In Canada, the New Rush Is for Diamonds

There are a few odd rules to working in a diamond mine. "You don't bend down to pick up anything" off the ground, said Gordon Kretchmar, 47, a heavy equipment operator who commutes from Kamloops, British Columbia. "A stick, a stone or anything." Employees are searched going to and from work.

But most workers never even see a diamond, only massive tons of gray stone disappearing into the jaws of machines. The machines sift and sort out the diamonds in an automated "no-hands" operation, removing temptation.

Some people here are wary of the north's latest call to riches. The gold miners who began migrating here in the 1930s created a boomtown in Yellowknife with large gaps between rich and poor. The companies skimmed the largess, pocked the earth and left a highly toxic legacy of arsenic trioxide in chambers underground.

Native groups, which contend they were cheated by the gold mines, have pledged that it won't happen again. They are surrendering rights to their land only in return for guarantees of jobs and training. The number of Indians and Inuit enrolled in post-secondary education has soared as skilled and technical jobs beckon at the nearby mines.

Environmental groups are giving the mines much tougher scrutiny. Local native groups are part of monitoring teams that hover over the operations and inspect the companies' plans on issues from water quality to caribou migration paths.

"This isn't the gold mining that we saw in the latter part of the last century," Bell said. "Environmental standards are much higher. There is lots of monitoring. It's a different era."

But the prosperity has brought a housing squeeze in Yellowknife. There are new drugs and crime in town. Attempts to establish a gem-polishing industry are flagging. Some of the companies owned on paper by natives have mostly non-natives on staff, and other aboriginal groups still contend mining companies' profits take precedence over residents' concerns.

"The thing about diamonds is they make the companies incredibly rich. The question is how much of that they leave behind to the community," said Joan Kuyek, national coordinator of MiningWatch Canada, an Ottawa-based watchdog group.

"Most of the aboriginal people are desperate for cash, desperate for work, desperate for some opportunities for their young people. Anyone coming in and offering those things cannot really be resisted."

Environmentalists also say that despite tougher regulations, the mines will leave a long-term scar on the land. Caribou numbers are falling; Indian hunters blame the mines. Long after the diamond mines have closed, their piles of excavated earth will be the tallest features on this subarctic tundra.

"The monitoring agency has said the environmental performance on the ground has been quite good, or very good. But that doesn't mean there are no environmental impacts," said Bill Ross, a University of Calgary professor who chairs a committee that reviews environmental management at one of the mines.

"There will always be issues," said Tom Hoefer, a Yellowknife native and Diavik's point man with the community. "But if you have to have a mine in your back yard, a diamond mine isn't bad to have."