Take a tour around N.W.T.'s notoriously toxic Giant Mine
The Northwest Territories' Giant Mine closed almost two decades ago, and its cleanup project team wants to get cracking on its cleanup phase.
More than decade ago, the remediation project team applied for a Type A Water Licence for its cleanup plan. It was rejected, and it took until 2014 until its environmental assessment was accepted.
Now, an updated application for a water licence to the Mackenzie Valley Land and Water Board will be submitted in January 2019, according to the project's deputy director, Natalie Plato.
It includes an updated draft on how it's going to close and cleanup the remaining areas of concern — like its toxic mine water pumped up from underground and its chambers filled with hundreds of thousands of tonnes of poison.
If all goes well, the actual cleanup led by U.S.-based company Parsons will begin after 2020, says Plato.
CBC News was one of handful of media that got to tour the site Friday and see what the notorious mine looks like during its care and maintenance phase. Join reporter Priscilla Hwang as she moves around the mine's maze and makes pit stops at tailings ponds (wet storage areas for contaminated waste), the water treatment plant, open pits and its underground arsenic freezing areas among other structures.
