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BC resource sector under the gun Breach at mining dam threatens drinking water, salmon-spawning rivers, spilling over to wider resource industry, pipeline plans Gary Park For Petroleum News
Opponents of natural resource development have started turning words into action across Canada.
In northwestern British Columbia, the Gitxsan First Nation blocked the movement of Canadian National Railway trains through their 13,000 square miles of “traditional” land.
In southwestern Ontario, protesters set up a blockade at a pipeline site, disrupting work on the reversal of Enbridge’s Line 9 which is planned to replace oil imports into Quebec and Ontario refineries with crude from Western Canada, mostly the Alberta oil sands.
But those events were quickly overshadowed when a dam containing tailings from Imperial Metals’ Mount Polley gold and copper mines in central British Columbia’s Cariboo region was breached, sending 10 million cubic meters of water and 4.5 million liters of toxic silt into adjoining lakes and some of the world’s largest salmon spawning rivers.
Filings with Environment Canada showed that material dumped into the tailings pond last year included 326 metric tons of nickel, 400,000 kilograms of arsenic, 177,000 metric tons of lead and 18,400 metric tons of copper.
Imperial says no mercury Imperial President Brian Kynoch told a meeting of residents that mercury had never been detected in the pond, while arsenic levels were about one-fifth of drinking water quality.
“We regularly perform toxicity tests and we know this water is not toxic to rainbow trout,” insisting that water from the pond is “very close to drinking water quality,” though the silt poses a problem.
The Cariboo Regional District took no chances, declaring a state of local emergency, giving it access to additional resources that were needed to further protect private property and government infrastructure.
While water tests were being conducted, a ban was imposed on all consumption and recreational use of the Quesnel and Cariboo river systems from the spill site to the Fraser River, several hundred kilometers away.
Imperial Metals’ controlling shareholder is Murray Edwards, an influential stakeholder in Canadian Natural Resources and Penn West Petroleum and a leading organizer of fundraising within the Alberta-based petroleum industry for B.C. Premier Christy Clark and her governing Liberal party.
That disclosure compounded unease among anti-industrial factions that neither the wider resource sector nor the British Columbia government can be trusted to act as responsible stewards of the public interest.
Engineering firm warnings The Vancouver-based engineering firm of Knight Piesold, which designed the tailings dam and storage facility at Mount Polley, issued a statement Aug. 8 saying it had warned Imperial Metals and provincial government officials that the dam was “getting large” and steps should be taken to avert problems.
The firm said it ended its involvement with the tailings facility in February 2011 and that changes made to its design and engineering since then mean it could “no longer” be considered a Knight Piesold design.
However, in preparing to hand over its responsibilities as an engineer of record, the firm said it sent the cautionary advice to Kynoch and the B.C. chief inspector of mines, then opted out of bidding to retain its role as the engineer responsible for the dam’s design.
Kynoch, without responding directly to the Knight Piesold statement, told a community meeting that if those who engineered the dam had said a bigger dam was needed “we would have built a bigger dam.”
Environment Minister Mary Polak told a conference call with reporters that her department did not have any of the Knight Piesold complaints “on record.”
She said six inspectors are now gathering concerns expressed by Imperial Metals employees, former employees and First Nations.
A spokeswoman for the Mining Association of B.C. said that although little is known about the cause of the spill - which she described as an “anomaly” - there could be consequences for the mining industry.
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers has not said whether it expects any collateral fallout.
Concerns from First Nations But Bob Simpson, a former member of the provincial legislature from the Cariboo area, told reporters the government is “directly implicated” in the dam breach, saying the Ministry of Mines, in approving the mine expansion, failed to “account for the increased effluent into an already suspect tailings pond.”
Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, said the spill will have a major impact on the relationship between First Nations and the resource industry.
“A spill is a spill is a spill,” he said, arguing it makes no difference whether it comes from a mine or a pipeline such as Enbridge’s Northern Gateway or Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain expansion.
Phillip said the issue is one of toxic chemicals such as oil and mining sludge versus water and the environment.
He said that if the government does not provide adequate answers on the spill’s impact and the history of problems at Mount Polley his organization will call for a public inquiry.
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