Projects

Sleeping giantBarrick recently spent two years and $20 million reclaiming the tailings storage facilities at Giant Nickel, a closed mine in B.C. it acquired, but never operated, as part of a lucrative merger almost 20 years ago

Barrick recently spent two years and $20 million reclaiming the tailings storage facilities at Giant Nickel, a closed mine in B.C. it acquired, but never operated, as part of a lucrative merger almost 20 years ago

By Kylie Williams

April 06, 2020

The Giant Nickel mine, British Columbia's only nickel producing mine, closed its doors in 1974. Courtesy of Barrick/Allison Brown

Barrick Gold Corporation inherited the closed Giant Nickel mine in southwestern British Columbia when it merged with Homestake Mining Company in 2001. The site, its best days already a generation in the past, was just a liability among a broad portfolio of assets around the world. At the time, the mine had been idle for 27 years, and what remained was an estimated five million tonnes of tailings material over 22 hectares. Activity at the site, however, picked up in 2016 as Barrick launched a $20-million project to reshape and reclaim the land.

This is NOT A PAYWALL To access CIM Magazine, please create a free account

(Note that by creating an account you are not signing up for a CIM membership.)

If you are a CIM member or have already signed up, click here to log in

If you already have a CIM account, please enter your username (often your email) and your password.

If this is your first time here, you can create a free account

Forgot your password?

More Projects

Quebec’s golden pockets

Virginia Heffernan

Exploration is stagnant around most of the world, but Quebec’s gold camps in the Abitibi and James Bay regions offer a ray of light in an otherwise dark tunnel

Hope for the future

Correy Baldwin

TMAC’s high-grade Hope Bay gold project in the Kitikmeot region of Nunavut is nearing start up