N.W.T. gov't budgets $2.5M for space to view, store old rocks
The N.W.T. government is spending devolution-tied money on a space where people will be able to view and study old mineral samples dating back decades.
The government budgeted $2.5 million on the Geological Materials Storage Warehouse, which is being developed near the Yellowknife airport, according to a government display at this week's Geoscience Forum.
The facility, announced a year ago by outgoing Industry, Tourism and Investment minister Dave Ramsay and scheduled to open this spring, actually consists of two buildings.
The first is a pre-existing, heated building on Bristol Avenue that the territorial government inherited from the federal government as a result of devolution. This building, which will be used as the study area, required partial renovations. When complete, it will include an office and petrographic/microscope room; a large, well-lit rock sample and core viewing area; and a sample receiving, sorting and warm-up area.
Clark Builders was also tapped earlier this year to build an adjacent, 920-square metre cold storage warehouse to store the samples, for $1.4 million.
The collection had been stored outdoors by the federal government at Giant Mine, "and is showing its wear from this less-than-ideal arrangement," according to the Geoscience Forum display.
Brooke Clements, the president of exploration company Peregrine Diamonds, says the facility will be very good for future explorers and researchers.
"When companies get done with a project, often the core disappears or it stays out on the tundra and deteriorates," says Clements. "Now they're gathering all of the core, properly cataloguing it and it's all gonna be in one place, so if anyone wants to do any research, they can just go to one place, look at it, and do their own tests."
The ultimate hope is for old samples to yield new leads about economically viable deposits.
"Methods evolve," says Clements. "There's maybe a test availability today that wasn't available 30 years ago. So it could lead to a new discovery."
The money for the facility comes directly from the federal government as a result of devolution and was budgeted for in the territorial government's 2016-2017 capital estimates, released in September.
