Victoria Gold pleads guilty to violating water licence in Yukon

Victoria Gold (TSX: VGCX) has pled guilty to violating some of the licensing conditions at its flagship Eagle gold mine near Mayo, Yukon. As a result, the company will be fined a total of C$95,000, reported CBC on Friday.

In June 2023, the Yukon government brought a series of charges against Victoria Gold for failing to comply with the water storage requirements at the Eagle mine site.

It was alleged that the gold miner had stored more water in its heap leach facility than the licence allows, and it also failed to report the amount of water being transferred each month.

The case stemmed from an incident that occurred in July 2021, when 17,000 litres of a cyanide solution, which is used to extract gold from ore, spilled from a pipeline at the Eagle mine site.

This week, Victoria Gold pleaded guilty to the charges related to its water licence in the Yukon Territorial Court.

The fine amount of C$95,000 given to the company was less than the maximum for those charges, as the defense argued that Victoria acted quickly to deal with the cyanide spill and entered a guilty plea early.

Shares of Victoria Gold were up by 1.9% as of 4:15 p.m. EDT. The company has a market capitalization of C$390 million.