Tlicho road gets green light from review board

The proposed Tlicho all-season road has cleared a big hurdle, receivingconditional approval fromthe Mackenzie Valley Review Board.

The board released its decision late Thursday, after a two-year environmental assessment. If built, the 95-kilometreroad will connect the tiny Tlicho community of Whati, N.W.T. to Highway3. Whati, roughly 170 kilometres northwest of Yellowknife, is currently a fly-in community except for the months it isaccessible by winter road.

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In its report of environmental assessment, the board statedthe road as proposed is likely to cause significant environmental impacts. But if 23recommended measuresare followed, those impacts can be reduced to an acceptable level, the board said.

The board'srecommended measures include:

• Tracking and managing the changes the road causes to the well-being of people in Whati, including harmful behaviours related to increased access to alcohol and drugs.
• Finalizing range plans to protect both boreal and barrenland caribou.
• Requiring policies that increase the safety of young women in work camps and communities.
• Establishing a working group to help with the monitoring, mitigation and management of the road's impacts.

Good news for NICOproject

The conditional approval is good news for Fortune Minerals, which is trying to develop the NICOproject. The gold, copper, bismuth and cobalt exploration projectis located 50 kilometresnorth of Whati. Fortune plans to build a spur road to the Tlicho road to ship concentrated ore south for processing.

The companyis currently trying to raisethe estimated $600 million it will take to turn NICOinto a mine.

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In January, the federal government conditionally agreed to pay up to 25 per cent of theestimated $150-million cost of building the Tlichoall-season road. The territorial government has decided to pursue the project as a public-private partnership a kind of no-money-down approach to building new infrastructure.

Last September it identified three multi-national joint ventures to compete for a contract to design, build and maintain the road.The joint venture that wins the contract will have to come up with the remaining money for the project after the federal contribution.

The private partners will then design, build, operate and maintain the road for about 29 years.

The territorial government is using the same public-private, or P3, approach to build a new territorial hospital in Yellowknife.

In January, one of the partners in the consortium that won the contract to build and maintain the hospital filed for creditor protection. The territorial government says the partners in the consortium, not taxpayers, are responsible for any problems or extra costs from this move.