Bedding plane aquifers in Silurian and Ordovician sedimentary bedrock exposed at the former Victor Mine, James Bay lowlands, Ontario

ABSTRACT: Open pit mining can create large exposures of rock previously only visible in core or televiewer data from small diameter boreholes. At the former Victor Diamond Mine, located in the James Bay lowlands, Ontario, a sequence of more than 300 m of flat-lying Silurian and Upper Ordovician shallow marines sedimentary rock was exposed by mining, revealing not only the complete stratigraphic sequence of sedimentary bedrock at the mine, but also all the bedrock aquifers. Some of these aquifers were visible as linear seepage features in the open pit. Photographs taken of the open pit during mine development and after the end of mine dewatering, display individual hydrostratigraphic features, providing a unique opportunity to view the aquifers as exposed over hundreds of metres of the pit wall. The photographs show the continuity of these thin bedding plane aquifers whose presence could previously only be inferred between boreholes. This presentation will compare pictures of the aquifers exposed in the pit wall to borehole data from packer tests and flow profiles to show how representative this data is of the many thin aquifers at the mine.