After 8.2m carats, Canada's First Mine is now a Lake
April 24, 23
(IDEX Online) - De Beers has filled the decommissioned Victor diamond mine, in northern Ontario, Canada, with almost 12 billion gallons of water and turned it into a lake.
Virtually nothing now remains of the mine, which opened in 2008 and closed in May 2019.
Over its life, more than 8.2 million carats of diamonds were recovered at Victor. It was identified in 1987 as Canada's first economically viable diamond deposit, and De Beers Group Canada spent $2.6 billion building and operating it during its lifetime.
The clearance project involved bulldozing 75 structures, from a small storage shed to a large processing plant, and using the mine's ice road to remove 4,000 tonnes of material for recycling.
"We've been working on closing Victor Mine for close to 20 years, even before we started construction," De Beers senior communications officer Terry Kruger told CBC, Canada's government-funded broadcaster.
"So closing the mine has always been at the forefront of our mind, even before we started to operate."
Pic shows one of the last trucks to leave Victor Mine before it closed in 2019