Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister responsible for Transportation. They are in follow up to my Member’s statement from earlier today where I talked about the rerouting of the Ingraham Trail through the Giant Mine site.
I understand that there is a public consultation process going on right now that is expected to be done in August, where they’re hopefully going to decide on some routing, and hopefully going to decide on a timeline for the completion of this project. I was wondering if the Minister could give me a bit of an update on the results of that public consultation. Do we know a route, has a route been finalized, and what kind of timeline are we working on for the completion of this project? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. About three questions there. The honourable Minister responsible for Transportation, Mr. Michael McLeod.
Thank you. I appreciate the recognition of all the questions he threw in that quick question.
Mr. Speaker, we have been working on the realignment of the Giant Mine road. We’ve been working with the Giant Mine Remediation Team over the last while. We want to ensure that whatever option is selected meets their requirements for remediation. We’ve also been talking to various stakeholders, such as the City of Yellowknife, the YK Dene, and we’ve also requested public input on the three options that we put out for consideration. We intend, as the Member indicated, to take one more round of consultations -- that’s going on, I think, right now -- and have some results before the end of August, after which a final decision will be made on which route will be taken.
Not to answer the second question but just to give some information, right now the information that we have indicates that there is a preference to relocate the road completely away from the mine site, so one of the options that does that will be considered. Thank you.
I’d like to thank the Minister for that response, and thanks for a little bit of clarification as to where the routing might be. The route that’s the right-of-way from the mine is route one. Does that mean that route one is the route that will likely be selected?
For the record, I like route one. I think route one is great because it opens up some more land for city development and public usage, so that’s good. I’ll stop with that one question instead of throwing three at him, Mr. Speaker.
First of all, we haven’t decided on a final route but I think that most people agree that route one is probably the option that meets most of the needs. It reallocates the road away from the mine site, it opens up new land, and it would provide, of course, for a completely realigned highway. That is, right now, probably a favourite. Thank you.
Regardless of which route is selected, do we have a bit of a timeline? The Minister did indicate that he hopes the public consultation will be done by August, but when do we expect, regardless of the route, that the construction will start, and when do we expect to see some completion so that we’re not having our heavy loads going up to the diamond mines over the arsenic chambers themselves? Thank you.
Right now the plan is to have all information gathered by the end of August, the final decision on realignment by the month of September, and start the engineering in the same month of September and into October. We want to have our tenders out for construction sometime in October/November and we’d like to have the construction start this year, the site preparation, and the stockpiling of gravel and crushing and work on the embankment next year. We’d like to have the road opened to the travelling public by the summer of 2012 and final servicing of the road by 2013. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final supplementary, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks for that update. We look forward to driving on the road in 2012 and 2013.
I guess my last question is about financing. This is part of the Giant Mine reclamation, so who is ultimately responsible for the cost of this road? Will it be the GNWT or can we expect the feds to kick in the bulk of the cost of realigning this road to avoid the arsenic chambers? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Of course, the final costs will be dependent on the option that we choose, and the price could be fairly expensive. However, we expect that the funding will be obtained from the GNWT’s Giant Mine Environmental Liability Fund that was previously established, and that’s probably where we’re going to draw the money from. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
