Stakeholder Engagement
Water stewardship is a key engagement topic with local and Indigenous communities and with regulators during project permitting, throughout operations and during mine closure and reclamation. More information on our approach to stakeholder engagement can be found here.
We are committed to collaborating with all relevant stakeholders and Indigenous groups in our operational areas of influence. We seek to ensure these groups have the opportunity for meaningful input and participation in our decision-making process so that together we can identify potential opportunities to improve access and maintain water quality.
At a community level, and as part of our Livelihood Restoration Plan at Öksüt, we continued work to improve water resources and identify new water resources on the pastureland that was allocated to the livestock farmers who were economically displaced by the mine. The pastureland is of higher quality than the mine area, and through this work the livestock farmers are expected to have improved yields and livelihoods. Our environmental team at Öksüt will continue to monitor water supply and availability through regular visits, logs and surveys to ensure livestock water demand is met.
At Endako, a multi-stakeholder group (the Endako Water Quality Working Group) composed of members from the Ministry of the Environment, Indigenous groups and Centerra works collaboratively to determine science-based environmental benchmarks and to develop and design monitoring programs.
Water Stewardship Performance
We strive to improve our water performance with regulatory compliance, consultations with concerned stakeholders, including Indigenous groups, and focus on design and planning for optimal water use in the engineering phase.
We recognize the importance of water conservation measure throughout our operations. At Öksüt, operations use a heap leach facility to reuse water and solution continuously to reduce the freshwater demand on the environment. In 2022, the installation of a permanent electric pumping system at Mount Milligan Mine enabled the recycling of 450,000 m3 of water, leading to a decrease in the site’s external water consumption. Öksüt’s contact wastewater treatment and reuse plant installation initiative has been able to reduce freshwater demands and support the recycling of process water.
Regional Water Benefits
We endeavour, where possible, to provide water benefits in the areas where we operate.
We have a responsibility to ensure that we manage the impacts to shared water sources with local communities of interest, especially in areas with high or extremely high baseline water stress.
We work to improve access to water for the communities in which we operate. These efforts are done in collaboration with regional committees and are often part of our strategic community investment initiatives.