BC’s Mount Polley Mining Disaster Blamed on Crappy Laws According to New Report

There will be no charges or fines issued against Imperial Metals as a result of the catastrophic failure of its tailings dam at the Mount Polley gold and copper mine last summer, according to Al Hoffman, the BC's chief inspector of mines.

The decision not to forward charges to Crown Counsel was based on Hoffman's yearlong investigation into the incident, in which a dam enclosing the mine's tailings storage facility collapsed, sending 10 million cubic metres of water and 4.5 million cubic metres of slurry containing tens of thousands of kilograms of toxic and carcinogenic materials into Hazeltine Creek, Polley Lake, Quesnel Lake, and the surrounding environment.

The investigation was completed and presented in a government report on Dec. 17.

"Though the mine and its engineers employed weak practices on the mine site," they were "not in contravention of any regulation," Hoffman said via email. They also did not legally contravene existing mining legislation, he added.

Some of the weak practices included a failure to account for the strength and location of a layer of clay underneath the dam in its design, inadequate water management, insufficient beaches and a sub excavation at the outside toe of the dam that exacerbated its collapse.

"The conclusions are fair, based on the regulatory regime we have in British Columbia right now, but therein lies the weakness," said fisheries biologist and long-time local resident Richard Holmes. "The mining company really walked a very fine line between creating profit for themselves and meeting their regulatory requirements—which by the way were very, very weak. And the government themselves were negligent on our behalf as citizens of the local area. They never monitored this project well enough and the regulatory regime was not powerful enough or strong enough to rein the company in."

Currently, mining laws do not allow for administrative penalties. At present, the government has very few tools to enforce compliance other than to shut the mine down, issue stop-work orders or pursue prosecutions according to Hoffman. Plans are underway to address this and other regulatory issues with new standards and guidelines.

Local First Nations are leading the charge to ensure these changes take place.

"Change is never easy and people fear change, especially when it's based on economy. Government is always hesitant to change anything that they think works for them," said Chief Ann Louie of the T'exelc (Williams Lake) First Nation. "But if we don't do the work there will never be any changes."

Louie was one of a number of First Nations leaders who spent four consecutive days after the disaster deep in negotiations—including one six-hour stretch on the phone in her car—to produce a letter of understanding together with the provincial government and the Xatsull (Soda Creek) First Nation that now guarantees First Nations oversight in a wide range of issues pertaining to the mine, which re-opened at half-capacity last July.

One issue the nation recently provided comment on was the province's November 30 approval of a two-year permit for the Mount Polley Mining Corporation to discharge treated wastewater from the mine into Hazeltine Creek and then via pipeline into Quesnel Lake in the short term. The mining corporation has not yet finalized a long-term water treatment and discharge plan.

At the time the permit was issued, the province stated that any treated and discharged water "will be required to meet Ministry of Environment water quality guidelines."

Residents who source their drinking water from Quesnel Lake remain skeptical about its safety, however, even without the addition of the new water discharges.

"They've taken care of the aesthetics. It looks pretty, it's almost park-like. But they haven't removed one ounce of the crap that came down the mountain and went into the lake," said Peggy Zorn, who lives on the Quesnel River and runs a tourism company with her husband Gary.

Both in their 60s, they sunk all their savings into the business, according to Gary, who estimates their losses to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. They have been told they will receive no compensation.

It is estimated that the deposit of mining waste in Quesnel Lake is at least 600 metres long, one to three metres deep, and a kilometre wide. "Tailings" are the leftovers from mining and include rock particles, chemicals used to extract minerals like gold, and water. If the tailings are pumped into a wet storage area, it's called a "tailings pond." The tailings from the Mount Polley mine contained a variety of highly carcinogenic and toxic materials, among other things, tens of thousands of kilograms of arsenic and lead, and hundreds of kilograms of mercury and cadmium. When the dam surrounding the Mount Polley tailings pond collapsed, this material emptied out into the surrounding waterways and environment over a period of 16 hours. Home to approximately a quarter of the province's sockeye salmon, chiefs at the Xaxli'p, Sek'wel'was and Tsk'way'laxw First Nation near Lillooet issued a notice days after the dam failure saying that "skin [is] peeling off the fish."

In the last two seasons since the disaster, when Quesnel Lake experiences its fall "turn over," the river has run green, said Gary. Holmes, who has lived in nearby Likely for more than 40 years, said he has also witnessed the phenomenon.

"They say it's safe to drink but nobody will drink it. All the filters they use are plugged up immediately," said Gary.

"The government had buried it here and hope it will go away. Our local town fathers, all they scream about is 'jobs, jobs, jobs' and screw the environment. […] But once they get the high-grade ore out of the underground, these guys will be gone, just like they always are. They strip it and then they're gone, and then the people here will be left with the mess. Who knows what's going to happen—one year, two years, five years down the road. Nobody knows."

Both Gary and Peggy Zorn have requested that the government conduct an investigation into what the social and economic effect has been on the local community, but have not received an answer.

Phone and email requests for comment that were sent to Lyn Anglin, Imperial Metals' chief scientific officer, and Steve Robertson, Imperial Metals' vice president of corporate affairs. VICE did not receive a response by time of publication.

Another investigation into the Mount Polley mine spill, led by the BC Conservation Officer Service, is still underway. Officers raided two sites related to the disaster last February, but have not given a date for when the investigation will conclude.

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