Article contentBullock said there are financial implications to the agreements but did not disclose what those are.Article contentHe said there are many phases to a gold mining project, including permitting and finance. Bullock said the company does not yet have all the federal approvals required but expects them to be in place within the next 90 days.Article content“Our goal is to start building next year and then it will be a two-year build, then there will be about 14 years of production,” Bullock said.Article contentBullock said the current industrial and environmental approvals cover 15 years from the building stage to the operational phase and the remediation process.Article content“We have a lot of ground around our current resources, a lot of opportunity for expansion, so I would think within the next 15 years, we’ll do a lot of exploration work on an ongoing basis to discover more and extend the mine life. We think this is going to be a multi-decade mine.”Article contentArticle contentBullock said the plan is to extract about 100,000 ounces of gold per year for about 11 years and then stockpile 60,000 or fewer ounces at the end for a total of 1.1 million ounces overall in open-pit mining.Article content“There is the potential for future underground (mining) and on-strike further open pits,” he said.Article contentCleaning up afterwardsArticle contentBullock said that amount of gold extraction would make the Goldboro development a relatively small open-pit mine in Canada, with a very small footprint within one watershed.Article contentThe company has submitted a reclamation bond of $41 million and a detailed reclamation plan with estimated costs. The bond is to be updated every three years to ensure that it continues to be sufficient into the future to remediate the site.Article contentBullock said there will be more jobs in the building phase than in the operational mining phase but both phases will create a substantial number of jobs in a depressed, rural area.Article contentArticle content“We hope to bring Nova Scotians home that are working away, we hope to bring Nova Scotians to an area where there is not a lot going on, we hope to create opportunity in that area,” Bullock said.Article contentHe said the company is planning an employee housing facility on site to house workers and it will incentivize workers to build in the area with some grants.Article contentThe mine industrial approval required surface water and groundwater quality predictions and mitigation measures, a waste rock and historic tailings management plan, site layout and design plans, air and noise monitoring plans, and mitigations and emergency response plans.Article contentEnvironment Department inspectors promote compliance with industrial approval measures and planned and unannounced inspections will take place at the mine site.Article contentUpon conclusion of an investigation, enforced compliance could result in a summary ticket offence or a ministerial order.Article contentThe province says mining accounts for at least 2,500 jobs in Nova Scotia that pay an average of $100,000 per year in wages and benefits. Article contentNotably absent from the briefing were any members of the majority Progressive Conservative government.Article contentAlyse Hand, a provincial government communications specialist who hosted the briefing, explained that the news conference was “purely a technical briefing” about the science that informed the industrial approval decision.Article content
New gold mine in Guysborough County will create an estimated 735 jobs
