Baker Lake uranium project draft impact report due

Areva Resources Canada will submit its draft environmental impact statement on a proposed uranium mine near Baker Lake to the Nunavut Impact Review Board on Wednesday.

Arevas Kiggavik project is a proposed uranium ore mining and milling operation located about 80 km west of Baker Lake.

The document is expected to be about 10,000 pages long, the result of five years of research and information gathering.

"This is a big milestone," said Barry McCallum, manager of Nunavut affairs with Areva.

"This will explain what is proposed, what the possible impacts are, how we've considered those impacts and what we plan to do about them."

He said he expects more than a thousand comments from people concerned about the proposal.

"A document of this nature and length and detail will take quite a bit of scrutiny," said Ross Thompson with the Beverly and Qamanirjuaq Caribou Management Board

The document will be available in English and Inuktitut on the Nunavut Impact Review Board's website butbecause it's so large, that may not be until early in the new year.