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Well my string on bad news posts is, sadly, about to expand.

Tailings pond breach





Quesnel Lake is one of the premier Rainbow Trout lakes in the world. Additionally it is the deepest and longest (~120km) fjord lake in North America. There is a large sockeye run, kokanee, lake trout, bull trout and many non-game species in the lake. It has been managed as a trophy water for some time now. This is a lake where +20lb rainbows are a possibility.

Check out some of the operations on the lake:
Northern Lights Lodge
Elysia Resort

These are the kinds of rainbows found here (not me - just from Elysia Resort):


Additionally the waterways connect to the Fraser River which is one of the top salmon rivers in the world, not to mention one of the last rivers in the world with a healthy population of sturgeon.

Man I hope this will not be as bad as it seems...

Pretty fu ckin stupid place to put an open pit gold mine. Shakin head big time.... Trust me, I know all about this chit I'm from Nevada. Total bs where they put this type of mine with such a big tailings pond. Yes there's a lot of arsenic and cyanide in that water. Up chit creek without a paddle there. Sorry to see it happen!!!

I can't help but put my tinfoil hat on as this happens just before a record year for wild sockeye. I am NOT a conspiracy guy but............


Warren

All the mines opened up and they are worried about pipelines. Sad that this happened, there is not any excuse for it but its good to see another industry getting in the news for bad press /public image instead of always the oil /gas.

I can't see how this can be considered good from any perspective, regardless of the press the oil/gas industry is getting. Why do you think residents in British Columbia are opposed to the Northern Gateway project?

BSA1917hunter hit the nail on the head - who would put an open pit gold mine in such a location? Similarly, who would put a huge pipeline to ship crude to China along the Skeena River? Quesnel Lake supports about 1/4 of all of the Sockeye in BC and now it is likely F-cked. The Skeena River is second only to the Fraser for the volume of salmon in the river. It supports all 5 species.

Gold is where you find it and if gold is there somebody is going to pay enough to get the permits. Given the price of gold today it will support a lot of graft. Not that that happens in Canada. I know the USA is the only Chicago style government in the Americas.

Wonderful. Morons.
We need mining, but this kind of stuff is just not acceptable. Someone needs to go to jail, and the mine is now going to operate in order to pay the damages. Morons!

So, how is something like this headed off at the pass?

By admitting that $ isn't the be all, end all.

The fishing lodges are industries and interested in $ too. I am hopefull the damsges will not be as bad as it looks. It certainly looks bad and why the dam failed is a big concern.

I'm not sure I see the link of "how to head off such an environmental disaster at the pass" relates to a fishing lodge.

Some updates - over 1100lbs of mercury and +160,000lbs of arsenic were in the tailings pond. Locals are posting pictures of dead fish floating in the lake. The sockeye are already in some of the rivers and creeks and the coho are supposed to be arriving in a few weeks.

I was planning on heading that way this weekend...

Everyone hates environmental regulation ... right up to the point where a lack of oversight allows an "anything for a buck" culture which makes something like this inevitable.

by Robyn Chambers - Williams Lake Tribune
posted Oct 13, 2011 at 7:00 AM� updated Oct 14, 2011 at 8:53 AM
The Mount Polley Mine application for a permit to discharge effluent into Hazeltine Creek is raising some environmental concerns in area communities. The Ministry of Environment confirmed that the mine applied for the permit in Nov. 2009. Since that time, says Tim Fisch, Mount Polley general manager, the mine has held six public liaison committee meetings in Likely, Big Lake and Williams Lake and held consultations with First Nations. Kirk Dressler, communications co-ordinator for the Williams Lake Indian Band, said the community has concerns and is currently involved in a technical review of the discharge permit.

�Obviously any discharge, particularly into a watershed that is critical habitat for traditional First Nations practices, is of significant concern to us so we want to make sure that the impacts are going to be minimized,� he said, adding to date the WLIB have been unable to conclude whether the discharge will result in �significant� detrimental impacts.

Dressler said that is because the consultant hired by the WLIB did not take into account the separate and recently approved amendment to the mine that leaves the facility�s production rate unchanged but increases its footprint by 15 per cent.

�So despite the fact that he came to some conclusions he really didn�t entertain the prospects of further expansion and so that potentially could have changed as a result, as well, which causes us some concern,� Dressler said.

Some residents of Likely are also on edge, wondering if the discharge permit could compromise the creek and potentially Quesnel Lake. According to resident Erin Robinson, many in the community thought the permit to discharge was off the table following consultation in 2009 when Robinson says it was made clear that the community did not want the discharge permit approved. She said there is a concern among community members for water quality in the creek and lake and the potential impact of mine discharge on the health of salmon runs, tourism, fishing, hunting and recreation activities in the area.

Robinson added baseline data needs to be collected, as well as a detailed monitoring and contingency plan put in place.

For his part, Fisch said he�s confident there is �adequate� base-line data to support the findings of the technical assessment requirements by the Ministry of Environment. He further indicated that monitoring would be conducted in accordance with the federal metal mining effluent regulations, which examine aquatic life to determine whether mine discharge has impacted species. There has also been a collection of data for Hazeltine Creek to be used as a benchmark for the water body before discharge, as well as a reference point throughout. Robinson said she had hoped the mine would remain a closed system, which would mean that no effluent would be released.

Although it is currently closed � the mine is required to capture and store all of its precipitation/runoff from disturbed areas of the site in its tailings storage facility � Fisch says a closed system is difficult as the mine accumulates more water than it can use in a year due to its location in a �net-positive� precipitation zone. Therefore, he said, the amount of runoff requires dam raises and prohibits the formation of proper tailings beaches which could increase seepage and cause conditions that are �geotechnically unstable.�

Robinson further questions the province�s water quality guidelines as it relates to mine discharge.

�They are saying there are certain guidelines that if you fall under this parts per million or whatever then you�re safe.�

According to Mount Polley, discharge effluent will consist of treated mine water containing elements that occur naturally in the Quesnel Lake watershed and would not include man-made chemicals. In August, the provincial government approved a separate permit amendment for Mount Polley that would allow it to continue its current production rate until 2015. According to the company, the amendment is not considered an expansion but an acceptance of a five-year mine plan during which the mine�s production rate remains the same as was permitted in 1997; under the amendment, the mine�s footprint will increase by 15 per cent.

At the time, the Williams Lake Indian Band indicated it was unhappy with the process and suggested there was a lack of consultation between itself and the Crown on the amendment. The WLIB has since said it will pursue action prior to the mine leases being granted.

�We�re pursuing that and hope and expect that the gold commissioner will respect our concerns and that there be no further action in relation to the expansion until our concerns are dealt with,� Dressler said.

�We would expect that the mineral leases would not be issued for Mount Polley until the concerns of the WLIB are addressed. In particular we are emphatic that a traditional-use study should be conducted before the expansion can take place,� he said.
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I am from just south of where this happened and i have being into that area a number of times - Very SAD to see this happen - there needs to be Severe action against the mineing company for this Dam giving away and this Disaster happening ! NOT forgivable EVER ! RJ

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

After some reflection on this, plus reading the strong, credible warnings given about the dam before it burst:

I blame environmentalists for a significant portion of the disaster.

Those nitwits run around protesting everything at full volume, so that we and the public and government regulators begin to ignore them like we would a boy constantly crying "wolf!"

Somewhere amid screeches at news conferences about tainted toenails on snail darters and soiled hair on white Kermode bears, there were environmental concerns about a vast lake impoundment of arsenic held by a dam on the verge of bursting with no back-up plan.

It angers and annoys me to see such important environmental concerns lost in the blizzard of micro silliness.

Shooting the messenger is a time-honored pastime.

More than messengers I see them as self appointed guardians of the environment. That is a noble task, and I applaud the intent.

To the extent that they are self appointed messengers of warning, my point is that they have worn out their audience with torrents of trivial messages. Therefore they failed in their mission and failed to communicate their message.

I'd like to shoot them for not having enough sense nor discernment to distinguish between serious and trivial. Also for not having enough communications sense to shut up once in awhile instead of becoming irrelevant white noise background.

Imperial Metals has donated at least $149,890 since 2005 to the BC Liberal Party and Murray Edwards - the company's controlling shareholder - helped organize a $1-million fundraiser for them (In Calgary. Lots of BC voters must have been in town). Meanwhile, Christy Clark promised to streamline environmental reviews in the mining sector. Coincidence? http://bit.ly/1mJKBN2

Imperial has plans for more mining in a much more sensitive area than in the Likely area, like in the upper Adam's river system.
I think they will have their wings clipped and all the backroom deals with a sympathetic government wont be enough for them to jump this hurdle

Agree 100%..

Gentlemen;
Top of the morning to you both, I hope this finds your respective families doing OK.

I'll have to agree with my friend Okanagan on this issue - and sometime over coffee on our back deck I'll tell him a bit more about my family's connection with that very mine and Imperial Metals.

There needs to be environmental controls and some semblance of balance between what has/is taking place and no extraction of any natural resources.

We've seen a lot of improvement over the years in forestry in my part of the Okanagan, at least as far as timely replanting is concerned. I'd still like to see some of the size of the blocks reduced, but that's another topic.

Anyway, maybe this will push the pendulum back the other way a wee bit - for both government and the enviros too. One can always hope so, right?

All the best to you both in the upcoming fall seasons.

Dwayne

Dwayne, this chit breaks my heart and pisses me off at the same time. My dad has been gold mining in Nevada for Newmont and other companies for many many years (since '81). I've been around these tailing ponds and leach fields and know this will have an enormous effect on the ecosystem in Canada. My heart and prayers go out to the people being affected by this disaster.

I'm stepping on a couple of friends toes now, but mining has decimated Nevada, and it will continue this way for at least another 100 years if the Canadian, British, Australian, and other foreign mining corporations have their way, which they will. They have big money, own big politicians and little, and they will kill to have it their way.

This is standard practice for the industry, both metals and coal. And to a large degree big pork and poultry operations. While in operation, they 'lagoon' the waste products. When the dam breaks, sometimes a petty enviro fine is paid and sometimes not. The lagoon is repaired and it's business as usual. The most cursory review of mining's history in the United States illustrates this. The other prime strategy of this industry is to pretend to stay open forever so 'closure' requirements do not have to be met. By the time the issue is litigated, insiders have taken the money and run.

Most decent people imagine these industries operate with a "Boy Scout" ideology that says to "leave the campsite like you found it or a little better". They imagine that our current environmental regulations assure this. Nothing could be further from the truth. They operate with a "Why does a dog lick his balls?" ideology. Because in the end, cleaning up these operations usually does not happen. If it does the cost is spread over the tax base. Why does this sound like a liberal rant? The best PR money can buy, that's why. I've been a professional environmental manager for the past 25 years, on both sides of the country. As of this writing also a registered Republican. I urge a dose of honest review of the topic before dumping my point into the whacko bin.

Seems there must be something to salvage there, probably the other mine they want to start up, CNRL chairman just put up a bunch of money thru an investment fund;
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repo...on-to-clean-up-bc-spill/article20074754/

The Tsolum River on Vancouver Island has been poisoned for over 40 years due to an abandoned copper mine on Mt. Washington. The leachate from the mine decimated pink, coho and cutthroat trout runs, almost to extinction. Environment Canada, Fisheries and Oceans, BC Ministry of Environment, Pacific Salmon Foundation and the Tsolum River Restoration Society spent millions of taxpayer dollars trying to remedy the problem. Blaming environmentalists for this situation is as laughable as Christy Clark telling us she is helping the taxpayers by cuts to environmental enforcement.

No matter how I look at this, it is a for profit made disaster. It is incumbent upon the entity that elects to exploit the resource to preserve the long term value of the eco system.

What is the monetary value of the lost food production and fresh water supply as a result of this man made pollution? What is the lost value of recreation, life style and culture for the people that rely on this watershed.

I would argue that root cause responsibility falls with the mineral exploiter and government oversight.

The same sort of sad history has been repeated here in Montana for well over a century. While I am not a big fan of many tactics of environmentalists, it is another historical fact that such pollution problems have been reduced (though not eliminated) over the past few decades, largely through new and more powerful environmental protection laws.

Mining is about profit, and profit is good. (I am a pretty pure capitalist, since I make my living purely by selling my work to various companies, with no government subsidies involved.) But sometimes mining profits result in the rest of us paying for 'em, and not just with money.

This is "Kutenay", posting from my wife's new laptop after several months away due to serious health issues=I don'tknow if or when/what I may post further on this site, but' after more a half century of committed environmentalism, I must comment on this and some of the posts above.

This, latest of the many eco-disasters which have sullied BC/Canada's historical evolution from "The Viking Era" to the present, IS NOT, in ANY respect, a "fault" of environmentalists.

It IS the inevitable consequence of "neo-con" governments who refuse to fund the necessary government management agencies so that they can properly regulate the various resource industries in this dying nation

This, is analogous to the appalling mismanagement of BC's wildlife and the declining numbers of game species.....Kootenay Moose are one example among all too many.........

Good to see you post, and hope you do more. Best wishes Kute.

As a long serving senior leader in the resource industry sector, an avid outdoorsman and like most avid outdoorsman an environmentalist I'll offer my perspective on this event.

First off, it is a disaster. The only thing in BC that is worse than this was the decision by the BC Government in the mid late 90's to let the latest Pine Beetle infestation "run a natural course" under advice from a Dr. David Suzuki. For our friends south of the 49th who don't know him Dr Suzuki is a rather extreme left wing environmentalist. This decision by the then left wing NDP government will have far reaching consequences for generations to come in this corner of North America. So it is a disaster, but not the worst.

Watching the media up here...it is almost as if they want it to be worse than it is. Some factual details are glossed over or missed while others are presented in a way that infers something other than the facts. Until very recently I lived in the area, am very familiar with the mine site, the entire watershed to the Fraser involved in this event, and have hunted and fished in the area for the last decade.

My understanding of the event.

There was a catastrophic failure of the tailings dam.

It was not overloaded.

There is some question about how it was built when the site reopened about 10 years ago. The contractor apparently did not put enough of the right kind of material in the area where the failure occurred. A fair amount of fingerpointing behind the scenes over this right now. He blames the company. Company blames him. etc, etc, I suspect it will turn out to be a combination of the two. If there was negligence here the guilty parties need to be held to the full account of the law.

The water of Quesnel Lake is fine. The water of Polley Lake has been affected but it is potable and the fish are fine.

One of the guys I hunt with has been a millwright there since it reopened. I jut had dinner with him last night as he came to town to see a doctor. He was looking out over Polley Lake Tuesday afternoon watching a hatch get fed on.

Due to the fact that the tailings pond's contents met or was under all guidelines there has been minimal impact on the water.

There is a heck of a mess out of Hazeltine Creek. It will be cleaned up.

At this point it does not appear that the watershed will be materially impacted at all.

Why do I read this different. The company identifies a problem and requires a permit to remidy. PERMIT HELD BACK BY SKY IS FALLING CHICKEN LITTLE TYPES. Dam failes 5 years after no progress in resolution.

[quote=tangozulu]Why do I read this different. The company identifies a problem and requires a permit to remidy. PERMIT HELD BACK BY SKY IS FALLING CHICKEN LITTLE TYPES. Dam failes 5 years after no progress in resolution.

I'm sure this is the problem

Hi Kute
Good to see you on here, have missed you. I have kept in touch with friend in Alberta, still seems to be no resolve on the missing lady. Cheers NC

Great to have you back - someone who knows and who isn't afraid to say it.

Moreover, Kute, I wish you good health.