Yukon Project Means Training, Jobs
Faro, YT – Carolyn Bennett, federal Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Larry Bagnell, MP for Yukon, recently announced the award of a major contract for the next phase of the North Fork Rose Creek realignment project at the Faro Mine site in Yukon. Pelly Construction Ltd. was the successful bidder on the $44.4 million project, which is required to prevent the creek from coming into contact with contaminated water on the site. The project will create jobs, build skills, hire local businesses and employees, and bring new economic opportunities to the Yukon.
“The work to protect the North Fork Rose Creek and clean up the Faro Mine site will not only safeguard our environment but provide employment and skills training that will benefit local First Nations and the Yukon for years to come,” says Bennett. The Faro Mine, located in central Yukon, is an abandoned lead–zinc mine that is one of the largest contaminated sites in Canada. “Remediating at the Faro Mine Site is our community’s top priority,” says Chief Jack Caesar, Ross River Dena Council. “Working with Yukon and Canada, as the community most affected by this contaminated site, we share the view that the remediation work must move forward as quickly as possible. [This] announcement, awarding the contract to further this remediation work, is what our community has been looking forward to for many years.”
The realignment of North Fork Rose Creek will keep the community’s water clean. It includes the construction of a new 1.9 km water channel, road construction, water management and other related works. A 1.15 km long diversion channel built earlier this year will be used to divert the existing North Fork Rose Creek from the current construction area before work begins on the new channel. Targets are set for training and subcontracting with First Nations as part of the tendering process. Since 2005, an average of 57 per cent of the work on Northern Contaminated Sites Program projects has been performed by Northerners and 33 per cent by Indigenous people. Contractors for Faro Mine remediation projects are generally hired and managed by Parsons Inc., the Interim Construction Manager for the site. Tenders are posted online at MERX.
