And, secondly, I think Linda would probably like

15 to speak to, you know, when we -- and Mike is

16 absolutely correct. You know, when we were looking for

17 assistance to help Mike in the field, we already had

18 established communication with the First Nations groups

19 on for a variety of topics, whether it was a field

20 assistant programs or other opportunities, and so

21 Linda, as H.R. superintendent, has maintained that

22 communication with the First Nations, and I'm sure she

23 was going through already-established procedures and

24 protocol regarding contacting First Nations on a

25 variety of subjects, and I'm sure Linda could say it



180

1 better than I.

2 MS. HODGSON: Linda Hodgson.

3 I would like to address the hiring of the First

4 Nations. Typically what we do is we will call the Band

5 office when we have a project such as this. We explain

6 to them what the project is, the type of people we need

7 for the project, and we leave it with them to send us

8 the best people for the job. In this case, their

9 philosophy was they wanted to give their young people

10 an opportunity to be in that area and do some

11 archaeological work. Some of them had taken programs

12 through facilities such as Northwest Community College,

13 and they wanted them to be able to use the skills that

14 they felt they had obtained through those programs. So

15 that's how we came to have younger people rather than

16 people who had actually been there.

17 MR. DUIVEN: I appreciate the response. My

18 question really was whether or not the people that you

19 were seeking, notwithstanding what the Band offered,

20 came with traditional knowledge of the area. That's

21 what I was getting at. And we would say that they

22 might have had formal training, but it seems perhaps

23 they didn't have direct traditional knowledge of the

24 area?

25 MS. HODGSON: That's correct.



181

1 MR. DUIVEN: Thank you.

2 THE CHAIR: Dr. Scoble.

3 MR. SCOBLE: Yes. Can you hear me, or have I just

4 switched it off? Is that better? No. Good. Can you

5 hear me? Can you hear me at the back? Yes. I'm okay,

6 I think I can be heard.

7 I've got two requests for information. The first

8 one really relates to the production that's planned,

9 and the look through the mine life, and there are two

10 graphs that appeared in your presentation today. The

11 first one showed tonnages of concentrate, and then on

12 the next page or a couple of slides later there was the

13 financial performance in terms of what was being

14 reflected in that. And it looks as if you've got

15 perhaps -- you were ramping up production for four

16 years or so, and then there's a significant dip, which

17 you then recover from. And I'm wondering what that's

18 due to. Does it relate to the expansion in tonnage,

19 mill capacity, ore body outline? What's driving that?

20 MR. MacPHAIL: What's driving the dip in the

21 cumulative cashflow chart?

22 MR. SCOBLE: Yeah, yeah.

23 MR. MacPHAIL: Yeah, that's a period of

24 lower-grade ore that we encounter, and it's just the

25 nature of the -- the nature of the ore body is that the



182

1 best grades are at the bottom of the east end of the

2 pit. You know, that ramp-up, you saw the ramp-up of

3 the concentrate profile and then you look -- it doesn't

4 necessarily look like it follows, necessarily, the

5 cashflow. And the reason for that is that if you

6 recall, we used a higher copper price early in the

7 production, and it slows down. So the cashflow is

8 there, even though the concentrate -- in its lower

9 grade, the concentrate is lower production and it's a

10 lower-grade operation. So the price of copper tailing

11 off, but the production coming up, so they aren't quite

12 exactly -- you can't equate one to the other. So that

13 might be where there's some confusion.

14 I could provide you, you know, details on a

15 year-by-year basis if you'd like.

16 MR. SCOBLE: Well, I think your explanation is

17 probably adequate. I mean, essentially you're saying

18 that you've got to move over after Year 4 so it looks

19 northwards and take a lot more waste in those years to

20 get deeper into the higher-grade core?

21 MR. MacPHAIL: That's right. Well, we move

22 through a period of lower-grade material as we

23 transition from the west end of the pit to the east end

24 of the pit. I think the waste -- the mining rate

25 remains relatively stable throughout the operation at,



183

1 you know, about 180 -- I think it averages 180,000

2 tonnes a day mining rate of total ore and waste. It's

3 in that range.

4 MR. SCOBLE: So the implications, in terms of

5 employment levels and equipment activity and everything

6 else, is that you're full speed ahead, so to speak, all

7 the way through that?

8 MR. MacPHAIL: Oh, yeah. You know, it's 24/7.

9 MR. SCOBLE: It's a feature of the ore body, or

10 the geology really.

11 MR. MacPHAIL: It's a feature of the ore body,

12 yeah.

13 MR. SCOBLE: So the second thing I wanted to

14 really ask for, I think it's called an undertaking in

15 the context of hearings like this, but it's a request

16 from us of the proponent to, I guess, provide

17 information or bring some information together.

18 Tomorrow, we're featuring pretty well through most of

19 the day on three pieces of work that have been done

20 that have been sponsored by the Panel, and they relate

21 to economics and alternatives. And we were wondering

22 if we could ask the proponent -- and part of the

23 exercise in a sense of the proponent looking at this

24 work and responding, but if you were able to perhaps

25 compile a table that would look at what we've seen



184

1 today are now different versions of the financial

2 performance over the mine life. There's a 2004

3 original EIA version from Northgate. We saw a 2006

4 version today. We see a Micon and Gartner Lee version.

5 Those are four, if you like, lines on a table that

6 might show assumed commodity prices, MPV, IRR,

7 production rates, so it's been -- you know, it's a bit

8 of a moving target. Commodity prices have been

9 changing, exchange rates and everything else, and part

10 and parcel of one reason that was motivating us to go

11 out for this work was to try and get a feeling for

12 what's been happening in the last few years and where,

13 maybe, this is going down the road in the longer-term

14 sense. So that was one thing we were hoping to ask of

15 you.

16 MR. MacPHAIL: Yeah, we could put a table

17 together, certainly on our material. In terms of

18 the -- yeah, we have reviewed, obviously, the Micon and

19 Gartner Lee reports, so -- although I'm not sure that

20 Gartner Lee commented much on the detailed economics.

21 MR. SCOBLE: No.

22 MR. MacPHAIL: I think not.

23 MR. SCOBLE: Well, I guess we're anticipating

24 something which we won't be too sure of until we get

25 there, but it seemed like something that would be very



185

1 useful perhaps to have, to look at an attempt to see

2 these different sources of coming to the same kind of

3 picture, I guess. The words that are often used, the

4 robustness of the project --

5 MR. MacPHAIL: Yeah.

6 MR. SCOBLE: -- the influence of commodity prices

7 and everything else. These things are going to be

8 coming up, I'm sure, in those presentations and the

9 questions that will be linked to them.

10 MR. MacPHAIL: Yeah, we can provide a table.

11 MR. SCOBLE: Yeah. It's not something you

12 necessarily have to do overnight, but, you know, the

13 day is a long day on the same subject, almost, so it

14 could evolve.

15 MR. MacPHAIL: Okay.

16 MR. SCOBLE: Yeah.

17 THE CHAIR: So then Northgate will take that as an

18 undertaking and provide that to us?

19 MR. MacPHAIL: Yes, we will.


21 Go ahead, Mr. Duiven.

22 MR. DUIVEN: Back to me. I have a couple of

23 questions here that relate to First Nations employment.

24 It seems that at first glance that levels of

25 employment are reasonably low, and the Panel's quite



186

1 interested in how the employment in the mine of the

2 First Nations folks compares to other projects in the

3 northwest area or in the province as a whole. Is it

4 less or greater than?

5 The other question that starts to relate to that

6 is there seems to be some confusion in the information

7 we've received and following from the presentation

8 today about what the mean annual income for First

9 Nation employees is at the mine, as opposed to people

10 who are not identified as First Nations.

11 MR. MacPHAIL: So two questions. How do we

12 compare to other -- well, a comment that our numbers

13 seem a little low, and how do we compare to other

14 mines.

15 You know, we try really hard to get those numbers

16 higher. We've been active at it, well, since we've

17 been there, and the reason -- and the way we have had

18 some success in the last few years is with this

19 training program.

20 You know, Linda, I think, will want to speak to

21 this, and I'm going to ask her to speak to it, but,

22 boy, she -- I suspect she spends half of her time on

23 this one subject.

24 How do we compare to other mines in the area, or

25 in the area? There are no other mines in the area.



187

1 You know, I don't know the answer to that question. I

2 do know that at Eskay Creek, it's a higher number,

3 I think probably approaching, from what I recall, in

4 the 30 percent range. They are a lot closer to some

5 communities that have a long history in mining; namely,

6 the Tahltan. It's certainly our intent to increase

7 those numbers, not the other way.

8 On the mean annual income, there was some

9 erroneous numbers floating around, and I think people

10 were taking the annual salary numbers or the annual

11 payroll numbers in our EIA and dividing it by the

12 number of employees that we said we employed during the

13 year, and getting a low number, and that's because a

14 lot of those employees were temporary employees, maybe

15 only working a few months of the year. That's why we

16 wanted to set the record straight, and in this slide

17 that we presented today we showed that over the last --

18 well, really over the last four years, the average has

19 been in the -- you know, if you were a First Nations

20 employee working at Kemess, and you worked for an

21 entire year, the average salary, T4 earnings, would be

22 around $60,000. So $60,000 per person-year. I think

23 it's a little lower this past one, as I think it's 57

24 or 58, I'd have to look at the slide again, because as

25 we've increased our numbers, we're increased the



188

1 numbers at the trainee end, at the lower pay scale end,

2 so, you know, the entry-level positions. And I'd have

3 to ask Linda what our average wages are for the overall

4 mine. It's somewhat higher than that, and again it's

5 largely due to the fact that most of our First Nations

6 employees, not all - we have some in senior

7 positions - but on balance, you know, they're certainly

8 being paid the same as anyone that -- you know, their

9 co-workers, but they tend to be, at least lately, the

10 ones coming in at the entry-level positions.

11 So, Linda, I think maybe you could add to that.

12 MS. HODGSON: Linda Hodgson.

13 One of the challenges that we've experienced at

14 the Kemess Mine is being able to recruit First Nations

15 employees and have them come in to work at the mine.

16 They just don't have the background and the experience,

17 and that's really a part of the fact that they're in

18 very remote villages, and so we have the challenge of

19 not only their education levels, which is always a

20 challenge, which is really the reason that we

21 implemented the training program is we recognized that

22 there was not the capacity in the communities to

23 provide us with employees that we wanted to have out of

24 those communities, so we implemented the training

25 program. We don't look at their education level,



189

1 formal education level, although we do require them to

2 be able to read.

3 One of the other challenges that we face at the

4 mine is the fact that most of the First Nations

5 employees don't have a driver's license, and for the

6 majority of our jobs you require a driver's license.

7 We're working on that. I had an initial meeting with

8 Northwest Community College in Smithers three weeks

9 ago. We talked about what our needs were at the mine,

10 to provide training -- for them to provide the training

11 that we couldn't, such as a driver's license, which to

12 us is a very simple thing but to them is a major

13 hurdle. So we're working on that, and we really -- I'm

14 confident, and I've seen it over the past couple of

15 years, in particular, that we'll be able to build

16 capacity as we work together with the communities to

17 give them assistance and to provide assistance for them

18 to be able to obtain some of the what we feel are basic

19 requirements to work at the mine, but for them they are

20 major hurdles.

21 The other significant portion of this is the fact

22 that they have a very long drive to get to Prince

23 George in order to come to work, and they don't have a

24 driver's license, so they end up having to either try

25 and get someone to drive them, which is not always easy



190

1 because it's a very long distance, or they try and

2 hitchhike in with some of the logging trucks. It's

3 just a very challenging, challenging area. We're

4 working very hard on that, and like I said in my

5 presentation this afternoon, should this project be

6 approved and then we will proceed at that time to have

7 a charter aircraft service that would go to Tse Keh and

8 Fort Ware, which is really the two communities that

9 have the greatest challenge. Takla Landing is less

10 challenging, and you actually see that in the

11 demographics of the people that are at the mine. Takla

12 Landing, they're able to come in very easily. Tse Keh

13 and Fort Ware is not the case.

14 So we're working on that. We're working very hard

15 on it. Peter is right, we spend a lot of time

16 communicating with the First Nations communities. If

17 we consider Takla Landing, they actually have very few

18 phone lines into their community, so even to reach the

19 Band office by phone is very difficult, but we work on

20 that and we send them faxes, and we communicate the

21 best way we can.

22 So it's a very challenging -- it's just really due

23 to their remoteness, and we're seeing some increases.

24 And when I put up the pictures of the people that are

25 on those slides that I used today, it's because those



191

1 are real successes, and we've had some great success

2 stories. Those were just a few, but I just thought

3 they were more -- the most recent. And so we see it

4 from our perspective as being very exciting. The ones

5 that do make that breakthrough and are able to get to

6 work on time, as scheduled, that's a big breakthrough

7 for them, and they're very excited about it. They're

8 very excited when they complete their training program

9 of three months, and we work very hard at getting them

10 full-time employment.

11 I hope that answers your question.

12 MR. DUIVEN: I have a supplement for you.

13 So we're saying that road adjacency is a critical

14 factor in the determination of employment?

15 MR. MacPHAIL: Road what?

16 MR. DUIVEN: Road adjacency, as opposed to flying

17 adjacency. So if you're closer by road or by non-air

18 lift to the mine site, we could correlate that with the

19 communities where you have highest concentration of

20 First Nations employment, not educational factors or,

21 as you say, driver's license factors? What I'm trying

22 to do here is get to the idea of -- because we have a

23 bunch of disparate and fairly scattered statistics, and

24 I'm trying to understand which communities from direct

25 employment at the mine have the greatest benefit.



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1 That's the heart of my question.

2 MS. HODGSON: Right now, it's Takla, and it's

3 because of their access by road to Prince George. Fort

4 Ware and Tse Keh, as I understand it - I've not driven

5 it, I've been in both communities, I've flown into

6 both, but as I understand it, in speaking to the people

7 that live there, it's mostly by logging road. So it's

8 very difficult for them to get in.

9 MR. MacPHAIL: To get into Prince George.

10 MS. HODGSON: To get into Prince George to be able

11 to catch our charter flight. And so it just presents

12 them a challenge, so it's just where we are.

13 I'm actually very excited that part of the

14 hearings may take place in Fort Ware, because I think

15 it's an important aspect of the whole project, for us

16 to be able to understand the challenges that they are

17 up against, and then how do we, as Northgate, help

18 that, and part of that for us is by putting in a

19 charter aircraft that would bring them in to work.

20 So does road have everything to do with it? It

21 doesn't, but it has an impact, and it's not a simple

22 answer. It's an answer with many prongs. It's the

23 road, it's education, it's driver's license, and we

24 work through that a bit at a time. And one of the

25 benefits I guess I've had is being there for seven



193

1 years, and I've been able to get to know the

2 communities better and more fully understand their

3 challenges so that we can do what we can to help them

4 overcome those challenges.

5 MR. MacPHAIL: I might add that in the two years

6 since Linda instituted the training program measured on

7 payroll, it's gone up not double but one and a half

8 million to two and a half million on First Nations

9 employment, and really if you looked at the few years

10 prior to that, if you look at that graph, it was

11 relatively flat. It only kicked off once we instituted

12 that. And, you know, it's a -- we're excited about it.

13 We want to do more.

14 MR. DUIVEN: Thank you.

15 MR. SCOBLE: I just wanted to follow up on this

16 sort of human resources side, but we're probably all

17 aware that there's a lot of prediction of availability

18 problems for people in the industry coming down the

19 road, 80,000 people needed over the next 10 years, et

20 cetera, nationally, and the oilsands developments in

21 Northern Alberta are getting quite, how can I put it,

22 proactive, I guess, in where they're recruiting from,

23 and I wondered how that may be seen by yourselves to

24 relate to manning up and maintaining a workforce with

25 implications, I guess, for wherever that workforce is



194

1 assembled from, but over the coming life of what might

2 be a new mining operation here.

3 MR. MacPHAIL: I'll take a stab at that one first.

4 You know, we -- certainly with Fort McMurray and

5 the economy the way it is, we might have thought that

6 we would have challenges keeping our Kemess South Mine

7 staffed. The reality is that I think our turnover has

8 gone up somewhat, but we're still relatively low.

9 Linda, what are we, around is it 5 or 6 percent per

10 year?

11 MS. HODGSON: Right now, we're at just over

12 6 percent.

13 MR. MacPHAIL: Just over 6 percent, so that's

14 still relatively low for, you know, an industry like

15 ours, and so we don't see it as a big challenge going

16 forward. I think the reason we have a relatively low

17 turnover is people like to work at Kemess. They like

18 to work there because they like the schedule, they like

19 the conditions. You know, it's a two-week-in/

20 two-week-out. You can live just about wherever you

21 want in Northern B.C. And, yeah, so we don't see that

22 as a big issue. That schedule would maintain -- we'd

23 maintain that same sort of schedule for Kemess North.

24 MR. BENT: If I could add to that. It's Harold

25 Bent.



195

1 Yes, but where we do have a concern, though,

2 because you are absolutely right, there is a trade

3 shortage on the horizon if not already here, and we are

4 very concerned that if there is a break or a gap in our

5 operation, we certainly will lose our people. So even

6 though as Peter mentioned we have a low turnover,

7 obviously a happy workforce, very skilled and do a

8 great job, we're extremely concerned that if there's a

9 break in our operation, whether it's one week or 12

10 months, we will lose that workforce. So that's our

11 big -- that is a concern.

12 THE CHAIR: In a recent brief that we were

13 provided, it was suggested that hydro power to the mine

14 is subsidized. We were wondering, how much does

15 Northgate pay B.C. Hydro and how much does it cost B.C.

16 Hydro to provide power to Northgate?

17 MR. MacPHAIL: Northgate pays B.C. Hydro the same

18 rate as any Tier 1 hydro user. Am I right, Morris?

19 Sorry, Morris Ethier is our general mine manager. He's

20 in the audience, and he may have to jump in to help me

21 on some of these more specific questions. But all Tier

22 1 industrial users pay the same rate. What does it

23 cost Hydro to generate that power? I don't know. It's

24 not a subsidized rate. It's the rate for large

25 industrial consumers.



196

1 We also -- just to add, we pay the cost of

2 transmission from Mackenzie, so we buy it off the grid

3 at Mackenzie, which is, you know, 400 kilometres down

4 the line. We own the line.


6 Another question. Northgate, in your presentation

7 today, stressed how good the water quality will be at

8 the time of closure in the Duncan Lake tailings

9 impoundment. Other reviewers have expressed concerns

10 about this quality and have even suggested that there

11 may be a requirement for water treatment. How quickly

12 will the impoundment water be restored to a

13 biologically-productive lake? I think that's two

14 questions.

15 So the first one was that other people have

16 suggested that there's a necessity for water treatment,

17 and -- it's hard asking other people's questions. How

18 quickly would the water in the tailings impoundment

19 meet discharge criteria?

20 MR. McLEOD: It's Harvey McLeod, and I'll take a

21 stab at that answer.

22 The water quality modelling that we've done, we've

23 predicted the water quality at closure, which is just

24 before -- or just when we finish mining operations, and

25 at that time it has elevated concentrations of several



197

1 things, particularly, as I say, sulfate is very high

2 concentrations. And the next period we've carried out

3 modelling, I think it's two years after that, and then

4 after about five years it reaches a steady state. So

5 we have that transition period from when we complete

6 mining to about five years, when it will reach a steady

7 state.

8 And the water quality right on closure, I mean,

9 it's possible that that could be directly discharged.

10 However, we have, in our contingencies, our water

11 management plan, that we could pump that up to the open

12 pit until it meets the criteria. Certainly after five

13 years, it would have reached a steady state with

14 respect to what it will be, and at that five-year

15 period, you know, our best assessment of the

16 predictions are that the effects in Attycelley will be

17 nominal and we can be managed with some site-specific

18 criteria there. So that's -- you know, we've talked

19 about whether we need to treat. At this time, we're

20 thinking, well, maybe we have to have some secondary

21 polishing ponds right on the dam, but those are more of

22 a potential fall-back, but our -- you know, we're

23 fairly comfortable that after that, certainly by five

24 years, we would have reached a steady state of good

25 water quality.



198

1 THE CHAIR: So then within five years, you would

2 anticipate that you should be able to meet the

3 discharge requirements?

4 MR. McLEOD: Yeah, it may be within one year or

5 six months, but that's sort of the upper limit.

6 THE CHAIR: I think I know the answer to this, but

7 I'm going to ask -- oh, was there another response?

8 MR. McLEOD: Peter was just mentioning that -- and

9 I think I'd mentioned it, that the contingency is to

10 pump the water up to the pit. So we have the

11 provision, we have the pump barge there. On closure,

12 if the water quality isn't suitable for discharge, we

13 have the facilities to pump that water that's coming in

14 up to the open pit.

15 THE CHAIR: And how many years would you be able

16 to do that?

17 MR. McLEOD: Well, the open pit has something like

18 80 million cubic metres, 80 or 90, and we're about

19 15 million cubic metres a year, provided we don't have

20 any diversion, so sort of five to ten years, in that

21 range, depending on how we manage the water.


23 This next question is regarding the maintenance of

24 the dams in perpetuity. Will that be Northgate that

25 would be around to maintain those dams, or would you



199

1 anticipate that there would be some other body that

2 would do that?

3 MR. MacPHAIL: Well, in either case there would be

4 bonding required up front for that maintenance in

5 perpetuity, so Northgate -- if Northgate is around,

6 which we would certainly hope, but we can never

7 predict, and if not, then that bonding is there for

8 others to maintain.

9 THE CHAIR: And following up on that, how would

10 people be notified downstream if there was a dam

11 failure many years after closure?

12 MR. McLEOD: Yes, it's Harvey McLeod.

13 The dam safety, it's an issue facing all dams

14 worldwide in terms of the long-term care and

15 maintenance of the dams, and it's with the Kemess South

16 as well as Kemess North. And, you know, the way the

17 industry is going is that it's recognized that

18 long-term care and maintenance is required, and that

19 requires annual inspections as a very minimum.

20 Now, every dam is a bit different. Every dam --

21 some dams have higher risks, some have lower risks, and

22 you assess those as you go along and build it and

23 operate it. But the base case would be that, you know,

24 a long-term care and maintenance program would be in

25 place that would, (a), ensure that the spillways are



200

1 cleaned out, because that's the -- if the spillways are

2 clear, even if the dam fails, the risk of -- because we

3 have that large waste rock there, the consequences are

4 much lower. The largest consequence is when spillways

5 are plugged and we have lots of water there and that

6 fails. So I think that, you know, in terms of the long

7 term, how would you manage it? Well, there's several

8 ideas, and I think a lot of industries or mines or dams

9 are facing it. You may have things like automatic

10 water level recorders that can send triggers and

11 alarms. That's a possibility. Those are technologies

12 like that, and I think that's part of, you know, the

13 emergency preparedness plan as to just what actions you

14 would have to have in place, and you would address

15 those both during operations and on closure, you would

16 review those and say, well, what is the appropriate

17 level of care and maintenance and what is an

18 appropriate level of emergency preparedness for that

19 structure.


21 One more question.

22 MR. DUIVEN: Hi. A couple of points here around

23 clarification that have to do with the socioeconomic

24 presentation.

25 On Slide G-13, there was a relationship made



201

1 between health services and taxation that I didn't

2 understand, and I was wondering if you could just

3 expatiate on that a little bit.

4 MS. LAMASH: Debra Lamash.

5 What that referred to was that the -- if Kemess

6 North went ahead, the mine would continue paying taxes,

7 and then the government could use those taxes in a

8 number of means, including financing of health

9 services.

10 MR. DUIVEN: Just sort of in a general kind of

11 way?

12 MS. LAMASH: That's right.

13 MR. DUIVEN: Okay. I just want one final question

14 on this, then.

15 There was various statements made in Slides J-7

16 through J-12 in relation to traditional use, and I've

17 been asking questions here to get a better idea of what

18 kind of traditional information you've been able to

19 collect, and how are these determinations made about

20 the relatively limited impacts on traditional use?

21 MR. BENT: It's Harold Bent.

22 Yes, absolutely, you know, with traditional use

23 we've tried to bring forward as much information as we

24 possibly could through archival information and

25 previous reports, but we've also, you know, really



202

1 wanted to bring new information from our own interviews

2 and data collection. And for a number of years, we

3 tried very hard to get this information from the

4 communities and made a number of offers to go to the

5 communities to interview elders or who the Councils

6 thought we should interview, so to answer your

7 question, we tried to get that sort of firsthand

8 information ourselves most recently, were unable to do

9 that, and so what we have provided is archival stuff.

10 And we've also provided our -- you know, we had good

11 communication with the trapline-holders, Joe Bob

12 Patrick and his family, and so where we had an

13 opportunity to ask questions, we did.

14 MR. DUIVEN: No, you made good use of your

15 secondary historical sources. You did an exhaustive

16 job, and I was happy enough to see that, and that takes

17 us towards -- because the issue of the trapline-holder

18 I'm really interested in, we get to Kwadacha, their

19 view of the site as well coming from the other side of

20 the watershed. And Gitxsan, because they're on the

21 frontier, also have real interest and knowledge in the

22 area. Thanks.

23 I'm done.

24 THE CHAIR: I think that brings to a close our

25 questioning for this evening. Oh, no, we have one more



203

1 question.

2 MR. BURSEY: One question, Madam Chair.

3 Today we saw a lot of slide --

4 THE CHAIR: Can you please identify yourself?

5 MR. BURSEY: Bursey, initial "D."

6 We had a lot of presentations. Will those

7 presentations be put on the website?

8 THE CHAIR: Yes, they will. In fact, I think they

9 already are. Have they been put up?

10 MS. THERRIEN: Tomorrow.

11 THE CHAIR: By tomorrow, they'll be up. Sorry.

12 MR. MacPHAIL: Also, we have a box of hard copies

13 of our presentation, if people want them. They're

14 around here somewhere. We'll put them by the door.

15 THE CHAIR: Okay. Well, I would like to thank

16 everybody for their attentiveness today. It's been a

17 long day.

18 I'm going to mention that tomorrow morning we will

19 begin at 9:00 a.m. Tomorrow's session is a little

20 shorter. It is expected to wrap up sometime around

21 4:30.

22 So, again, I thank you for your attention, and

23 hopefully we'll see you all again tomorrow. Thank you.

24 [HEARING ADJOURNED AT 8:52 PM]

25


Reporter's Certificate

204

1 REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE

2

3 I, Wayne M. Bilko, Official Reporter in the

4 Province of British Columbia, Canada, BCSRA No. 290, DO

5 HEREBY CERTIFY:

6 That the proceedings were taken down by me in

7 shorthand at the time and place therein set forth and

8 thereafter transcribed, and the same is a true and

9 correct and complete transcript of said proceedings to

10 the best of my skill and ability.

11 IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto subscribed my

12 name this 31st day of October, 2006.

13

14

15

16

17 Wayne M. Bilko RCR, CRR

18 Official Reporter

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kemess north copper-gold mine project · 30.10.2006 · 2 will resume on november 20th in...

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