Red Chris mine is expected to yield a vast fortune. But how to insure against another catastrophe?
The highest levels of corporate integrity and responsibility should be the standard for any new mine in Canada, and especially for one with as much potential as Imperial Metals’ Red Chris project, situated at the heart of the Sacred Headwaters in remote northwestern British Columbia. Imperial Metals has acknowledged that all exploration, regulation and construction costs will be reclaimed within two years of the mine’s anticipated three decades of active production.
If true this immense and certain profitability ought to allow both the company and the government to push the limits of excellence on every front, assuring the public at every step in the process that costs and/or expediency will never deflect them from their goal of building an exemplary mine. It is in the interests of all of the mining industry and both federal and provincial governments that such high standards be set for Red Chris. Civic and corporate responsibility aside, self-interest alone would suggest that Imperial ought to build a great mine.
Consider the optics of Imperial’s immediate dilemma. Todagin Mountain, site of the Red Chris mine, is home to the largest concentration of stone sheep in the world, a resident population that attracts remarkable numbers of predators. A wildlife sanctuary in the sky, the massif looks west to Edziza, sacred mountain of the Tahltan; north to the Grand Canyon of the Stikine, internationally known as the K2 of white water challenges; east to the Sacred Headwaters, birthplace of the Stikine, Skeena and Nass Rivers; and beyond to the Spatsizi, widely recognized as the Serengeti of Canada.
Building an open pit mine on Todagin, which overlooks the nine pristine lakes of the Iskut/ Stikine headwaters, is the height of industrial audacity, seen by many as being as ill-conceived a gesture as drilling for oil in the Sistine Chapel. In time it may well be considered an act of folly comparable to the building of the Glen Canyon dam on the Colorado River, today widely viewed by all sides of the political spectrum in the United States as having been an egregious public policy decision.
Changing prospects in the region
There are other issues to concern the provincial government. The construction of the Northwest Transmission Line (NTL), the extension of the provincial power grid without which Red Chris could not be developed, perhaps made sense in 2006 when there were five major industrial projects being proposed for the remote region. But since then the global economy has endured the worst blow since the Great Depression.
In 2012 Shell Canada withdrew from its much anticipated coal bed methane development in the Klappan. The promising and highly promoted Galore Creek copper and gold project imploded due to fiscal challenges and uncertainties. Fortune’s play for anthracite in the Sacred Headwaters has very weak legs, especially in the wake of the recent Supreme Court’s Tsilhqot’in decision; the Tahltan are universally opposed to the project.
AltaGas’s run of the river hydro project at Forrest Kerr is a going concern. But the public will be hard pressed to understand why well over $700 million of public funds were spent to extend the provincial grid to facilitate a private power company’s efforts to sell back electricity to the state. People are especially uneasy to learn that $130 million of this initial funding came from the federal Green Infrastructure Fund, money set aside by Parliament ostensibly to “green” our national economy.
The official rationale for the inclusion of these funds was the government’s desire to get 350 Tahltan people at the small community of Iskut off of diesel to reduce their carbon footprint, albeit at a per resident cost of close to $400,000. This will surely be difficult to sell to anyone, let alone a skeptical public, especially for a government that prides itself on fiscal responsibility.
For the rest of this article, click here: http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2014/09/22/Mount-Polley-Sister-Mine/