Newsletter

Like the earth was breaking open

In this week’s newsletter, we look to the 10th anniversary of Canada’s worst mining waste disaster, and ask — has anything changed?

By Karan Saxena

Aug. 2, 2024

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Carol Linnitt at the base of the rebuilt Hazeltine Creek bed after the Mount Polley disaster spilled about 25 billion litres of wastewater into surrounding water bodies.

Photo: Farhan Umedaly / Vovo Productions

A highway full of speeding semis, jet engines low overhead — like the earth was breaking open.

That’s how residents described the roaring spill of about 25 billion litres of water mixed with mining waste from the Mount Polley mine into Polley Lake, Hazeltine Creek and Quesnel Lake on Aug. 4, 2014 — nearly a decade ago. Just a week after the tailings dam disastrously breached, causing Canada’s worst mining waste disaster to date, Carol Linnitt, co-founder of The Narwhal, found herself wading through the toxic spill.

“One of the things I distinctly remember is everyone talking about how thunderously loud the spill itself was. The sound was hugely disorienting for the peaceful lakeside community,” Carol, who’s on leave, told me. “But by the time I arrived, all was strangely still, with the torrential spill having settled itself quietly at the bottom of the province’s deepest and once-very-clean lake. It’s wild to think all that waste that spilled into the water during that incident remains there to this day.”

Imperial Metals, the company that owns the mine, was never fined or charged for the breach of the tailings dam. It still releases toxic wastewater into Quesnel Lake — and now, as B.C. reporter Shannon Waters just detailed, wants to expand the same dam and extend the life of the mine into 2031.

A lansdcape covered in grey mud in the aftermath of a flood from a breached tailings dam.

🔗 A decade after disastrous breach, Mount Polley mine tailings dam could get even bigger

It’s no secret that B.C. has a multimillion-dollar mining waste problem. Our joint investigation into the issue with The Globe and Mail revealed ballooning cleanup costs — and B.C. taxpayers might just have to foot the bill. (The cleanup of Mount Polley mine cost British Columbians $40 million — check out this piece to catch up on five things you need to know about the disaster.)

🔗 Opinion: Mount Polley disaster was the result of putting resource extraction above all else. Here’s how we change that

Carol still thinks back to the reporting trip 10 years ago, about how we still don’t know the spill’s impacts on the environment and our food chain. “What we need from mines now is so much more than copper and gold,” she said. “We need resource extraction that serves our communities, helps us build our thoughtful and livable futures. We forget that the metals that lie in the ground across the province are a public good and are meant to be developed for the public’s good.”

“If this kind of spill doesn’t lead to swift, transformative change in the mining industry — and it hasn’t — one has to wonder: what will?”

Take care and don’t be toxic,

Karan Saxena
Audience engagement editor

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Aerial view over a lakeshore, with houses lining a beach and rocky breakwaters

‘A great ground game in Meaford’

For our Ontario bureau, covering TC Energy’s proposed clean energy project in Meaford, Ont., had long been a top request from Narwhal readers — so much so that reporter Fatima Syed went to the town last year and reported one of our longest features ever. The plan to pump water up from Georgian Bay using excess power from the grid, and pour it back down through turbines when demand is high, is controversial for reasons that include … some unexploded ordnances.

But that’s not all.

In a leaked recording of a TC Energy meeting — which spawned a series of Narwhal investigations — officials sent “big congratulations” to their team working on this project for using “tactics” to build up support in the region for the company’s pumped storage project. Fatima paired up with reporter Matt Simmons to dig into the details for this story.

Psst. Know someone in the Georgian Bay area? Forward this newsletter to them and tell them to check out the piece, too.

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What we’re reading

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In a joint investigation by Vox and Drilled, Amy Westervelt details how oil companies know carbon capture isn’t a climate solution — but touted its potential publicly and got billions in taxpayer dollars.