Geddes President urges CIM to back Windy Craggy plan

Geddes Resources (TSE) President Gerald Harper recently urged his mining industry colleagues to get behind the Vancouver company’s bid to bring the Windy Craggy copper project in British Columbia into production. Harper was the guest speaker at a well attended luncheon in Toronto, sponsored by the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum. He advised the audience not to sit back and allow environmental activists to prevent the huge deposit from ever being mined.

CIM members should write to their provincial premier, the provincial mines minister and provincial and environmental ministers, said Harper.

“If we don’t speak up at every opportunity to defend and sustain our industry, we can’t expect the general public to support us,” he said.

As the operation is expected to produce 308 million lb. copper in the first 14 years, Windy Craggy represents the single largest opportunity to arrest the inevitable drop in Canada’s share of world production, according to Harper. Three deposits outlined so far contain enough copper to rival existing mines at Highland Valley, B.C., and the Sudbury Basin in Ontario.

But a key obstacle to developing a new mine in British Columbia’s remote Tatshenshini River valley is strong opposition from environment groups who want the area preserved as a wilderness. One of their main concerns is the potential for acid rock drainage when the mine is eventually brought into production.

In a bid to find a proven solution that will endure both during the life of the mine and after minable reserves have been depleted, Geddes has already revised its original mine plan to reduce the amount of potentially acid generating sources.

Under a new plan, the amount of time that ore is mined via open pit methods will be reduced to 14 from 22 years while underground mining is phased in after year 10.

The strip ratio has also been reduced, in the revised plan, to 2-to-1 from 3-to-1 so that the estimated quantity of potentially acid generating waste rock is cut by more than 50% to less than 10 million ton.

Because Windy Craggy is on a trans-boundary, salmon spawning river system, the project comes under federal Canadian environmental jurisdiction as well as the province of British Columbia. “Consequently every one of our environmental reports is distributed to more than 75 government agencies,” said Harper, who claimed that the review process provides a forum for opposition groups to make headlines. Geddes is owned 37% by Northgate Exploration (TSE) and 17% by Cominco (TSE).