Eagle Gold mine disaster: Yukon calls for safeguards

Yukon mines minister John Streicker says the Eagle Gold mine disaster has the territory’s residents “justly concerned” about the implications of the mining spill on Yukoners’ way of life “for generations to come.”

Streicker says the government Department of Energy, Mines and Resources has directed Victoria Gold, the company that owns the mine, to stabilize the area where the slide happened and more closely monitor surface and groundwater near the slide site.

The direction also requires the company to come up with a “comprehensive water treatment plan,” after the failure of a “heap leach embankment” that resulted in a spill of cyanide solution used in the gold extraction process.

The statement says the company has also been ordered to immediately increase the mining site’s water storage capacity, as officials monitor water sample tests around the site of the spill that occurred on June 24.

At a technical briefing Thursday, Streicker told reporters that testing of samples from Haggart Creek last week 2 kilometres downstream from the site detected no cyanide, but officials say people should not consume water or fish from the creek even though risk to human health is “very low.”

Benton Foster, Yukon’s director of community health programs, says the recommendation to avoid drinking water or eating fish from the creek is out of “an abundance of caution.”