http://www.nunatsiaq.com/archives/2008/801/80118/...ut/80118_852.html
January 18, 2008
Port, road plan enters environmental review
Project promises to unlock vast riches for Kitikmeot residents
JOHN THOMPSON
A road and port project that promises to lift the Kitikmeot from poverty by opening up vast troves of diamonds, gold, silver and other treasures has entered Nunavut‘s environmental review regime.
The Bathurst Inlet Port And Road project submitted its draft environmental impact statement to the Nunavut Impact Review Board Jan. 3, marking the long-anticipated project's entry into Nunavut's regulatory system. The impact review board expects to finish reviewing the document within a year.
If the project, popularly known as BIPAR, becomes reality, ice-reinforced freighters will regularly plow through the Coronation Gulf to deliver fuel and supplies to a deep-sea port located in Bathurst Inlet.
There, a 200-person camp, airstrip and tank farm will be linked to a 211-km all-weather road to the southeast shore of Contwoyto Lake, near the border to the Northwest Territories.
For boosters of the project, BIPAR promises to unlock vast quantities of gold, silver, diamonds and base metals currently buried in the Kitikmeot, by providing the missing infrastructure needed to supply mines in the area. This, backers hope, will lift the region from poverty, and provide enough jobs for most of Nunavut.
The port may also lower the cost of shipping supplies to surrounding communities.
BIPAR's proponents are the Kitikmeot Corp., the business arm of the Kitikmeot Inuit Association, and Nuna Logistics Ltd., a company that specializes in building ice roads, which is also partly owned by the KIA.
The project has an optimistic schedule, given the sluggish nature of Nunavut's regulatory system: proponents hope BIPAR will be clear of regulatory red-tape, and fully financed with the $270 million needed to build the project, by mid-2009, the draft EIS states.
Construction would begin the summer or fall of 2009, and the road and port would be fully operational by the summer of 2012.
BIPAR appeared to be in jeopardy several years ago when the project lost its anchor tenant - the owners, at the time, of the massive Izok Lake property, who froze plans to develop their zinc and copper mine due to low global metal prices.
Since then Izok Lake has changed hands and is now owned by Zinifex Ltd., which hopes to bring the mine into production by 2016. The company plans to cut costs by using the old Lupin gold mine to mill ore from Izok and other nearby mines, and is listed on the EIS as a future user of BIPAR.
However, the 80-km ice road and summer barge connecting Izok to the route, once part of BIPAR but dropped in 2003, is still not part of the project.
Interest also renewed in BIPAR, in part, because of climate change. The existing ice road to Yellowknife is now melting earlier in the year, and mines such as Rio Tinto's Diavik diamond mine in the NWT have had to resort to flying supplies in by helicopter in recent years because of early thaws.
BHP Billiton's Ekati mine and De Beer's Snap Lake mine are other prospective users in the NWT.
In Nunavut, prospective users of the project include Miramar Mining Corp., owners of the Hope Bay gold fields. Future Nunavut users, other than Zinifex, include Sabina Silver Corp., which owns the Hackett Lake deposit.
Construction of the port and road itself is expected to employ, at its peak, 260 people over 30 months. Thirty per cent of workers are expected to be Inuit.
While in operation the project is expected to employ 57 people, half of whom are expected to be Inuit.
BIPAR has encountered some opposition in the past, mostly from the occupants of the outpost camps of Bathurst Inlet and Omingmaktok, who worry their traditional activities on the land will end when the neighbourhood becomes a transportation hub for mines.
Another victim of the project would be the Bathurst Inlet Lodge, which currently markets itself as a premier spot for eco-tourists to enjoy Arctic wilderness. It's hard to imagine the lodge maintaining this pristine image if freighters, weighing as much as 50,000 tonnes, chug up and down the inlet to a nearby truck depot, airstrip and tank farm.
Concerns have also been expressed about how the road will affect the spring migration of the Ahiak and Bathurst herds of caribou. But proponents say few caribou would be near their chosen route between January and April, the time when 70 trucks will hauling fuel and cargo to the terminus at Contwoyto Lake.
Gentle slopes would be built into the roadside where major caribou crossings are expected, the EIS states. The size and health of herds is also expected to be monitored.
Late April is the most likely time of year that caribou migrations would be affected by the trucking route. Then, both the Ahiak and Bathurst herds are expected to be near the road, and the Bathurst herd has usually just finished calving.
"Some effects on caribou are expected," the report states, "but the magnitude of these effects is not expected to be high."
Shipping routes may also affect caribou, as some herds migrate across sea ice. The Dolphin and Union herds migrate across the proposed shipping route, as do Peary caribou, an endangered subspecies that inhabits the High Arctic islands.
The possibility of the project affecting Peary caribou's ability to migrate and reproduce are both rated as "moderate" under the EIS. The impact on other caribou is either rated as "negligible" or "minimal."
But the worst environmental disaster that could be created by the project would be a major oil spill. The EIS predicts the odds of a major spill, of more than 10,000 barrels, occurring is "very unlikely," or likely to occur once every 2,320 years.
Medium-sized spills, between 50 to 199 barrels, are "within the realm of possibility," and rated likely to happen every 209 years.
Small spills less than 50 barrels are considered relatively likely to occur, but their impact is considered negligible and easy to clean up.
Freighters delivering supplies would follow established shipping routes, proponents say, which have been used at various points by oil exploration vessels and cruise ships: from Lancaster Sound and Barrow Strait, ships would head south, through Peel Sound, Franklin Strait and Victoria Strait, then cross Queen Maud Gulf and Dease Strait to enter Bathurst Inlet.
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