Prince George Citizen

by Mark Nielsen
Citizen staff

With the permitting process in the final stages, work on an open-pit gold mine near Barkerville could begin in a little more than two months, an official with the company behind the project said Wednesday.

"We're doing our last submission to government and we would hope to be in receipt of our permit by sometime in May and then we could start gearing things up to start in July," said Andrew Rees, vice-president of corporate development at International Wayside Gold Mines Ltd.

International Wayside is seeking the provincial government's permission to open up a mine forecast to yield 70,000 ounces of gold over a three-year lifetime. Based on the current price of $550 U.S. per ounce, that would add up to $38.5 million.

Between 35 and 40 people would work at the site, located on International Wayside's Bonanza Ledge property on one side of Lougheed Creek.

About 200 tonnes of ore would be extracted each day and shipped to a mill at the QR mine near McLeese Lake, about 160 kilometres south of Prince George.

However, International Wayside wants to follow up with a second mine on the other side of Lougheed Creek near Cow Mountain, involving about 1,500 tonnes of lower-grade ore per day and a payroll of between 150 and 200 people.

Rees said a mill will probably be built on site.

"Because the grade is lower, you're moving a lot more dirt essentially and because of that, the economics of trucking that ore to an off-site facility just doesn't make sense," said Rees.

More work needs to be done before a valid yield prediction can be made for the second mine, expected to last about 10 years. But he said the resource is estimated to hold about 600,000 ounces and depending on the results of a drilling program this summer that number may be as much as doubled.

Rees said July would be the best-case scenario for the first mine, but was fairly confident of the timeline.

"There are outside variables which can come into play which makes it a little hard for a company to say this is what we're going to do, but it is our objective," he said.

It's hoped work can begin on the second mine in about 18 months to three years time.

The mines could mean a significant influx of both people into Wells, a small community of about 250 people, 200 kilometres south of Prince George. The site is about an hour's drive from Quesnel, but just a few minutes from Wells.

"There is housing available in Wells to handle an influx of workers like that," Rees said. "But some people, if they're already living in Quesnel, wouldn't pack up and move, they would probably just do the hour-long drive."

District of Wells Mayor Jay Vermette is hoping for as much.

"I'm pretty happy about it. Anything that brings some economy into the town here is worthwhile," he said. "There are two sides to every story of course. You have the naysayers on one side and the hooray people on the other side, but everybody seems pretty much on board, even the ones that are a little bit leery about what's going to happen as far as the environmental concerns and things like that.

"But it is all permitted through the ministry so they have to jump through all the hoops in order to proceed."

International Wayside, which has most of the area around Barkerville and Wells staked, won't be the first to try mining the site. Hydraulic monitoring, where high-pressure water hoses were used to break down the ore for placer mining, was used in the area during the 1860s.

And in the late 1930s, a company put through via a three-kilometre tunnel and dropped a 300-metre shaft at Bonanza Ledge to meet the tunnel and access a quartz vein.

"But then they did only a little bit of mining because steel for rail wasn't available, it was used in the war effort," Rees said.