Experts working with the #FirstNation of #NaChoNyäkDun who have witnessed the fallout at #VictoriaGoldEagle mine near #Mayo, #Yukon, say systems on-site are so severely compromised that damage to the land & water is all but inevitable.

What they describe is a system rendered mostly #inoperable, with each affected piece elevating #risks to the #environment — every day.

On June 24, part of the Eagle #mine failed and a massive #RockSlide involving roughly 4 million tonnes of material cleaved off a large piece of the facility where #gold is extracted from ore using a chemical process called cyanide heap leach. Estimates put the amount of ore stacked on the heap leach pad — which functions as a giant industrial percolator — at nearly 4 times what was lost in the slide.

With the #HeapLeach pad downed, experts say a #toxic soup of #SodiumCyanide & other #contaminants — up to 300,000 cubic metres of solution, according to the #YukonGovernment — was released in the initial slide. Since then, they say, more of it has been draining.

The First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun has called the event "the region's most recent and potentially #catastrophic #mining failure."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/victoria-gold-mine-experts-1.7264503