(This article appeared in the Yukon Star, 21 June 2024 .)

(Not so mined boggling!)

Has anyone actually read the current Whitehorse Official Community Plan (OCP)?

The City developed the OCP with significant public input over a five-year period ending with adoption in March 2023. The OCP is driven by the Yukon Municipal Act and updated every 10 years or so. It covers future development, land use, and environmental matters in Whitehorse looking forward about 20 years.

Someone must have read the OCP. The recent concern over proposed downtown building heights of 40 metres (Councillor muses about a plebiscite on building heights, Yukon Star, May 24, 2024) arose in part because the OCP set the maximum height at only 30 metres.

Between 1972 and 1982, The Whitehorse Copper headframe stood over a 400 metre shaft at this location to service the extensive underground workings of the mine, which are now full of water. Tailings are in the centre of the picture.

But the recent sporadic hand wringing over mineral exploration in City limits clearly springs from people who have NOT read the OCP. That sky-is-falling consternation ignores Whitehorse’s past. And it avoids consideration of our future in the face of climate change.

The OCP is quite clear. It encourages brownfield development: new development on previously developed sites, including those requiring remediation. It discourages urban sprawl: no scattering of new low-density residential development over wide areas. It recognizes that heavy industries (“those that may produce smoke, vibration, odour, noise, or electrical impacts that extend beyond their property lines”) would be “valued” and “accommodated” while being buffered from residential areas.

And quite specifically, the OCP encourages the remediation and redevelopment of the Whitehorse Copper Mine site for heavy industrial use. That area, just off the Mt. Sima Road, includes a large expanse of tailings (dry except for seasonal accumulations of rainwater), a deep water-filled pit, wide areas of waste rock, and dangerous sink holes. No, not the sort of place to build houses.

That copper deposits exist in the Whitehorse area is no surprise. The Whitehorse Copper Belt, an arc of about 30 km around the west side of Whitehorse, was defined and explored in the early 1900s. White Pass built a railway branchline along part of what is now the Copper Haul Road to service mines that shipped ore to smelters Outside. But that was a long, expensive haul and mines operated or not as the copper market fluctuated. Those early mines all closed for the last time when the price of copper fell after World War I.

Various companies with more modern exploration techniques came back at irregular intervals. Finally in the 1960s, New Imperial Mines (later Whitehorse Copper) found enough copper in the same locations as the early-1900s mines to build their mill for processing ore from the Copper Belt.

The Whitehorse Copper Mine was a major economic contributor to the Whitehorse economy during its 1967-1982 operation. Indeed, when the City limits expanded in the 1970s, they extended a very long way specifically to include the main Whitehorse Copper Mine area and known copper deposits from Mary Lake in the south to the landfill area in the north.

As a result, our small population and large area give Whitehorse close to the lowest population density of any community in Canada.

A very low population density means that we have a lot of space inside City limits with no houses. Indeed, the OCP designated the Whitehorse Copper Mine area and a band running north along the Copper Haul Road for industrial use. This is well away from current and future residential areas foreseen in the OCP.

So when yet another company comes along looking for more copper in the Whitehorse Copper Belt, why are people surprised and upset? Especially if the company is looking in areas designated for industrial use well away from residential areas? And in the otherwise-useless Whitehorse Copper Mine area specifically mentioned in the OCP?

Noisy, dusty copper mines with tailings piles are not about to spring up next to houses. The OCP prevents that. In any case, sufficient copper to support new mining near Whitehorse has not been found. And moving from successful exploration to building a mine requires many years of detailed public consultation plus lengthy deliberations by the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board (YESAB) and others. We have arguably come a long way since the Whitehorse Copper and Faro mines closed.

Nobody is suggesting that exploration take place in such a way that it affects domestic wells through mineral contamination or increase of radon. And exploration companies do not get away with harming the environment or heritage resources. Mechanisms exist to prevent that and triggered the conviction of one company on exactly that basis in Whitehorse last year.

The OCP does mention resource extraction in the context of gravel, which it says is fundamental to the Whitehorse economy. The Canadian government has declared copper to be a mineral that is critical to Canada’s future in creating a net-zero economy in the face of climate change.

Climate is changing faster in the North than anywhere in Canada even as current copper reserves dwindle. So, if we can tolerate gravel quarrying and crushing inside City limits, saying no to just looking for copper makes no sense. This is especially nonsensical if the exploration meets the OCP and would take place in otherwise useless areas away from residences and recreation sites in our very low density city.

We have no idea today if mines inside City limits are even viable. Banning exploration now would be extremely short sighted.

We have nothing to lose and everything to gain by considering each project on its own merits as long as it meets the OCP without affecting our environment or heritage sites.

TimmiT editing, writing, procurement