Hmmm� �There had been accusations the company had been warned this kind of disaster was possible, but Kynoch dispelled that information.�

Seems Mr. Kynoch's version of events differs from a number of other people and third parties. Chief Bev Sellers said warnings in a 2011 environmental consultant's report about the pond, commissioned by her band, the Williams Lake First Nation, and Imperial Metals (your own company), were not heeded by your company. "He (Environmental Consultant; Brian Olding) had concerns about the tailings pond but they were basically ignored," she said.

The report, by Brian Olding, who operates Brian Olding and Associates Ltd., said the tailings pond was accumulating water so quickly that it would have needed to discharge about 1.4 million cubic metres of water a year to keep its levels stable. "A sustainable means of discharging excess water is required because dam building cannot continue indefinitely," the report said in June 2011. The report also criticized the company for not having a contingency plan in case of a tailings pond failure. It wasn't clear Tuesday if such a plan had been developed between the report's completion and the dam breach on Monday that left the area looking like a lunar landscape. Olding said in an interview that no analysis of the dam's structural integrity was done as part of the review. "I requested a structural engineering company be involved, and that was nixed. They did not want to deal with that problem at that time."

Gerald MacBurney, a foreman at the dam for seven years before he recently quit, claimed the dam was breached last May and that weakened the whole system. "When you get a breach, there's more than one spot it breached. It weakened the whole system," he said in an interview. "And that's where it popped, right where it was breached. ... I knew it was going to burst."

An emotional Kynock flatly denied the claim. "The dam has never failed before," he told the crowd.

http://bc.ctvnews.ca/b-c-mine-president-denies-being-warned-tailings-pond-would-fail-1.1946241