It will take 45 years to seal Faro’s toxic tailings off from the rest of the world, making it one of the most expensive mine remediation projects in Canadian history.Closing Faro’s tomb will cost over $450 million and require constant maintenance for at least 500 years.
These are the early figures from the Faro Mine Closure plan, now being prepared for an environmental assessment in the fall. Many details still have to be finalized, but this is the first time the daunting, multi-centennial task has been outlined in one coherent plan.
It won’t be easy burying the former lead zinc mine. The 25-square kilometer mess consists of 55 million tons of tailings, 320 million tons of waste rock and contaminated spill sites.
“Right now, we haven’t got the details of the design and specifications for all of the future, but what we do have is a single direction that we can take,” said Stephen Mead, the project’s senior manager.