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. 
 

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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