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Giant oversight board makes sweeping recommendations

Next Tuesday, the Giant Mine Oversight Board (GMOB) will host its annual public meeting on the remediation project to provide its recommendations and take questions from the public.

The Giant Mine Oversight Board is hosting a public meeting Tuesday night at Northern United Place, starting at 7 p.m., to provide recommendations and take questions from the public.

The board published its annual report, which benchmarks progress on the remediation project and highlights ongoing concerns with the project's implementation.

The recommendations include socioeconomic and community opportunities, improvements to stakeholders' ability to participate in the water licensing process and improvements to communication with the public.

The 7 p.m. meeting at Northern United Place is intended to help the public understand the recommendations and the project teams' response.

The Giant Mine project team has yet to respond to the oversight board's report ahead of the public meeting Tuesday, but will be present to answer questions about the project and report.

In its report, the GMOB suggested the project team establish a strategy to identify specific opportunities that can be measured and monitored.

The project will inject hundreds of millions of dollars into the local economy. However, there has been “relatively poor uptake of available opportunities” and it is not “readily apparent” that the project team is meeting its commitment to create local business opportunities, the report states.

Employment through the project was 23 per cent Northern and four per cent Indigenous, numbers that the board described as a “disappointment.”

Further, the recommendation for a federal apology and compensation has yet to be met, the report states.

The GMOB suggests that “hotspots” of contaminated soil on Latham Island and N'dilo be subject to comprehensive soil testing and a full clean up.

The report recommends traditional knowledge studies to be conducted and integrated into the remediation program.

Such a study would also seek clearer information on what parts of the project area are safe to trap and gather food in.

There is still a recommendation for an apology and compensation related to the historic operations of Giant Mine.

In 2017, the Legislative Assembly unanimously passed a motion calling for the government of Canada to apologize to the YKDFN for the Giant Mine operations.

The YKDFN are still without a federal apology.

During public meetings in March, the project team stated the majority of work opportunities would come into effect once the project receives its water license.

Through community consultation, it also became clear that people desire an extension of the Giant Mine project clean up area to include Baker Creek watershed.

It also states a need for clearer warning signs in the context of tourism and contaminated areas, and extending the project's scope to remediate contaminated offsite areas.

The remediation project, though urgent, must await regulatory approvals from the Mackenzie Valley Land and Water Board (MVLWB).

It is currently operating without a water license, something that should prompt a specific, but temporary five-year license on effluent discharge.

The project team previously responded that the project can release treated effluent into Baker Creek as an interim measure, given that there are no viable alternatives for discharge.

The board maintains that multi-year discharge of treated wastewater into the environment without a water license is “inappropriate.”

Currently the mine operates under Metal Mining Effluent Regulations (MMER) and the Fisheries Act (FA).

Both statutes are “reactive and punitive in nature,” the report states.

The MVLWB has jurisdiction over issuing a license.

The project team will submit its information to the MVLWB starting in early 2019.