Twitter

Mining Environmental Accidents, Pollution, Tailing Dams and Abandoned Mines

B.C.’s Brucejack gold mine approved; first since Mount Polley tailings dam failure – by Gordon Hoekstra (Vancouver Sun – March 29, 2015)

http://www.vancouversun.com/index.html

Mine will not use a dam to store waste

The B.C. government has approved Pretium’s $450-million Brucejack gold mine, the first mine approved since the collapse of the Mount Polley mine tailings dam last year.

Construction of the mine, about 275 km northwest of Smithers, is expected to begin this summer and it is to be in commercial production by 2017. The project will create 500 jobs during the two-year construction period and 300 permanent jobs during its 16-year life.

The Ministry of Energy and Mines said the mine, unlike Imperial Metal’s Mount Polley gold and copper mine, will not have a facility to store mine waste held back with an earth-and-rock dam.

The failure of the Mount Polley earth dam last summer released millions of cubic metres of water and finely-ground rock containing potentially-toxic metals (called tailings) into the Quesnel watershed in the B.C. Interior.

It has raised concerns on the long-term effects of the spill on millions of spawning salmon and other aquatic life, and has led to intense scrutiny of tailings dams in B.C.

Read more

My turn: Mine development in British Columbia raises concerns – by Abe Tanha (The Juneau Empire – March 29, 2015)

http://juneauempire.com/

Abe Tanha is owner and operator of Hooked On Juneau, a locally operated fishing tour company.

As owner of a sportfishing business based in Juneau, I join a large group of Alaskans including Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, Rep. Don Young, 11 municipalities including CBJ and the Southeast Conference of Mayors, tribes, fishermen and tourism operators who are deeply concerned with the scale and speed of mine development in British Columbia. Thank you, Juneau Empire, for a thorough job documenting this issue for your readers.

Last week the Empire responded to a litany of outrageous claims from B.C.’s Minister of Energy and Mines, Bill Bennett, about the Mount Polley mine tailings dam failure and development in the transboundary region. Bennett’s remarks are a total mischaracterization of Alaskans’ concerns and the widespread call from Alaskans for International Joint Commission involvement.

As unprecedented as the Mount Polley catastrophe may have been, the tailings dam failed because of regulatory oversight. Bennett claimed government inspectors could not have detected the glacial silt layer; however, they did identify a plethora of issues related to poor design and maintenance of the dam. These went unaddressed by Imperial Metals.

Read more

Montana mning proposes environmental safeguards – by Mark Thompson (Montana Standard – March 21, 2015)

http://mtstandard.com/

Mark Thompson is the Montana Mining Association president and manager of environmental affairs for Montana Resources in Butte.

On Friday, legislation was introduced in the state Senate that would ensure Montana’s environmental protections are amongst the most rigorous in the world. Senate Bill 409 carried by Sen. Chas Vincent, R-Libby, is the advent of a new era of mining in Montana, where industry proposes standards progressive in concept, comprehensive in scope and definitive in responsible management of tailings storage facilities.

Following a tailings area breach in British Columbia, the Montana Mining Association took a long, hard look at what the Treasure State had on the books to prevent a similar disaster from occurring in Montana.

Mine tailings are the uneconomic remains that result from the milling process, and are conventionally stored in large impoundments similar to the one which breached in British Columbia last year. No such occurrence with a large impoundment has ever happened in Montana’s more than 100 years of mining, yet the Montana Mining Association had the foresight to facilitate a bill which would add a laundry list of new requirements in law and would implement measures to ensure that Montana’s impoundments remain safe.

Through an exhaustive investigative process, the association pooled together resources and information from the industry’s foremost experts in mining and engineering and has proposed a process with significant engineering and review requirements ahead of any new mine tailings storage facilities or expansions.

Read more

Empire Editorial: On the topic of transboundary mines, a response to Mr. Bill Bennett Posted (Juneau Empire – March 22, 2015)

http://juneauempire.com/

 The Tulsequah Chief Mine, located south of Juneau on the Taku River just across the Canadian border, has leached acid runoff into the Taku River since its closure in the 1950s.

Alaskans — Native tribes, commercial fishermen, local governments and ordinary residents — feel it is not at all respectful to leave a mine in ruin, leaching acid runoff. Nor do we feel this is in any way an example of “environmental protection.”

As B.C. forges ahead with 30 new mines to add to the existing 123 along the transboundary region, we’d like to see a firmer grip on reality and less public relations spin from our Canadian neighbors. We need actual compromise and solutions. (Juneau Empire Editorial-March 22, 2015)

It’s not often the Juneau Empire offers a rebuttal to an submitted column. Waging a back-and-forth war of words isn’t fair for the other party. We buy ink by the barrel and have dedicated staff to get the word out online as well.

However, we must respond to the Feb. 24 My Turn penned by Bill Bennett, the Minister of Mines for British Columbia.

Let us start off by addressing the first portion of Mr. Bennet’s piece when he states it was “unfortunate your editorial has seized upon the Mount Polley mine tailings storage facility failure to undermine the long tradition of respectful relations and co-operation between British Columbia and Alaska on mining development and environmental protection.”

Read more

Mount Polley spill leads to new rules for tailing ponds (Canadian Press/CBC News B.C. – March 2015)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia

Companies have to enhance safety and cut the risk of dam failures

The disastrous collapse of the Mount Polley mine tailings pond in B.C.’s Interior last year has spurred changes to provincial environmental requirements for new mines with similar dams.

Developed in collaboration between the ministries of environment and mines, the new rules say mining firms must consider the possibility of a tailings disaster and evaluate the environmental, health, social and economic impacts of an accident.

Environment Minister Mary Polak said Thursday that companies currently under environmental assessment have been anticipating the changes.

“I think there’s an understanding within the industry that after Mount Polley, the world has changed,” Polak said. “We have to be able to assure the public that what’s happening in the province for resource development is safe.”

On Aug. 4, 2014, the massive dam storing tailings from the gold and copper mine gave way, spilling 24 million cubic metres of mine waste and water into nearby lakes and rivers.

Read more

65 Alberta Dams To Be Inspected For Integrity – by John Cotter (Canadian Press/Huffington Post – March 12, 2015)

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/alberta/

EDMONTON – The Alberta Energy Regulator says it will inspect the structural integrity and review the safety records of 65 dams used by the oilsands and coal industries in the province.

The announcement follows criticism by the auditor general that the provincial government is failing to properly regulate Alberta’s network of dams and tailings ponds.

The 65 dams are used to contain industrial waste and the regulator says 32 are classified as posing either “extreme” or “very high” environmental consequences if they were to fail.

CEO Jim Ellis said the regulator will apply the same safety standards to these dams that are used on oil and natural gas pipelines in order to ensure the safe, environmentally responsible development of energy resources.

“The auditor general has recognized the AER’s pipeline regulation performance, and Albertans can be confident that we will apply that same rigour to all AER-regulated dams,” he said. The regulator took responsibility for regulating energy industry dams from Alberta’s Environment Department last year.

Read more

B.C. mines minister aims for right audience with next trip to Alaska – by Tamsyn Burgmann (Canadian Press/Vancouver Sun – February 22, 2015)

http://www.vancouversun.com/index.html

VANCOUVER – British Columbia’s mines minister is making plans to visit Alaska’s indigenous fishing community after admitting his first trip to the state following the Mount Polley disaster addressed “probably the wrong audience.”

Bill Bennett spoke at a major mining industry conference last fall, but met with none of the tribal groups in the southeast region presumed most threatened by upstream mining across the border in B.C.

In retrospect, Bennett said people living off the sea in the transboundary region have every right to be concerned about mines in his province, but that he wants to stem the rising anxiety by sharing more information.

“They do not have the kind of information and understanding of how we do things here in British Columbia that they need to have, and that’s probably our fault,” he told The Canadian Press. “I think that we can relieve some of these fears.”

Bennett has asked a binational economic think-tank to consider organizing a symposium to bring both sides together in one of the southeastern Alaska towns at the heart of its multibillion-dollar fishing industry.

Bennett said he hopes the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region will convene a forum in a few months to share best practices and raise awareness about B.C.’s “rigorous” permitting process.

Read more

Comment: Mines minister must not ignore his own experts – by Calvin Sandborn , Mark Haddock and Jamie Arbeau (Victoria Times Colonist – February 20, 2015)  

http://www.timescolonist.com/

“The panel firmly rejects the notion that business as usual can continue.” — Mount Polley Expert Review Panel

In all the fuss about the execution of search warrants in the Mount Polley Mine disaster case, we shouldn’t lose sight of the main issue — how do we prevent the next disaster?

Indeed, Mines Minister Bill Bennett commissioned the Mount Polley expert panel “to ensure this never happens again.” So why is the minister dodging commitment to the panel’s most important recommendation? Why has he failed to endorse that vital recommendation — and shuffled it off to bureaucrats for extended “review”?

Here’s the issue: The panel noted that more tailings lakes and ponds will inevitably fail — and recommended that the province move to eliminate such water impoundments across the province, in both new and closed mines. Criticizing construction of tailings ponds as “century-old technology,” they called for dry disposal of tailings.

The panel pointed out a central problem: For tailings lakes to work, everything has to go right, all the time and forever. But human error inevitably intervenes. For example, the panel exposed the incompetent ad hoc management of the Mount Polley tailings lake.

Read more

Empire Editorial: Mining disasters must end with Mount Polley (Juneau Empire – February 12, 2015)

http://juneauempire.com/

Two.

That’s how many tailings dams holding back mine waste are expected to fail every decade in British Columbia.

Thirty.

That’s the number of proposed mines and sites under advanced exploration in British Columbia right now.

Four thousand.

That’s how many Olympic-sized pools worth of toxic sludge spilled out of the retention basin at the Mount Polley Mine on Aug. 4, 2014.

If you’re not too concerned about these numbers, you should be. If you’ve glazed over news reports about the recent transboundary mining efforts across the border from Southeast Alaska, it’s time to sit up and pay attention. There are big plans afoot — some with proposals eclipsing the Hoover Dam — that have the potential to decimate our way of life.

On Jan. 30 an independent review panel, established by British Columbia’s government through the Ministry of Energy and Mines with support from the T’exelc and Xat’sull First Nations, found that design flaws were to blame for British Columbia’s Mount Polley Mine tailings dam breach.

Read more

Alaska tribal groups push for study on B.C. mine safety (Canadian Press/CTV News – February 9, 2015)

http://www.ctvnews.ca/

KETCHIKAN, Alaska — A coalition of aboriginal tribes in southeast Alaska is calling for a Canada-U.S. commission to study the impacts of British Columbia’s mining industry on shared waters because of last summer’s collapse of a tailings-pond dam.

Some 14 tribes have formed the United Tribal Transboundary Mining Work Group to urge both governments to evaluate B.C. mining-safety practices through the International Joint Commission.

The call follows the release of an independent report in late January that blamed an inadequately designed dam for the Aug. 4, 2014 incident that saw 24 million cubic metres of silt and water flow into nearby lakes and rivers at the Mount Polley open-pit, gold-and-copper mine near Williams Lake, B.C.

“Alaskans, we’re not at all convinced that B.C. can do all this mining without harming us,” said Carrie James, the group’s co-chair. “Environmental safeguards in B.C., they’ve been weakened over the past decade.”

The group’s main concern is its $1-billion fishery, located downstream from several large-scale mining projects, James said. They want an investigation into any potential long-term effects on the fish and other wildlife located along the transboundary rivers.

Read more

After Mount Polley: ‘This is Indigenous Law’ – by Jerome Turner (The Tyee.ca – February 7, 2015)

http://thetyee.ca/

Six months after dam breach calamity, First Nation takes the lead on mining regulation.

Thursday marked six months since the Imperial Metals-owned Mount Polley mine became the site of the most devastating tailings storage facility disaster in Canadian history, when nearly 25 million cubic metres of toxic mine effluent waste and chemicals spilled.

The spill damaged both Hazeltine Creek and Quesnel Lake, which reside within the traditional territorial boundaries of the Secwepemc Nation.

An official report on why the spill happened from the Mount Polley mine itself was set for release at the end of January, but the B.C. government altered the regulations. Now a report from Mount Polley isn’t due until 2017.

Such moves from the provincial government have spurred the Secwepemc, and specifically the Xat’sūll (Soda Creek) First Nation, to takes steps to ensure nothing like Mount Polley happens again.

The Northern Secwepemc te Qelmucw leadership council, which is composed of four northern Secwepemc bands, finalized a mining policy dated Nov. 19, 2014. Formation of the mining policy began in 2012, but the Mount Polley spill provided the council the motivation to finish it.

Read more

B.C. conservation officers raid two sites in Mount Polley investigation – by Sunny Dhillon (Globe and Mail – February 4, 2015)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

VANCOUVER — Conservation officers investigating the Mount Polley mine spill have finished raiding two sites, though it remains unclear what charges could be laid, or when.

Officers executed search warrants at the mine, near Williams Lake, and the company’s Vancouver office on Tuesday. The spill occurred in August, when 25 million cubic metres of water and mining waste breached a tailings pond and entered Polley Lake and Quesnel Lake.

The investigation is being led by the B.C. Conservation Officer Service, a government agency that focuses on natural resource law enforcement and human-wildlife conflicts.

Chris Doyle, an agency inspector, said Wednesday he could not indicate when the investigation would be complete. “We don’t have a firm timeline, just due to the complexity of the investigation. The goal is obviously to gather the best evidence possible,” he said in an interview.

Mr. Doyle was tight-lipped when asked what officers were hoping to recover from the raids. More than 70 officers were involved, he said.

Read more

B.C. First Nations urge province not to cherry-pick from mine report advice – by Geordon Omand (Canadian Press/CTV News – February 4, 2015)

http://bc.ctvnews.ca/

First Nations leaders are urging the B.C. government to adopt each of the seven recommendations laid out in a review of the Mount Polley mine disaster.

First Nations Summit Grand Chief Ed John said the resulting “massive breach of public confidence” means the province cannot afford to cherry-pick from the conclusions of a report into a tailings dam failure in the province’s Interior.

“I think when you mix water and tailings it’s a recipe for disaster,” John told a news conference Tuesday, commending the work of a government-ordered expert panel that blamed poor dam design for the collapse at the open pit gold and copper mine.

The report, released last week, said building the mine’s tailings site on a sloped glacial lake failed to account for drainage and erosion.

It likened the ad hoc approach to the pond’s design and construction to loading a gun and pulling the trigger. “We urge the province of British Columbia ΓǪ to know and understand this is not a smorgasbord,” said Grand Chief Stewart Philip of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs about the seven recommendations.

He called on the B.C. government to take immediate action in implementing the panel’s conclusions.

Read more

Documents missing, unanswered questions on Mount Polley dam breach – by Vaughn Palmer (Vancouver Sun – February 3, 2015)

http://www.vancouversun.com/index.html

What’s in the 150 pages of material withheld by the B.C. government?

VICTORIA — When a trio of engineering experts reported their findings on the failure of the Mount Polley tailings dam last week, they warned that not every document assembled by their panel could be released.

Some 100 of 850 documents were withheld on directions from the ministry of mines and the ministry of environment, which were still conducting their own investigations into the disaster.

Not wanting to compromise ongoing investigations was one reason, protection of privacy the other. But the result prevented publication, for now anyway, of the supporting documentation for the most telling findings in the report.

Still, one can make assumptions about the contents of the withheld documents by working backwards from the meagre details provided, coupled with the brief passages quoted in the panel report.

The government ordered the exclusion of most of the documents produced by BGC Engineering, the firm that was hired by the mine operator in 2013 to preside over the next raising of the dam to keep ahead of the rising water level in the tailings pond.

Read more

Mining industry welcomes BC’s independent panel report on Mount Polley – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – February 3, 2015)

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – The Mining Association of Canada (MAC) has committed to reviewing the information and recommendations of the Friday-released report examining the August 2014 tailings dam failure at the Mt Polley mine, in British Columbia, with a view to enhancing tailings dam safety.

The report, compiled by the British Columbia government-appointed independent panel, concluded that the cause of the tailings dam breach was a layer of clay underneath the dam that was not taken into account in the original design. The panel stated that the failure occurred notwithstanding effective regulatory oversight.

“The tailings dam failure at the Mt Polley mine was an unfortunate incident that has been taken seriously by the entire industry. While a necessary component of mining, tailings facilities create risks that need to be effectively managed. We believe that every effort must be taken to prevent failures and we support continual advancement in their design, operation and management,” MAC president and CEO Pierre Gratton said.

Immediately following the breach, while the cause was still unknown at the time, MAC proactively initiated a review of its tailings management programme. This included a review of the tailings management requirements of MAC’s mandatory Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM) initiative, as well as the association’s three tailings management guides.

Read more