Tribal council accuses mine of stonewalling

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Takla Lake First Nation, one of the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council member nations, is being kept in the dark regarding Northgate Explorations Ltd.'s plans to start up a mine that the First Nation maintains will destroy Duncan Lake in their traditional territory 500 kilometres northwest of Prince George.

Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the tribal council have also come down against Northgate using Duncan Lake as a tailings pond for the proposed Kemess North mine, for which a feasibility study was due for completion at the end of March.

Carrier Sekani Tribal Council Chief Harry Pierre told Raven's Eye that neither the council nor the First Nation knew whether the feasibility study was completed on schedule or otherwise.

Paul Blom, also speaking on behalf of the tribal council, additionally told us that the Takla Lake and Bear Lake people had received a response to a Nov. 12 letter outlining their objections they had handed to Anne Currie, the project assessment director in the provincial Environmental Assessment Office.

"Their statement was that this is just a pre-feasibility stage, that the environmental assessment has not occurred yet, and it was premature to demand what the First Nations had demanded-not to dump the tailings into that lake. Now, the irony behind this is that the Minister of Energy and Mines Richard Neufeld (on March 15) stated that in his opinion that lake is the only way that this mine can move forward. So the environmental assessment hasn't been completed yet, so how can people make an unbiased environmental assessment when the minister's already stated in public that that is the preferred alternative?"

Blom said Neufeld told them that he had had a two-hour meeting about the mine in mid-March with the federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, Geoff Regan.

Blom added that Northgate CEO Ken Stowe and Kemess North project manager Dave Hendricks were not returning telephone calls to the tribal council or calls to Takla First Nation Chief Janet West that Blom has made on her behalf.

The environmental assessment office is only saying "they have no funds at this point to address this issue of involving the First Nations other than maybe in the fiscal new year, but maybe if they're lucky, $10,000," according to Blom. He says this amount is nothing to hire engineers, geologists, biologists and have community members travel to Kemess North "to spot check some of the studies."

Northgate's Web site states Kemess North's prospects are for a mineable resource of four million ounces or 369 million tonnes grading 0.34 g/t gold and 0.18 per cent copper.