Shoal Lake project study can proceed

A feasibility study on the Shoal Lake gold property of Kenora Prospectors and Miners (CDN) near Kenora, Ont., has been given the green light. Ontario Environment Minister Ruth Grier recently announced that the exploratory gold mining project would not be subject to the Environmental Assessment Act (EAA).

Permitting was delayed while the Ontario Ministry of the Environment (MOE) considered a request that the project be designated for an environmental review.

In early December, the City of Winnipeg and a citizens’ coalition, the Winnipeg Water Protection Group, wrote to MOE requesting that the project be designated under the EAA. The city and lobby group were concerned about the potential impact the project would have on the water quality in Shoal Lake. Winnipeg draws its drinking water from the west shore of Indian Bay in Shoal Lake.

Once the project received clearance from MOE, Kenora and Eastern Stone Products (ASE), which is earning a 50% interest in the property, were granted all of the necessary permits to begin the advanced exploration program on the property.

Eastern Stone President Chris Proud told The Northern Miner that he was extremely pleased that the permitting had been approved and said that the next step was to test the profitability of gravity separation milling without the use of chemicals.

Proud also noted that representatives from Ontario’s Ministry of Northern Development and Mines had helped the joint venture partners address all possible environmental concerns including many aspects not required under the permitting process.

“We do not expect any adverse effects on water quality in the lake from this exploratory work,” Grier said in a news release. “We are satisfied that the company will operate in what is essentially a closed loop with no discharge of processing effluents to the lake.”

Had the project been designated under the act, then the companies would have been required to submit an environmental assessment study to the government. The study would have been required to review all of the natural, technical, social and economic aspects of the project.

Richard Szudy, vice-president of environmental management for Laidlaw Environmental Services of Burlington, Ont., says that historically, compliance with the EAA takes a great deal of time and is an extremely costly process. Ultimately, some proponents drop their proposals entirely, Szudy added.

Kenora and Eastern Stone hope that underground exploration will commence in early March, 1993, and that bulk sampling and test milling at the site will be under way by the end of March.

Grier and other Ontario ministers plan to meet with the Shoal Lake First Nations, as well as the government of Manitoba, in February, to start looking at the best long-term approach to any future development in the Shoal Lake area.