Prince George Citizen

by Paul Strickland
Citizen staff

An open-pit mine two kilometres from Barkerville is expected to produce 70,000 tonnes of gold ore per year if it receives government approval, says the vice-president of environment for International Wayside Gold Mines Ltd.

That would be refined into 35,000 of pure gold annually, Neil Mallen said from the company's offices in Vancouver. Although close to the historic town, the open-pit mine would not be visible from Barkerville, he said.

International Wayside currently employs 10 people full time at its mining camp near Wells. That number would increase if the open-pit mine proposed for Barkerville Mountain is approved, Mallen said.

"We're not sure how many jobs," he said. "Some work would be done by local contractors. We would hire some staff and generate work for local contractors."

Mallen said he didn't foresee any objections or obstacles that would interfere with eventual government approval of the project.

New employees would likely bring families to the Wells district, including younger children who would attend Wells-Barkerville elementary school, Mallen said. "If the mine project is approved, it will generate opportunities that will allow that school to stay open for at least a few more years," he said.

The Quesnel school board briefly closed Wells-Barkerville elementary school during the summer of 2002, but after continuing parent and community protests, the school was reopened under special financial arrangements with the town of Wells. This fall it has 11 students.

International Wayside applied Aug. 3 to the regional manager of environmental protection in Williams Lake for a permit to discharge effluent through the Bonanza Mine portal and through a nearby covered waste-rock pile uphill from Barkerville, near Stout's Gulch. Maximum effluent discharged would be 50,000 cubic metres per day, which would flow through Stout's Gulch into Williams Creek. The 30-day comment period recently ended.

The Bonanza Mine is a small underground mine from which International Wayside removed 10,000 tonnes of rock in 2004 as a bulk sample of ore, Mallen said.

"Water runs from the portal of that small underground mine and becomes effluent, but there is no activity there now," he said. "It's groundwater accumulating and discharging through the portal.

"It's essentially natural water," Mallen added. "It's not being churned up. From the water-quality data we've derived from all the exploring we've done over 18 months, there is no evidence of contamination in the receiving environment."

This water contacts rock walls not previously exposed to open water and air, and it may carry away traces of metals from them. However, water quality from the Bonanza Mine effluent is much higher than the churned-up water from an active mine, Mallen said.

Effluent from the proposed open-pit mine would flow another direction into Lowhee Creek toward Wells.

"We've designed the mine to have no impact on Barkerville at all," he said.