MELFORT — A diamond mine at Fort à la Corne is still in the early stages, with a decision whether to move ahead with a mine a couple of years away.
Rio Tinto and Star Diamond corporation held an open house in Melfort Feb. 7 and will hold an open house in Nipawin Feb. 8 so people can ask questions about their plans for what they’re calling the FalCon Project
“What we’re doing here today is understanding what the communities expect, what the communities want,” said Gary Hodgkinson, project director with the FalCon Project. “People have concerns, which is why we need to understand what those concerns are so we can start working on communication – because a lot of it is around communication.”
Currently the project is still in the early stages, which could change what the project will become.
“We’re trying to take more sample material from these kimberlites to understand whether they have the right value, the right grade to turn it into an economic opportunity. That’s what we’re going to spend most of this year and into the next year, understanding the grade distribution of the diamonds.”
If the companies decide it will not be an economic opportunity, they won’t mine.
“The reason we’re involved with the project is we would like to see it become a mine,” Hodgkinson said.
The sample material can take up to two years.
“In the next couple years we have to make a decision point, whether this project has the potential to go ahead, or whether it’s not going to happen.”
Several people went to the Melfort open house on Feb. 7 to look into job opportunities. Joanne Plamondon was one of them.
“My husband works away in the north already, drilling for diamonds,” Plamondon said. “I was hoping there would be something for him so he doesn’t have to fly away two, three weeks at a time.”
Hodgkinson said if everything works out in the grading process and it does become a mine, it will bring job opportunities.
“We’re not building a massive big city, we’re building a mine,” Hodgkinson said. “But it’s going to bring good job opportunities for the local community.”
He finds it hard to say at this step how many jobs could open up, but they intend to hire local people for those jobs should the everything go through.
“That just makes the most sense, why would you want to hire somebody from another part of the world to come and work here when you can get good quality, local staff,” Hodgkinson asked.
Currently the only positions hired by the mine are for specialized work for the grading process.
“We need a highly experienced technical geologist to interpret the information that we are getting, a number of contractors on site that are providing services to us. They’ll be needing drill operators, maintenance staff, and welders.”
Other people were there to ask about investment opportunities or concerns on the environmental impact.
“There will definitely be an impact, it will be a negative environmental impact to start, but what are we going to do to minimize that impact and how are we going to rehabilitate it afterwards,” Hodgkinson asked. “We are really at the very, very early stages of this project. There is no point in saying we’re going to do a certain amount of rehabilitation when we don’t even know what size the mine footprint is going to be.”
He said the water comes from a shaft on site.
“On site there is a shaft Star Diamond has put down to do the underground sampling and that has got a lot of water in it. For our present drilling purposes we are permitted to use that groundwater,” Hodgkinson said. “The drilling process is very benign, everything that we use in there is biodegradable. It just returns. We pump it into a fines management dam that is permitted and it settles out and then it will go back into the ground water or evaporate.”
Hodgkinson encouraged community members with questions or concerns to reach out to the project.
“There are always contact numbers, we encourage people if they have any questions or concerns to approach us straight away and we’ll do our best to answer them.”
