In regards to the article “Western Copper permit denial casts shadow on Yukon permitting process” (T. N.M., May 24-30/10), the record needs to be set straight.
The Yukon Water Board made the right decision based on solid facts. I know because I attended every minute of the hearing, unlike the Western Copper Corp. president and COO whom you quote at length in the article.
It is so unfortunate for the mining industry here in the Yukon that Western Copper made such a defective application.
At no time did the hearing go well for the company and, in the end, one could only conclude that no-one present believed the company’s plan. The firm’s testimony was remarkable only for its evasiveness, with its executives frequently stumped for responses to the Water Board’s simple questions, especially about heap leaching.
We all know heap leaching is conceptually simple, but technically very complex. The company put forward a heap-leach test done in a crib as proof that the project would succeed, but the test had failed miserably with over 80% of the solution locked up in decrepitated ore. Their tall columns were a bust and they are back to 1 metre high by 10 cm diameter column tests, and even these are plugging up.
What in the world were these guys thinking in bringing this forward as viable?
The Water License process can be the toughest part of the regulatory process in the Yukon, so it’s not proper for Western Copper to make a slap-dash application and then cry foul when it fails.
Folks around here would like to see a mine, and I would like to see a mine, but this project has some very serious technical problems that the company has been struggling with for over 15 years without success.
Robert Moar, Lands Technician Lands Resources and Infrastructure
Little Salmon Carmacks First Nation Carmacks, Yukon
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