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The Mount Klappan Coal Project is located in Northwest British Columbia (B.C.), Canada approximately 330 km northeast of Prince Rupert.  The initial exploration licenses were acquired by a subsidiary of Gulf Canada Resources Limited (Gulf) in 1981. Subsequent to 10 years of site investigation and environmental assessment, Fortune Minerals Limited contacted Gulf’s new parent company, Conoco Oil, in 2001 to negotiate the acquisition of the Mount Klappan coal property.  Acquisition of the lease and a comprehensive technical database was completed in 2002.  The property is comprised of 59 exploration licenses totalling 15,093 hectares. The site contains Canada's largest known resources of high quality anthracite coal in four deposit areas. Fortune Coal, a division of Fortune Minerals intends to develop a mine and process plant at Mount Klappan.

Overview

This project is a resurrected version of one that Rescan worked on in the early 1980’s when the property was owned by Gulf Canada. At that time, Rescan was retained to prepare environmental and socio-economic assessment reports and an application for approval-in-principle from the Government of British Columbia. Material from Gulf and various consultants was assembled and prepared for presentation in a Stage II Submission which described the project, proposed environmental management strategies, evaluated potential environmental management strategies, potential environmental effects and assessed social and economic implications for the region.

Experience

Rescan/RTEC is currently providing environmental and socio-economic services for the development of a 1.5 million tonnes/year open pit coal mine near Mount Klappan.  Components of the Baseline Studies and subsequent Environmental Assessment include: fisheries and aquatics, hydrology, hydrogeology water quality, wetlands, wildlife, habitat mapping, vegetation, soils and reclamation, meteorological studies and air quality, acid rock drainage (ARD) and metals leaching assessment, archaeology, socio-economic surveys, and First Nations traditional knowledge. These data will be presented in the environmental assessment report along with environmental management and mitigation plans for the proposed mine and associated operations and infrastructure.

We also endeavour to hire as many local people to assist in our work as possible. To this end we continue to have Tahltan and Iskut personnel on virtually every field team.