As the cleanup plan for the defunct Con Mine near Yellowknife seeks final approval this week, the mine's operator is in talks with the City of Yellowknife to see about cleaning part of the site enough so that houses could be built there some day.

Miramar Mining Corp. will present its cleanup plan to the Mackenzie Valley Land and Water Board for final approval later this week. The mine closed in 2003 after 65 years of gold production.

The proposed cleanup plan, which was 20 years and five versions in the making, describes how the company will clean up the massive 340-hectare site, including how it will demolish old buildings, haul scrap away, and eliminate arsenic — the by-product of gold processing — that has contaminated much of the site's water and soil.

"We're pretty well at a standstill now. We need the final approval of the closure plan so we can move forward," said Ron Connell, Miramar's environmental superintendent.

Tailings ponds located in the middle of the mine site have 10 times the allowable arsenic level for an industrial site. They will eventually be capped with rock and and planted with grass and trees.

Arsenic is also present on the lakeshore on the west side of Yellowknife Bay. While the Northwest Territories government wants that area to be cleaned up to industrial standards, the city of Yellowknife has asked Miramar to aim for even higher standards: clean enough to be suitable for a residential area, which the city would like in order to help ease its land shortage.

"Essentially we are required to return the land to an industrial use standard. Being within the city of Yellowknife, the city's asked us to go a little further on those standards and bring some of the areas to residential standards," Connell said.

"We've had quite a number of meetings with the city recently to negotiate how we're going to do that, but it appears that we will be doing some reclamation to residential standards."

Connell could not say how much it would cost to meet the higher standards requested by the city.

While the process of meeting those standards would be expensive and time-consuming, Coun. Mark Heyck said it's an idea worth researching.

"You know, once the existing buildings are removed, it's not terribly difficult to start developing residential areas," said Heyck, who lived next to the mine's boiler house as a child.

If the Land and Water Board gives the plan its final approval — it had already given approval in principle — Miramar will do most of the clean-up work over the next two years, transforming the 65-year-old industrial site into a grassy field.