A land swap between a mining company and the city is seeing a snow dump move away from a local waterway.
To meet an Ontario Ministry of Environment order, the City of Timmins had to relocate the snow dump from its previous location behind the Carlo Cattarello Arena (The Barn) in South Porcupine.
The snow dump in that part of town will now be on Gold Mine Road on the property where the mine manager's house was.
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To allow for the move, the City of Timmins and Newmont Porcupine swapped parcels of land.
The City of Timmins receives the two-hectare mine manager's property at 4610 Gold Mine Rd. Newmont Porcupine receives a 13.39-hectare parcel of land behind the arena. As part of the exchange, the city is only allowed to use its acquired land to store snow.
Over a year ago, the Ministry of Environment determined that the Legion Drive snow dump didn't meet the province's best management practices and required site improvements, such as berms or trenches. The city advised the Minstry that the improvements couldn't be made in 2022-23 and the snow dump was temporarily moved for last winter to an area north of Spruce Hill Lodge at Gold Mine Road and Bruce Avenue.
There was no report in the agenda to explain the land swap. Coun. Lorne Feldman asked for clarification about the agreement at the meeting, though.
The snow dump site behind the arena was close to the Porcupine River, CAO Dave Landers told council.
"By doing a swap with Newmont our snow dump has been moved away from the watercourse into the area where the old mine manager’s house is, which is well away. So if there’s anything in the snow, perhaps salt, perhaps metals or whatever, dirt, it’s not making its way as directly into the watercourse. It’s melting a good distance off,” he said.
The swap is an investment to protect the waterway, said Landers.
"(Newmont was) willing to work with us on that because we had received orders from the Ministry of the Environment to make sure that the winter snow storage was moved as far away from the waterway as we could manage and this is better for the environment, it works well for us in public works and meets the needs,” he said.
