Federal environmental hearings are only days away, down in the valley at Williams Lake, but up on a nearby mountaintop the work goes on like it has for the past 40 years.
Taseko Mines is proposing a new mine, the New Prosperity gold/copper project, not far from its existing Gibraltar copper/molybdenum mine. There have been ups and downs in its life span, but Gibraltar opened in 1971 and still has years of production ahead. There are political lines in the sand being drawn at the New Prosperity hearings, but work at Gibraltar continues, including the process of restoration in areas where work is complete.
"Even though we are an operating mine, reclamation on site is underway and ongoing throughout the mine life," said Katherine Gizikoff, Gibraltar's director of environment and governmental affairs. In some areas, where the mining is finished, we have already done a lot of work to restore it to habitat for wildlife, establish a variety of native plants, a lot of trees, stabilize the hillsides from erosion, a number of things are going on at once."
In the reclamation areas, land has been re-sloped and covered over with topsoil and rocks that had been stockpiled for just such a purpose. To guard against erosion, logs have been set in the soil at regular intervals, perpendicular to the slope. These catch the water and hold it for plant life, as well as reducing sloughing. They are also the biomass nests on which other vegetation is planted. Most of that additional greenery is live-staked willow, because it is common to the area, quickly creates a root-web for slope stability, and draws in wildlife for the food and shelter values it provides.
The company has gone so far as to place full trees upside down on the reclamation landscape to provide nesting spots and hunting perches for birds.
"It's amazing how fast the wildlife moves in, starting with the mice and the voles and other rodents when you set up the right conditions," said Gizikoff. "Once they move in, you see the raptors and coyotes follow and you've got the natural cycles going on."
Some of this work is fresh this spring, but some dates back to the 1980s before Taseko was owner of the project.
Not far from the administration offices, Gibraltar has its own garden patch. Instead of vegetables, it grows native plants and trees that are installed when they reach the appropriate stage of growth. The site grows 500 trees per year, along with the willow program.
The choices of plants are often determined by discussions with area First Nations, said Brian Battison, Taseko's vice-president of corporate affairs, especially birch, which was recently suggested by Cariboo aboriginal liaisons and will now become a priority for the vegetation program.
Managing a forest is relatively easy compared to managing water. When a mine's footprint is more than 2,100 hectares, water becomes the key consideration.
At Gibraltar Mine, there are three working pits but they also act as giant rain and snow collectors. That water, and all ground water there, is gathered into a closed-loop system. It is used for such operational needs as milling and road dust reduction, but no matter what it's used for, it all ends up in its own biosphere - a storage facility which looks like a lake a few kilometres from the mine itself.
The "lake" was a couple of ponds and a few boggy spots when Gibraltar was first constructed. Two dams were built to ensure all water flowing into the bowl was contained there, and over time it filled up. Part of that was natural inflow, and part of it was from pipes bringing the tailings from the mine.
Tailings is a term for the end waste product of any industrial activity. At some mines, tailings can have elevated metal content but in Gibraltar's case, said Battison, it is environmentally benign with essentially two clean byproducts: uncontaminated water and sand so fine it feels like icing sugar. Both are pumped to the lake where a spinning process sends the sand in one direction and the water the other. Over time the amounts have become so huge it is a large reservoir with a full-breadth beach.
"We have fish in this lake, rainbow trout, and they're up to five or six pounds," said Gizikoff. "You can see the birds out there on the lake, the flies hatching and gathering around the shoreline, there are frogs, and many different kinds of water insects."
There are two discharge points, one that operates year-round and a second that operates during high water months, sending the water down the mountainside in pipes and into the Fraser River several kilometres below. The water is monitored by Taseko staff and checked on by the provincial Ministry of Environment and federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
In March, Gibraltar Mine won the Mining Association of B.C.'s Metal Mine Reclamation Award "for their forward-looking approach to reclamation by utilizing research trials to determine best methods in order to set the stage for future reclamation success at the Gibraltar Mine near Williams Lake."
Gibraltar Nuggets
- First built in 1972, then closed in the 1990s. Reopened in 2004 under Taseko's ownership.
- The second largest open pit copper mine in Canada (also produces molybdenum).
- 2013 second quarter stats: 28.1 million pounds of copper and 333,000 pounds of molybdenum.
- In 2007, a massive renovation and expansion began (more than $700 million invested).
- Estimated mine life: 25 more years.
- Gibraltar is a joint venture owned by Taseko Mines Limited (75%) and Cariboo Copper Corp. (25%).
