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Quesnel, B.C. — A tailings pond that breached Monday, releasing a slurry of contaminated water and mine waste into several central British Columbia waterways, had been growing at an unsustainable rate, an environmental consultant says.
Brian Olding, who operates Brian Olding and Associates Ltd., said Imperial Metals Corp. (TSX: III) had been working on fixing the problem with waste water from the mine. Olding said he was hired by the company as well as the Williams Lake and Soda Creek First Nations to review the company’s plans to treat and release water as part of the province’s effluent release permitting process.
“More water was coming in over the year than they could deal with,” Olding said. “They just kept building the walls up higher and higher every year and it got to the point where that was untenable.”
He said the firm was seeking a permit to treat and release some of the water to keep the size of the pond in check at its Mount Polley Mine, an open-pit gold and copper mine about 140 kilometres southeast of Quesnel.
The earthen dam at one end of the four-kilometre-long pond breached early Monday morning, sending a 45-metre-wide wall of water and mining debris into local creeks and lakes.
