A ‘doomed’ tailings dam and a system that ‘institutionalizes failure’ – by Vaughn Palmer (Vancouver Sun – January 31, 2015)

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

Report calls for systemic (and costly) change that will eliminate possibility of dam failures

VICTORIA — The tailings dam at the Mount Polley mine was “doomed to fail” and the remedies that could have prevented the reckoning were undertaken “too little and too late.”

Such was the depressing, persuasive conclusion of the trio of experts appointed to review last August’s breach of the dam — an environmental catastrophe that need not have happened at all.

The root cause of the failure, they determined, was literally at the root of the dam: an underlying deposit of glacial till that was never fully mapped nor properly understood. We only know about it now because of the forensic engineering work that was part of their review.

But if that were the whole story, their report would not be as troubling as it is. For authors Norbert Morgenstern, Dirk van Zyl and Steven Vick — all experts in engineering — painted a far from flattering portrait of the Mount Polley operation and the constant raising of the dam that preceded the breach.

“Dam-raising proceeded incrementally, one year at a time, driven by impoundment storage requirements for only the next year ahead,” they write. “More reactive than anticipatory, there was little in the way of long-term planning or execution.”

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B.C. report on Mount Polley results will decide Morrison mine’s fate – by Justine Hunter (Globe and Mail – January 29, 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.

VICTORIA — One of the little-known casualties of the Mount Polley mining disaster was a proposed new mine hundreds of kilometres away, its fate left in limbo since the tailings pond dam collapsed.

When the provincial government releases a report Friday on the cause of the massive breach at Mount Polley, it will be forced to reconsider its decision on the Morrison mine project.

In the fall of 2012, British Columbia refused to issue a certificate for the Morrison copper-gold mine, despite the fact a government report had concluded it would not result in significant adverse effects if mitigation measures were followed. It was a surprising decision from a pro-resource government that had systematically streamlined regulation and reduced oversight to encourage investment. Suddenly, the industry was questioning whether the ground rules for mining in British Columbia had changed.

A B.C. Supreme Court judge overturned the government’s decision in December, 2013, saying the province had failed to meet the requirements of procedural fairness. At the time of the original decision to reject the Morrison mine, then-environment minister Terry Lake explained that his government had applied new “risk versus benefit” criteria that the proponent, Pacific Booker Minerals Inc., failed to meet.

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Report on Mount Polley mining disaster set for release – by Justine Hunter (Globe and Mail – January 28, 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.

VICTORIA — A report to be released on Friday will pinpoint the cause of the Mount Polley dam failure and is expected to lead to new safety standards for the entire Canadian mining industry.

But blame and consequences for any misconduct won’t be part of the story this week. Almost six months after the ecological disaster, responsibility for the collapse of the tailings pond that released millions of cubic metres of waste material into Quesnel Lake and other waterways in central British Columbia is still under investigation.

The provincial government is set to release the results of a geotechnical inquiry by an independent panel – this will be the engineers’ explanation of what went wrong.

The report’s findings could pave the way for the partial reopening of the copper and gold mine 55 kilometres northeast of Williams Lake. Two other investigations have yet to be published that would determine if any fines or prosecution are warranted – one by the Chief Inspector of Mines and the second by the Conservation Officer Service, a law-enforcement body that would send any recommendations for charges to provincial Crown Counsel.

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B.C. First Nation to probe pollutants despite assurances from mine – by Mark Hume (Globe and Mail – January 22, 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 — A small native community in central British Columbia has launched a health study into the possible impacts of a copper mine, despite assurances from the company that its research shows there’s no reason for concern.

Chief Bernie Mack of the 180-member Esdilagh First Nation said as tailings from the Gibraltar Mine build up around reserve lands, concerns are growing that pollutants may be seeping into the ecosystem.

“Number one thing is, our community members fear the resources and the water around the mine are contaminated. So why we are doing this research is to find out how safe the ecosystem and the health of the environment is,” Mr. Mack said Thursday.

A research team from the University of Victoria and the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, a Switzerland-based agency that works globally, will conduct the research. Mr. Mack said many Esdilagh members grew up with the mine almost in their back yards, but they have become increasingly concerned about the operation.

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BC chief inspector of mines amends Mt Polley Act to enable repairs to start – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – December 19, 2014)

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

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – The chief inspector of mines for British Columbia, Al Hoffman, has approved an amendment to the Mount Polley Mine Corporation Mines Act permit to allow the company to start repairs of the breach in its tailings storage facility dam.

The repair work was part of the long-term remediation plan for the area impacted by the August Mount Polley breach, the provincial Ministry of Energy and Mines said. The work at the tailings storage facility would help ensure that the increased water flow from melting snow (also known as spring freshet or spring breakup) will not result in further environmental or human health impacts.

The amendment to the mine’s permit only authorises the company to undertake the approved breach repair work and set out a number of conditions that would have to be followed by Imperial Metals subsidiary Mount Polley Mining Corporation. The amendment does not allow the mine to restart its ore-processing operations.

The Cariboo Mine Development Review Committee, which included technical representatives from the provincial government, Williams Lake Indian Band, Xat’sull First Nation, Cariboo Regional District, Community of Likely, and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada had reviewed the Mines Act permit amendment application and geotechnical design for the breach repair.

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Transboundary issues remain thorny – by Elwood Brehmer (Alaska Journal of Commerce – December 11, 2014)

http://www.alaskajournal.com/

Alaska groups concerned about the impact of British Columbia mines on Southeast fisheries continue to push for federal intervention in Canada’s project review process.

Leaders from Rivers Without Borders, the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, Salmon Beyond Borders and the United Tribal Transboundary Mining Working Group urged attendees of the Dec. 2 Bureau of Indian Affairs Tribal Providers Conference in Anchorage to sign a petition requesting Secretary of State John Kerry to initiate the International Joint Commission process — the only way the Alaskans can have their voices heard they said.

The commission, or IJC, consists of five commissioners, two from Canada and three from the U.S., who review transboundary watershed issues. The IJC can only get involved when called upon by both governments. In the U.S., the State Department makes that call.

Rivers Without Borders Alaska Campaign Director Chris Zimmer said there are about a dozen proposed mines in British Columbia that his organization is concerned about. However, the Kerr Sulphurets Mitchell, or KSM, gold proposal on the British Columbia side of the Unuk River drainage seems to be top priority for most individuals worried about the issue.

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Alaskans fear environmental, industrial threats from B.C. mines – by Dirk Meissner (Canadian Press – December 3, 2014)

http://www.canadianmanufacturing.com/news/

Alaskan environmental, aboriginal groups say unchecked development threatens salmon and tourism industries

VICTORIA—British Columbia’s ambition of opening new mines in the province’s north has raised fears in neighbouring Alaska where environmental and aboriginal groups say the unchecked development threatens their salmon and tourism industries.

Tribal leaders and salmon-protection advocates gathered at a Bureau of Indian Affairs conference in Anchorage, and high on the agenda was the impact of B.C. mineral developments on the multi-billion-dollar Alaskan industries.

Conference delegates called on the United States State Department to use the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty to activate the International Joint Commission, hold boundary dispute hearings and discuss the important salmon waterways, the communities they support and the risks they face from potential mine contamination.

“We’re asking the U.S. federal government to elevate this issue to the International Joint Commission,” said Guy Archibald, a spokesperson for the southeast Alaska Conservation Council.

Archibald said conservation and aboriginal groups have formed the Salmon Beyond Borders coalition to lobby their government to pressure Canada and B.C.

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Teck to control contaminants from mining operations in B.C.’s Elk Valley (Canadian Press/Huffington Post – November 19, 2014)

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/british-columbia/

VICTORIA – A plan to address decades of coal-mining contaminants leeched into the Elk Valley watershed has been approved by the B.C. government.

The water treatment plan by Teck Resources Ltd. would control selenium and nitrate that have been dumped into nearby rivers and streams as the mining giant expanded operations over the years.

The company will construct water diversions and treatment facilities at several of its mine sites, including at Line Creek, Fording River and Elkview Operations, the government said. Environment Minister Mary Polak said Tuesday that the measures will improve water quality.

“This plan represents the next step in the long-term plan to ensure a healthy watershed in the Elk Valley,” she said in a statement. “Many different groups have come together to find solutions.”

In April 2013, the government ordered Teck Resources to stabilize and reverse water-quality concentrations. It cited the presence of several chemicals, including selenium, cadmium, nitrate, sulphate and the formation of calcite in the water.

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Red Chris mine failure would eclipse Mount Polley damage: report – by By Cara McKenna (CBC News British Columbia – November 19, 2014)

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

Porous soil at site of proposed tailings pond dam called a ‘major design issue’

The Canadian Press – The results of a third-party review into the design of a northwestern B.C. gold and copper mine says it has the potential to cause significantly more environmental damage than the recent collapse of the Mount Polley tailings pond.

Engineering firm Klohn Crippen Berger made 22 recommendations for the owner of the mine, Imperial Metals, to improve the tailings dam of the Red Chris mine, 500 kilometres north of Terrace.

The review found the design of the dam is feasible, but that there are issues that must be addressed. The three-phased review looks at the tailings pond design, water quality predictions and geohazards at the mine site.

It identifies a “major design issue” for the soil on which the dams would be built, noting the porous soil could cause damaging water leaks if the planned installation of a fine-grained tailings blanket isn’t enough to limit seepage.

It also suggests that designers carefully monitor the water balance for their tailings reservoir and complete a risk assessment around the effects of another nearby landslide.

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Groups ask why no charges have been laid a year after Alberta coal mine spill – by (The Canadian Press/Globe and Mail – November 12, 2014)

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.

EDMONTON — Conservation groups want to know why no federal or provincial charges have been laid over a massive spill from a coal tailings pond in west-central Alberta.

An estimated 670 million litres of waste water spilled into tributaries that feed into the Athabasca River after an earth berm broke at the Obed Mountain mine on Oct. 31, 2013.

The mine was owned at the time by Sherritt International, which has since sold it to Westmoreland Coal Company. Groups including the Alberta Wilderness Association say Sherritt should be charged under the federal Fisheries Act.

They also say they want both governments to make public what was in the tailings, how the spill has affected the rivers and how it may affect the health of people who live downstream. Federal officials and staff at the Alberta Energy Regulator were not immediately available for comment.

“The lack of enforcement and charges for a spill of this magnitude calls into question the approval of any mining development in Alberta,” Brittany Verbeek, a spokeswoman for the wilderness association, said Wednesday.

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Second Mount Polley probe looking into government’s disclosures – Mark Hume (Globe and Mail – November 11, 2014)

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 — A second investigation has been launched into the question of whether or not the B.C. government has improperly withheld information about the catastrophic collapse of the Mount Polley tailings pond.

In a letter to the Environmental Law Centre at the University of Victoria, Michael McEvoy, the acting Information and Privacy Commissioner for B.C., has confirmed his office has opened a file into a complaint by the ELC about the government’s refusal to release routine mine inspection reports concerning Mount Polley.

Since the Aug. 4 accident, which discharged nearly 15 million cubic metres of toxic mine waste into the Fraser River watershed, the government has refused to release documents related to the mine, including the annual dam safety inspection reports from 2010 to 2013.

The government said documents couldn’t be released because an investigation is under way. That prompted the ELC to complain to the Information and Privacy Commissioner that the release of documents “relevant to the greatest mining environmental disaster in B.C. history is a matter of clear and pressing public interest.”

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At Alaska mining conference, talk of Pebble and Mount Polley – by Yereth Rosen (Alaska Dispatch News – November 6, 2014)

http://www.adn.com/

The owner of the Canadian mine that suffered a disastrous dam breach in August might face sanctions as serious as criminal penalties, British Columbia government officials said on Wednesday.

Decisions on corrective and possibly punitive steps will be made after provincial officials learn the findings of three separate investigations into the Mount Polley Mine dam failure, said Bill Bennett, British Columbia’s minister of energy and mines.

The Aug. 4 dam failure, though unprecedented for British Columbia, undercut confidence in the safety of mining in the province and around the world, Bennett told an audience at the Alaska Miners Association annual convention in Anchorage. “If it could happen there, where else can it happen? And that’s a question that’s on all of our minds, I think,” he said.

The Mount Polley dam breach has been cited by opponents of the controversial Pebble mine as a harbinger of risks that project poses to Alaska’s salmon-rich Bristol Bay region. Mount Polley is considered a moderate-sized mine for British Columbia; the proposed Pebble copper and gold project would be much bigger, with a much bigger tailings dam and much bigger potential damages, critics say.

Mount Polley’s woes also concern fishermen and environmentalists in Southeast Alaska, many of them already on edge because of spreading mine development just over the border in British Columbia.

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The Stealth Element: How Mercury Became a Global Environmental Problem – by Gustavo A. B. da Fonseca (Huffington Post – November 3, 2014)

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/

Gustavo A. B. da Fonseca is Director of Programs, Global Environment Facility.

I spent many fond moments as a child letting captive mercury droplets swirl from the palm of my hand to another as I waited for my father, a dentist, to finish working on his last patient of the day.

The element that goes by the symbol Hg in the periodic table of elements (from the Greek word hydrargyrum, or “liquid silver”) is still widely employed in fillings of dental cavities in the form of an amalgam with a blend of other metals. It has also found a breath of uses in the modern world including medicine, industrial manufacturing of chlorine, plastics, compact florescent lights and gold production.

It took a major calamity to wake society up to the health hazards brought about by the carefree use and handling of mercury. In 1956, at a remote fishing village of Japan, where a chemical plant was, for decades, dumping loads of mercury into the Minamata bay, the large-scale poisoning of people and animals was bought to the attention of the wider public.

Mercury bioaccumulates in the environment through the ingestion of food and water. Over time, the element then concentrates in individual organisms then through the contamination of their immediate environment. Described as the Minamata disease, this form of severe mercury poisoning is a debilitating neurological syndrome caused by the consumption of marine organisms heavily contaminated with mercury.

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In Polley’s Wake, Downstream Alaska Fears BC’s Mining Boom – by Christopher Pollon (The Tyee.ca – November 1, 2014)

http://thetyee.ca/

Tag along with the fishermen whose livelihood depends on watersheds that cross borders

Roaring at seven knots up the U.S. side of the Stikine River, a grizzly bear of a man named Mark Galla steers our jet boat through a gauntlet of protruding logs, attempting to point out the exact point at which Alaska becomes British Columbia. Against the vastness of the surrounding wilderness, the border is invisible, almost arbitrary. Until recently, most Alaskans couldn’t see it either.

That all changed in August when YouTube video highlights of the Mount Polley mine disaster circulated through panhandle towns like Ketchikan, Petersburg and Wrangell. Media from across the state drew comparisons between Mount Polley and the tailings dams that could one day accompany the half-dozen open pit mines proposed in the wild river watersheds that Alaska and B.C. share — the Unuk, Taku and, more than anywhere else, the Stikine.

The first of these proposed mines will be Red Chris, a copper and gold mine built by Mount Polley-owner Imperial Metals in the B.C. headwaters of the Stikine, scheduled to open later this year. Another is the $5.3 billion Kerr-Suphurets-Mitchell (KSM) project, which could generate two billion tons of waste rock, requiring tailings storage in the Nass River drainage and waste rock dumps in the Unuk watershed.

The grand enabler of these projects is a taxpayer-subsidized power line completed this year, which will bring cheap, rock-grinding electricity to the B.C.-Alaska border region for the first time. With the price tag of about $750 million (BC Hydro’s original estimate was $404 million) comes the electricity required for at least five new northwest mines.

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Mount Polley mine reopening is an issue of credibility – by Justine Hunter (Globe and Mail – November 3, 2014)

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.

VICTORIA — It is not too soon, in Williams Lake, to talk about reopening the Mount Polley mine.Not three months has passed since the tailings pond dam failed, releasing millions of cubic metres of waste into central British Columbia waterways.

The province and the company are still working on a cleanup plan that will take years to fully implement. It will be months, at least, before any clear explanation for the dam failure is made public.

But Williams Lake city council, mindful of the uncertain future for hundreds of mine workers, is drafting a letter to Premier Christy Clark – expected to be approved this week – to urge her to get the gold-copper mine back to full operation.

The mine is 55 kilometres from Williams Lake, and many of its workers and suppliers reside in the community. The province has launched three investigations into the ecological disaster, and has cautioned against rushing to judgment on just what happened and why.

“It is going to be really important that none of us form conclusions until we get to the end of those investigations,” Environment Minister Mary Polak said last month.

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