https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
The Township of Pickle Lake is impatiently waiting for answers from Queen’s Park on what to do with a four-decades-old environmental legacy issue that’s hampering local development.
The presence of arsenic in surface tailings at the former Central Patricia mine site has the northwestern Ontario community in a long-running standoff with three provincial ministries. The mine site is located within the community and just off the highway that courses through town and runs north to service remote First Nation communities and Goldcorp’s Musselwhite Mine.
The tailings are spread over multiple places on the property, which ceased mining in 1954. Until mine closure plans were imposed by the province in the early 1990s, companies could walk away and leave their mess behind with no obligations.
But new provincial planning regulations forbid the township from doing any new development near the mine site. “Basically, it ties our hands in Pickle Lake,” said Mayor Karl Hopf.
Pickle Lake is located at the extreme north end of Ontario’s highway system and on the western edge of where one of two Ring of Fire access roads is expected to start construction in 2019.
For the rest of this article: https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/regional-news/northwestern-ontario/left-in-limbo-in-pickle-lake-922063