One of these alternatives, the North Option, involves dumping the tailings directly into Bamoos Lake, destroying all life in this 10 thousand year old lake.
View Bamoos Lake in a larger map
Recent fisheries assessments confirmed what anglers from Marathon and the Pic River First Nation have known for generations - Bamoos Lake hosts a highly productive, naturally reproducing cold water fishery.
The Marathon PGM Corporation hasn't yet presented a plan for how they will compensate for the destruction 48 million cubic metres of fish habitat and the extirpation of ancient, locally adapted fish stocks.
Bamoos by the numbers
area=182.5, Ha/451 acres.
mainland perimeter=11.6 km/7.2 mi.
maximum depth=69m/226 ft.
mean depth=26.9 m/88 ft.
elevation=282 m/925 ft.
volume= 48,000,000 cubic metres
location:N 48.81517; W -86.36404
distance from Lake Superior=6.2 km/3.8 mi.
Known fish species from Bamoos Lake
Brook Trout (Salvelinus fontinalis)
Lake Trout (Salvelinus namaycush)
Lake Herring (Coregonus artedii)
Longnose Sucker (Catostomus catostomus)
White Sucker (Catostomus commersonii)
Lake Chub (Couesius plumbeus)
Finescale Dace (Phoxinus neogaeus)
Longnose Dace (Rhinichthys cataractae)
Burbot (Lota lota)
Brook Stickleback (Culaea inconstans)
Ninespine Stickleback (Pungitius pungitius)
Trout-Perch (Percopsis omiscomaycus)
Slimy Sculpin (Cottus cognatus)
High-resolution images of Bamoos Lake, made freely available for publication under an unrestricted Creative Commons license, can be found here.
[Update: July 6, 2010. Marathon PGM has withdrawn its proposal to dump tailings into Bamoos Lake. Read more here.]
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