This is Giant Mine

“Space-age pipes loom over me, two-pronged fingers jutting straight up at the sky. They plunge into the earth under our feet, where, like a steampunk Lovecraftian nightmare, the pipes full of carbon dioxide freeze a quarter-million tonnes of deadly arsenic trioxide dust to keep it dormant in perpetuity. The size of an office building, the test chamber below is the first, and the smallest, of 15; there’s a long way to go before all of the dust is contained. This is the future of what was for 60 years the crown jewel of Yellowknife, the economic driver of the North, until it finally closed in 2004.”

 

Jimmy Thomson – The Narwhal – June 2018

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