B.C. mining boom, recent tailings breach prompt environmental fears in Alaska – by James Keller (CTV News/Canadian Press – August 21, 2014)

http://www.ctvnews.ca/

VANCOUVER — Heather Hardcastle has spent her life fishing for salmon at the mouth of the Taku River, which starts in a remote corner of northwestern British Columbia before dumping into the ocean near her home in Juneau, Alaska.

She was six years old when her parents bought a fishing boat. More than a decade ago, she became co-owner of Taku River Reds, a small commercial fishing outfit that ships salmon throughout the United States.

In recent years, however, Hardcastle’s attention has been focused farther upstream in B.C., where a cluster of proposed mining projects has fishermen, environmentalists, aboriginals and a handful of politicians in Alaska concerned about the potential impact on the environment in their state.

And those concerns have only been amplified by a recent mine tailings spill in central B.C., where the full impact from the disaster on aquatic life remains unclear.

“It’s one thing on paper to say that you have standards that are high, but it doesn’t matter when you have a disaster like this,” said Hardcastle, whose concerns prompted her to become involved with the environmental group Trout Unlimited.

“There’s a real lack of confidence and trust right now.”

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Mt Polley: Expert Panel Review – by Jack Caldwell (I Think Mining.com – August 18, 2014)

http://ithinkmining.com/

Jack Caldwell, P.E. has a B.Sc. in Civil Engineering, an M.Sc. (Eng.) in Geotechnical Engineering and a post-graduate law degree. He has over 35 years engineering experience on mining, civil, geotechnical and site remediation projects. He has worked on numerous projects throughout southern Africa, Europe, Canada and the United States.

We are heartened by today’s announcements re the Mt Polley tailings facility failure. I particular we applaud the choice of experts retained to do the engineering review.

CBC New reports as follows on this issue: “Minister of Energy and Mines Bill Bennett says the B.C. government is setting up two separate reviews following the Mount Polley tailings pond failure earlier this month.

Bennett said Monday that:

The first review by three independent experts will investigate the failure of the tailings dam at the Mount Polley mine.
The second review will require all mines in British Columbia that have tailings dams to have independent experts conduct a review of their facilities and submit them to the government.

The first review will be completed and submitted to the government and the Soda Creek and Williams Lake Indian bands by Jan. 31, 2015, and the recommendations will be implemented by the government “where needed,” Bennett promised. The minister said the reviews were necessary to restore public confidence in the mining industry.

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Will the mine of the future be a mine at all? – by W.Scott Dunbar (Globe and Mail – August 18, 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.

The Globe and Mail has sought out columns from thought leaders in Western Canada, people whose influence is shaping debate, but whose names may not be widely recognized. Scott Dunbar is the head of the Department of Mining Engineering at the University of British Columbia.

Metals to support our way of life are extracted by mining and processing large quantities of rock. The basic extraction paradigm is “drill, blast, load, haul, dump, crush, grind, separate, process.” There are many variations, but fundamentally, the paradigm has not changed since ancient times.

Innovations have made operations in the paradigm safer, more efficient, automated and even autonomous. Rock containing very small quantities of metal can be economically mined and processed and it is tempting to think that further innovations will allow mining and processing of rock containing even smaller amounts of metal.

However, some constraints are having a significant effect on the feasibility of mining. First, economic metal deposits are very difficult to find. Some deposits exist at depths of one kilometre or more, but heat and rock-mass stability at these depths make their exploitation difficult. Also, the waste-rock dumps and tailings generated by mining and mineral processing pose significant engineering challenges, environmental concerns and financial liabilities.

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B.C. mine’s breached tailings pond one of 98 to undergo independent investigation – by Sunny Dhillon (Globe and Mail – August 18, 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 — The B.C. government has ordered independent investigations into the spill at the Mount Polley mine and at every other tailings pond in the province, saying the disaster has shaken public confidence and threatens to undermine other resource-sector projects as well.

The province – which has been criticized by First Nations near the spill for a perceived lack of industry oversight – has also signed a letter of understanding with two bands, whose leaders say they’ll push for meaningful mining reform.

The hiring of an outside panel of experts to investigate the Mount Polley spill is a shift from the province’s earlier stance that probes by the chief inspector of mines and the Conservation Officer Service would suffice. Each of the three experts on the panel has decades of engineering experience, with one having worked on the investigation into the New Orleans levee failures during Hurricane Katrina.

At a news conference Monday, Bill Bennett, B.C.’s Minister of Energy and Mines, stressed that the province must do whatever it takes to restore public confidence in mining in particular and the resource sector in general.

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Why [B.C. mines minister] Bill Bennett Needs to Resign – by Rafe Mair (TheTyee.ca – August 18, 2014)

http://thetyee.ca/ 

By well-established precedent, Bill Bennett right about now should be typing his letter of resignation to Premier Clark.

Extreme? Not at all. Here’s a bit of history that, trust me, speaks directly to the mining minister’s duty after the catastrophic breach of the tailings pond at Mount Polley mine.

Just after the the Second World War, the British agricultural minister resigned. During the war, the Royal Air Force had expropriated a lot of farmland for airfields. After the war, this land was resold by the ministry to bidders. A lot of hanky-panky and plain unfairness came with the sales and it became a scandal.

When the scandal broke, the minister, Thomas Dugdale, who knew little of the scheme and had nothing personally to do with it, promptly resigned. When asked why, he explained simply that since he took credit for when things went well in the ministry, he had to bear responsibility when they didn’t. He perhaps was too hard on himself. Many thought so, including Winston Churchill, his prime minister. He, however, felt that his ministry had failed in its duty, which required that he take the fall.

During the Falklands War, Lord Carrington, the defence minister, felt that his ministry had not properly advised the prime minister on the ramifications. The prime minister didn’t think so but Carrington did. Again, in his view, the ministry had failed to do its duty, he was the minister, and so he must go.

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Mount Polley inquiry must be independent – by Stephen Hume (Vancouver Sun – August 18, 2014)

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

Dam collapse: Government was involved in inspecting structure, so a true arms’-length investigation essential

The engineering firm that designed the Mount Polley tailings pond containment system that collapsed on Aug. 4 also designed a tailings dam that failed catastrophically in South America on Aug. 19, 1995.

Knight Piésold designed the tailings containment facility for the Canadian-owned Omai gold mine in Guyana. Before the accident, it had handed off operational responsibility to the mining company, which then hired another engineering consultant, the Canadian firm Golder Associates.

The Omai tailings dam collapse spilled an estimated 2.9 million cubic metres of toxic waste into the Essequibo River, the country’s biggest and most important watershed. (Some estimates run higher.) Guyana’s President Cheddi Jagan, whose government held a five per cent share of the mining venture — it was the poor country’s largest private sector employer — and had been championing its economic benefits, called it “the country’s worst environmental disaster.”

A subsequent inquiry found no criminal liability and a civil class action suit was later dismissed. It’s worth noting, perhaps, that by comparison the Mount Polley tailings dam failure, which B.C.’s Mines Minister Bill Bennett has equated with a simple natural landslide, spilled 14.5 million cubic metres — about five times as much contaminated waste as at Omai — into the Fraser River system, B.C’s biggest and most economically important watershed.

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Oilsands mogul Murray Edwards to help fund Mount Polley mine spill cleanup – by Christopher Donville and Andy Hoffman, (Bloomberg News – August 15, 2014)

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

Oilsands mogul Murray Edwards is backing a $100 million bond sale by Imperial Metals Corp. that will help fund the cleanup of a B.C. mine-waste spill, the worst accident of its kind in Canada in 20 years.

Edwards, Imperial’s largest shareholder, agreed to buy $40 million of the 6 percent, 6-year senior unsecured convertible debentures via Edco Capital Corp., a company he controls.

The Fairholme Partnership LP will buy another $40 million. If the issuance fails to raise the full amount sought, Edco will buy non-convertible notes bearing interest at 12 percent to make up the shortfall, Imperial said yesterday in a statement.

Murray, 54, who holds a 36 percent stake in Imperial, has business interests that span energy, engineering and a stake in a National Hockey League team. Buying the bonds isn’t the first time that he’s helped fund development of the Mount Polley copper and gold mine, the scene of last week’s accident, said David Davidson, an analyst at Paradigm Capital Inc.

“Once he invests in something, he supports it through thick and thin,” Davidson, who’s based in Toronto and whose rating on Imperial is under review following the spill, said today in an interview. “Not only is he committed to Mount Polley, but he’s committed at a really tough time.”

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B.C. First Nations band evicts mining company that owns Mount Polley tailings pond – by James Keller (Vancouver Province – August 14, 2014)

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

THE CANADIAN PRESS – CHASE, B.C. — A British Columbia First Nation plans to issue an eviction notice to Imperial Metals Corp. (TSX:III) — the company behind a massive tailings pond breach at a gold and copper mine last week — over a separate project in the band’s territory.

The declaration from the Neskonlith Indian Band is the latest sign that last week’s tailings spill at the Mount Polley Mine in central B.C. could ripple across the company’s other projects and possibly the province’s entire mining industry.

The Neskonlith band said the notice, which its chief planned to hand-deliver to Imperial Metals in Vancouver on Thursday, orders the company to stay away from the site of its proposed Ruddock Creek zinc and lead mine, which is located about 150 kilometres northeast of Kamloops.

The mine, which is still in the development phase and has yet to go through the environmental assessment process, would be located near the headwaters of the Adams River, home of an important sockeye salmon run. The Neskonlith band opposed the mine long before the Mount Polley tailings spill.

“We do not want the mine developing or operating in that sacred headwaters,” Neskonlith Chief Judy Wilson said in an interview Wednesday.

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Regulate Canadian, Not American Metals Mine, Murkowski Says – by Alan Neuhauser (U.S. News and World Report – August 14, 2014)

 http://www.usnews.com/

The Alaska senator seeks greater environmental enforcement at a Canadian metals mine, but opposes regs at a similar mine in Alaska.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, has called for greater oversight of a Canadian metals mine – even as she lambastes federal regulation of a similar proposed mining project in Alaska.

“It’s an irony, because the risks associated with Pebble Mine are precisely those that we have seen unfolding before our eyes over the past week in British Columbia,” says Joel Reynolds, western director and senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “That is to say, a major containment dam failure resulting in significant off-site contamination in salmon habitats.”

Last week, a dam containing the wastewater pond for Canada’s open-pit Mount Polley mine ruptured, sending millions of gallons of potentially contaminated water spilling into a river along the Alaska border (Canadian officials lifted a ban on drinking tap water Tuesday). Later that week, Murkowski dashed off a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, urging him to impress upon Canadian leaders “the potential impacts that large-scale mining in Canada could hold” for the state’s fishing and tourism industries, as well as its indigenous population.

“The tailings pond breach at Mount Polley on August 4 has renewed the specter of environmental impacts from large-scale hardrock [sic] mineral developments in Canada that are located near transboundary rivers,” Murkowski wrote.

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BC’s two-faced approach to regulation – by Doug Firby (Troy Media – August 14, 2014)

http://www.troymedia.com/

Doug Firby is Editor-in-Chief and National Affairs columnist for Troy Media.

Doug FirbyCALGARY, AB, Aug. 14, 2014/ Troy Media/ – Several organizations have egg on their faces after the tailings pond disaster in central British Columbia. But no one has more than the government of British Columbia.

Yes, Imperial Metals Corp. looks like a bad corporate citizen for failing to anticipate and prevent the collapse of the dam. The mishap unleashed an estimated 10 million cubic meters of water and 4.5 million cubic meters of ground-up rock. The local folks are still waiting to hear when it will be safe to drink the water.

B.C., however, looks even worse and here’s why. As one recent poll found, citizens trust resource industries because they believe they are highly regulated. That is, they expect their governments to protect their interests. By that measure, the bureaucrats have betrayed that trust.

Accidents don’t happen when it comes to this sort of thing. Dams don’t just collapse without warning. They do when people aren’t paying close enough attention to them. Clearly, neither Imperial Metals nor the government of B.C. were paying close enough attention to this dam.

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Clark still promising natural gas dream will produce ‘billions’ to slay B.C.’s debt – by Brian Hutchinson (National Post – August 14, 2014)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Time and other factors are shredding British Columbia’s $1-trillion liquefied natural gas (LNG) expansion dreams, served up by Premier Christy Clark and leading to her successful — and disingenuous — provincial election campaign last year.

Despite more and more skepticism, she’s still running with it. An expanded LNG industry in B.C. will eliminate the province’s mounting debt, or so the premier claims. As well, “billions-of-dollars in new [LNG] revenue will be dedicated” to a “Prosperity Fund,” a sort of rainy-day account “for the benefit of current and future generations.”

How many “billions-of-dollars” does Ms. Clark have in mind? “More than $100-billion.” That’s a loose figure, based on estimates from reports commissioned by the B.C. government and assuming at least five new LNG plants will soon enter production in the province.

B.C. has a lot of natural gas; in theory, much of it can be piped from the hinterland to seaports, then chilled, liquefied and shipped to markets in Asia.

Easier said than done. Ms. Clark’s “billions-of-dollars” promise relies on a whole lot of what-ifs; nonetheless, the premier and her B.C. Liberal Party ran with it, declaring themselves wealth generators, job creators, debt busters. Their opponents, the B.C. New Democratic Party, offered no compelling response in the election, and lost.

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Editorial: Who designed the Mount Polley tailings dam? – by John Cumming (Northern Miner – August 13, 2014)

The Northern Miner, first published in 1915, during the Cobalt Silver Rush, is considered Canada’s leading authority on the mining industry. Editor John Cumming MSc (Geol) is one of the country’s most well respected mining journalists.  jcumming@northernminer.com

It’s a week and a half after the massive tailings spill at Imperial Metals’ Mount Polley copper–gold mine in B.C.’s Cariboo region, and many unclear aspects of the disaster are coming into better focus.

Of immediate concern, the tailings have continued to flow in an uncontrolled manner out of the tailings lagoon all this time, but on Aug. 12, the B.C. government said that the flow had “decreased dramatically,” and that Imperial had begun building a temporary dike to stop the flow. Lake and river water tests outside the contaminant plume show that this water is within safe drinking water guidelines, and so most water-drinking and fishing bans in the region have been lifted, except in the immediate area of the spill.

Engineering firms are usually pretty low-key when it comes to commenting on their clients’ projects, but the extraordinary scale of the Mount Polley breach has prompted both Knight Piésold and AMEC to go public and describe their roles in designing the tailings dam and its later expansions.

Knight Piésold describes itself as the “former engineer of record of the tailings storage facility at Mount Polley,” and said that it informed Imperial that it would no longer continue in that role as of February 2011. Knight Piésold commented that during the time it acted as engineer of record, the tailings storage facility at Mount Polley “operated safely and as it was designed,” and was subjected to multiple third-party reviews.

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Following B.C. disaster, Alaskans seek tougher review of Canadian mines – by Pat Forgey (Alaska Dispatch News – August 13, 2014)

http://www.adn.com/

JUNEAU — Following a massive mine waste spill in Canada, Alaska state and Canadian federal officials are being asked to do more to protect parts of Alaska downstream of several Canadian mines.

“That water belongs to us, too,” said Rob Sanderson, a Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indians of Alaska vice-president and co-chair of the United Tribal Transboundary Mining Workshop.

He’s most concerned about the Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell mine in Canada east of Ketchikan, which he said is seven times the size of the Mount Polley Mine in interior British Columbia. The breach of the latter mine’s tailings dam contaminated the watershed of Canada’s important Fraser River.

“If that ain’t an eye opener down at Mount Polley, I don’t know what is,” Sanderson said of the KSM mine risks. “Could you imagine if they had a disaster like that at KSM if it was in full production, or even half production, it would be a disaster beyond words,” he said.

But state officials are defending provincial and federal regulators in Canada, and saying their environmental protection measures are as strong as those in Alaska or the United States.

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Mount Polley mine spill: a hazard of Canada’s industry-friendly attitude? – by Peter Moskowitz (The Guardian – August 13, 2014)

http://www.theguardian.com/uk

A dam at a waste pond on the site of a British Columbia mine burst last week, releasing 4.5m cubic meters of potentially toxic slurry into virtually untouched forest

The scale of the devastation only became apparent from the air. A dam at a waste pond on the site of a British Columbia open-pit mine had burst, releasing 10m cubic meters of water and 4.5m cubic meters of potentially toxic slurry into virtually untouched forest, lakes and rivers into an area of Canada populated mostly by the indigenous First Nations peoples.

Soda Creek First Nations chief Bev Sellars took a helicopter tour to assess the scale of the disaster. “It looked like an avalanche, but avalanches don’t have toxic waste in them,” she said.

Government reports about the incident at the Mount Polley mine on 4 August have been cautiously optimistic, saying the surrounding water is likely safe to drink, and that wildlife will not be significantly impacted by the spill.

But the industry-friendly attitude that has become a hallmark of both the British Columbia and federal governments in Canada over the past decade has led to scepticism. Local activists and residents say they are waiting for data of their own to determine the safety of the surrounding environment. In the meantime, just over a week on from the spill, they are working to determine why it happened in the first place.

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Imperial Metals insurance likely not enough for dam collapse cleanup – by Gordon Hoekstra (Vancouver Sun – August 12, 2014)

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

Restoration costs expected to be hundreds of millions of dollars

Imperial Metal’s $15-million property and business interruption insurance coverage is likely to fall short of the cleanup cost of the collapse of its mine waste dam at Mount Polley last week.

The company also has $10 million in third-party liability insurance, triggered if a party other than the company is responsible for damage.

While Imperial Metals says it is too early to provide a cleanup cost, the collapse of the mine waste dam in 1998 of the Los Frailes lead-zinc mine near Seville, Spain, cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Imperial Metals vice-president of corporate affairs Steve Robertson said Saturday he would be guessing at a cleanup at cost at Mount Polley. The company has, however, vowed to do all it could to “make right” the effects of the dam collapse.

“I don’t know if it’s nowhere near (enough insurance) — it would we way too early to tell,” Robertson said in an interview. A BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc. analysis pegged the cost to the company at $200 million. That does not include legal damages that could double that amount.

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