On Friday, Imperial Metals, the company responsible for Canada’s largest-ever mining waste spill, served an injunction application to indigenous protesters blocking roads to its Red Chris copper and gold mine near Iskut, British Columbia.
A group of Tahltan First Nation elders known as the Klabona Keepers have blocked access to the mine for the second time in two months over concerns that Red Chris is too similar to Mount Polley, a sister mine that spewed 24 million cubic meters of toxic sludge and wastewater into one of the province’s biggest salmon spawning lakes on August 4.
“As a result of the blockades and the conduct of the blockaders, no person and no vehicle are able to access the project site along the access roads,” reads Imperial Metals’ injunction application, which was delivered yesterday morning. “Red Chris has been forced to severely limit its construction activities at the project site, and if the blockade continues, will be forced to halt them altogether.”
Resource companies often use injunctions to break up protests. For example, on October 3, 2013, a company called SWN Resources was granted an injunction to remove Elsipogtog First Nation protesters from a shale gas exploration site north of Moncton, New Brunswick. Two weeks later, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) enforced the injunction with an over-the-top display of force that included beanbag guns, police dogs, snipers, and plenty of pepper spray. Needless to say, shit escalated quickly.
Last time the Klabona Keepers blocked the mine’s two entrances, British Columbia’s mines minister and high-ranking execs from Imperial Metals came out to the blockade to negotiate a deal. The company offered to pay an independent contractor chosen by the Tahltan to conduct a safety review of the “tailings facility” (the man-made lake where they planned to dump more sludge containing arsenic, lead, and mercury). BC’s provincial government agreed not to issue the mine’s final permit until that independent review was complete.
The Keepers agreed to these terms on August 23, but returned to the mining roads on September 29 and set up camp. What brought them back to the blockade?
“A few women came up from Secwepemc territory and did a presentation about what happened at Mount Polley,” said Klabona Keepers spokesperson Rhoda Quock, who I reached by phone on Saturday.
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