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by Will Purcell

The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Monday was a mediocre 64-71-122. The TSX Venture Exchange fell two points to 752 while polished diamond prices lost 0.35 per cent. Dermot Desmond's Mountain Province Diamonds Inc. (MPVD) gained 15 cents to $4.03 on 109,000 shares. The company is ramping up diamond production at Gahcho Kue and hoping for higher prices.

Jim Gowans's Dominion Diamond Corp. (DDC), down six cents to $16.17 on 203,000 shares, has received an amended Type A water licence for its Ekati mine. The revised licence was approved last week by the government of the Northwest Territories, based on the recommendations of the Wek'eezhii Land and Water Board. (The licence is not some simple certificate that is tacked up on the wall of the front office: The document runs for 95 excruciating pages.)

The amendment allows Dominion to develop Jay, a key component of which is a large water retention dike in Lac du Sauvage, a bay at the northeastern end of Lac De Gras. Once the dike is complete, the water trapped atop the pipe must be pumped out. Fortunately, the licence allows Dominion to remove 32 billion litres of water, which is the amount that would be contained in a cube 320 metres to a side. (Dominion plans to pump the water at Jay into the Misery and Lynx pits, once they are mined out.) There should be ample wiggle room in the volume limit, as the water in Lac du Sauvage is not as deep as in Lac de Gras, where Dominion and its Diavik partner, Rio Tinto PLC, had to build big water retention dikes in the early 2000s.

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