An abandoned asbestos mine in a remote corner of Yukon has yet to be remediated 42 years after closing, and could pose a flood risk to anyone downstream, according to the federal government.

“Clinton Creek is literally on the edge of the map,” said Lewis Rifkind, mining analyst for the Yukon Conservation Society. The mine is on the western border of Yukon, about 100 kilometres northwest of Dawson City. “It’s out of sight, out of mind.”

Clinton Creek Mine opened in 1967 and is the only mine on record in the territory to extract asbestos — a mineral often used in construction materials, such as insulation, and fire-proof coating, until it was found to cause cancer when its microscopic fibres are breathed in. Asbestos gradually ceased to be used in the 1970s, though its use was only banned by the federal government in 2018. 

Yukon’s former open-pit asbestos mine was decommissioned in 1978 by its then-owner Cassiar Asbestos Corporation.

“That mine was developed way before environmental assessments or economic impact agreements, anything,” Rifkind said. “It’s just there.” 

A sign posted at the Clinton Creek Mine site by the Government of Yukon.

The road to Clinton Creek dead-ends at the mine site, about 12 kilometres from the Forty Mile River, which pours into the Yukon River. The abandoned mine gets less attention than others in the territory such as Faro, a former zinc and lead mine — once the largest in the world — which is just 15 kilometres north of the town of the same name. Plans for remediation are much further along at Faro, having been submitted to the environmental assessment board, and anticipated to start in 2024. The cleanup is expected to take around 15 years and cost about $500 million in federal money. 

There’s currently no start date for reclamation work at Clinton Creek, since there’s no plan in place, Sue Thomas, a spokesperson with Yukon’s Department of Energy, Mines and Resources said in an email.

The federal government states an expected start-date for reclamation work in 2026 through its northern abandoned mine reclamation program. The work is expected to take four years. The federal government also expected a conceptual remediation plan to be completed this spring, but it is not yet available.

The Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation, on whose territory Clinton Creek is located, the Yukon and Canadian governments, are in the process of developing that remediation plan, but the site remains a risk of uncertain degree until that work is underway. A spokesperson for the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in was not available by publication time.

The Yukon government has notified the public to stay away from Clinton Creek for years. The ground is unstable, with waste rock and tailings throughout. There’s a risk of inhaling asbestos, and the site is susceptible to “extreme” flash floods. 

This is worrying for the nearest community downstream of Clinton Creek: Eagle, Alaska — some 40 kilometres away.

The community of roughly 120 people along the Yukon River is launching a water sampling study in the coming weeks. The study is not being undertaken specifically to identify possible environmental effects of Clinton Creek, Chief Karma Ulvia told The Narwhal, but it could provide a better understanding of the levels of asbestos in the water, as well as metals. 

“The asbestos can blow in the air, so of course that can get in the river, which can get in the fish,” Ulvia said. “It definitely can pollute the river. We would be very interested in helping to get it cleaned up. For me, I’m concerned about our people, the fish, our subsistence way of life.”

What happened at Clinton Creek Mine?

In Clinton Creek’s lifespan, 940,000 tonnes of asbestos were mined, according to a report by the Dawson Regional Planning Commission, which is in the process of drawing information together to eventually establish a land use plan in the region.

In 1974, the slope of the mine’s waste rock dump failed, pouring 60 million tonnes of waste rock and tailings into Clinton Creek valley, blocking Clinton Creek, according to the report. The dam that resulted from that slide created a 25-metre-deep artificial lake that remains today. The sprawling 115-hectare Hudgeon Lake runs the risk of flooding under heavy rain or snowfall. After several failed attempts to control overflow from the lake, in 2002, the Yukon government had a channel built from Hudgeon Lake over the waste rock dam, and fortified the entrance to Clinton Creek to limit erosion. The hope is to prevent a full breach of the dam that could empty the lake, sending 500 cubic metres per second of potentially contaminated water down to Forty Mile River. 

Despite work to restabilize the channel, there is a continued risk that Hudgeon Lake could overflow as the spring freshet gets more pronounced every year, Rifkind said.

“If you have a lot of water going into that lake you could get erosion issues on the channel,” he said. “Once a channel starts to erode, you could get a catastrophic failure. Impacts downstream would be unknown.”

Some remediation work at the site was completed by the former mine owner, but a full remediation agreement between Cassiar and the federal government was never reached, according to a report on remediation options for Hudgeon Lake. 

Blasting during operations at Clinton Creek. Photo: Peter Kosel

Workers at Clinton Creek mine. Photo: Peter Kosel

Cassiar, which also operated an asbestos mine and now-abandoned mining town of the same name in B.C. near the Yukon border, was purchased by Princeton Mining Corporation in 1991 and went bankrupt in 1992. A decade later, the federal government sent a directive to the former owners of the company to stabilize the channel, which went unanswered. The site was then labelled abandoned. 

In 2003, the Yukon government took over care and maintenance of the Clinton Creek site, working on water diversion, geotechnical stability and environmental monitoring — funded by the federal government, who permitted the mine in the first place.

“Upgrades completed at site thus far have been aimed at stabilizing sections of the Clinton Creek channel that are susceptible to erosion during high flow events,” Thomas of Yukon’s Department ofEnergy, Mines and Resources said.

The Yukon government issued an order in council in 2006 prohibiting the staking of new mineral claims across the majority of the Clinton Creek Mine site, to allow for the reclamation of damages already incurred there.

Public access to the site was restricted in 2012 because of a threat to human health and safety. A bevy of signs are posted along the road leading to the site, notifying the public of the risks should they enter.

Moving forward with reclamation

Last August, the federal government earmarked $2.2 billion over 15 years for remediation projects at eight sites in Yukon and the Northwest Territories, including Clinton Creek and Faro. According to a spokesperson with Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, the portion dedicated to Clinton Creek has not yet been determined as the site remediation plan is still in development.

Earlier this year, the Yukon government commissioned a report on potential options for remediation of Clinton Creek to help develop a plan that will be made public once submitted to the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board, according to the federal spokesperson. It’s unclear when exactly that will happen.

The main concerns right now surround habitat disruption prompted by sheer volumes of water released downstream should heavy levels of precipitation and snowmelt swell Hudgeon Lake. 

Abandoned equipment at the Clinton Creek mine site in 2012.

The federal government also recognizes such flooding poses a risk to anyone downstream — such as the people of Eagle.

The community experienced severe flooding in 2009, Ulvia said, noting the entire area is prone to the phenomenon.

“We lost our lower village,” she said, adding that she wonders how Clinton Creek may have contributed to the event.

But acid rock drainage and metal leaching at the site are not present concerns, Thomas said. And the department has tested asbestos levels in water at the mine site.

“From an aquatic habitat perspective, asbestos does not appear to be any more harmful than other types of suspended sediment,” Thomas said.

The Government of Canada doesn’t have guidelines for acceptable levels of asbestos in drinking water because there “is no consistent, convincing evidence that ingested asbestos is hazardous.”

But impacts downstream are ultimately unknown, Rifkind said, because they haven’t been studied to the degree they should be.

“If a lot of the issues were remediated, they wouldn’t necessarily go away, but we’d have a greater understanding and know better how to deal with it.”

Update June 24, 2020 at 9:20 a.m. PST: This story was updated to include information provided by a spokesperson with Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada that a specific portion of the funding for remediation programs in the North has not yet been determined for Clinton Creek Mine as a remediation plan for the site has not been completed.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This is a guest post by Michael Harris, author of Party of One: Stephen Harper and Canada's Radical Makeover. It originally appeared on iPolitics. 

In politics, as in baseball, the rule is simple: Three strikes and you’re out.

When Stephen Harper finally shambles towards the showers, head down, bat in hand, I’ll be thinking of Mighty Casey. For much of his career, Harper has umpired his own at-bats. But that role will soon — if briefly — fall to the people of Canada. Election Day is coming to Mudville.

Strike one against this government of oligarchs and corporate shills comes down to this: They have greedily championed oil and gas while doing nothing to protect air and water. Consider the piece of legislation with the Orwellian name — the Navigable Waters Protection Act. NDP house leader Nathan Cullen said it as well as anyone could:

“It means the removal of almost every lake and river we know from the Navigable Waters Protection Act. From one day to the next, we went from 2.5 million protected lakes and rivers in Canada to 159 lakes and rivers protected.”

On second thought, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May put it pretty well too: “In Bill C-38, Stephen Harper cancelled and gutted environmental laws brought in by Brian Mulroney. He’s now moved on to destroy environmental law brought in by Sir John A. MacDonald.”

And who gave the Conservatives the blueprint for gutting the Navigable Waters Protection Act? The pipeline industry. The new legislation gave them a big plum: Along with power lines, pipelines were removed from the legislation altogether.

After eight years in office, Harper’s promise to regulate the energy sector remains as empty as the look behind his eyes. There’s a reason the Green Party just enjoyed the best fundraising year in its short history. May, like most Canadians, sees the big picture: All Stephen Harper has done in office is play shortstop to big business.

Canada now has more corrupt companies on the World Bank’s blacklist than any other country in the world. A stunning 115 of those companies are comprised of disgraced engineering giant SNC-Lavalin and its subsidiaries — the same company that the Harper government supported with an $800 million loan guarantee to build the dubious Muskrat Falls power development in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Big business keeps telling workers they can’t have defined benefit pensions. Yet 43 per cent of Canadian CEOs have reserved that option for themselves. The PM has nothing to say about the gulf between worker and CEO pay packets.

The Conservatives have ignored the great issue of the age — the environment — and have offered instead a robber-baron vision of Canada built on unsustainable development and inflated oil prices. The lion’s share of the benefits have gone to foreign corporations and speculators.

Albertans get a tenth of what Norwegians get from the sale of their non-renewables. Since the public owns those resources, this amounts to a form of theft.

The Harper government has sabotaged international efforts to set a bolder course on global warming. How badly has he betrayed the environment? We’re talking Benedict Arnold here: He has transformed Environment Canada into just another oilpatch stooge, violating the purpose for which it was created.

And for the third time in a year, the Harper government is trying to stop an investigation into Canada’s environmental record. Although there is evidence that chemicals from toxic tailings ponds created by the tar sands are seeping into adjacent groundwater in Alberta, the Harper government is trying to terminate a proposed NAFTA probe into the environmental effects of tailings ponds. Poison leaching into the ground — and Harper doesn’t want a factual record.

Of course he doesn’t. He didn’t want a factual record on endangered polar bears or salmon farm pollution. And remember, this is the guy who didn’t mind selling asbestos to other countries when it was being treated as a deadly carcinogen here in Canada.

Strike two against Stephen Harper is his personal failure to give Canadians a more open, ethical and democratic government. That is, after all, what got him elected in 2006 (that and a little cheating during the campaign). So it was beyond hypocritical this past week for the PM to portray himself as a champion of democracy and free speech after the dreadful killings in Paris. He even politicizes tragedy.

Here is the real man … the one who dedicated his entire communications effort to smothering free speech, who undermined access to information, the life-blood of any democracy, with endless delays in handing over government documents that belong to us. In some cases, his government has simply — and unconstitutionally — refused to fork them over. He has also mused about charging $200 per access request — which would certainly suppress the urge to ask.

The real man has muzzled his own workers — even demanding loyalty oaths from them. He wanted the right to ask prospective government employees about their politics. He has viciously attacked any individual or institution that opposes him, from former parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.

The real man repeatedly has tried to turn the Internet into a servant of the police state, disguising his intent with nonsense about child pornographers and “protection.”

The real man has starved the opposition of even the most basic information about the budget and deprived Parliament of the ability to debate legislation through the cynical use of enormous omnibus bills.

Sheila Fraser has named the disease. Laws are being passed in Stephen Harper’s Canada without scrutiny. (That didn’t seem to bother the dear host of CBC’s The Current when she interviewed on my new book. But it bothers me, and a lot of other people, a great deal.)

The real man doesn’t speak to his fellow premiers as a group, banishes journalists from public buildings and thinks Sun News is where it’s at.

It didn’t take a genius to work out that Harper’s reaction to the robocall scandal would be new legislation that will make it harder to catch cheaters the next time. And trust me, there will be a next time. So let it be said clearly: Stephen Harper is a champion of screwing free speech and democracy at every opportunity.

What’s strike three? Canada is not Harperland. Stephen Harper is not who we are.

Canadians don’t want to see medicare slowly reduced to a ghost of its former self by a prime minister who once headed an organization created to destroy it.

Despite the stunning selfishness of some of its stars, Canadians don’t want to see the CBC brought to its knees and “restructured” by a man who prefers public relations to journalism.

Finally, Canadians don’t want to save money on the backs of veterans who didn’t take to the closet in the face of clear and present danger — especially when Harper has so egregiously used the military for political gain. There has to be more for our soldiers than bullets and beans.

Stephen Harper will definitely come out swinging when he comes to the plate. He will drag out the usual mantra to continue his reign of error — that only Steve can protect us from terrorists, only Steve can protect us from recession, and only Steve has the stuff of leadership.

I don’t think it’s working this time. I suspect that when Mighty Steve strikes out, there will be joy in Mudville.

Michael Harris is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his “unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us.” His eight books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean, and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry, and three of his books have been made into movies. His new book on the Harper majority government, Party of One, recently hit number one on Maclean’s magazine’s top ten list for Canadian non-fiction.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This is a guest post by Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy with the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). It originally appeared on the UCS blog The Equation.

Asbestos can kill you. We’ve all been warned about the dangers of breathing it in. That is why we test buildings for it and have rules to protect construction workers from exposure to it. But how do we know asbestos is harmful? Because scientists have done studies of the dangers it poses to our health. And I’m glad they have so we can avoid these threats.

Tampering with science behind the health effects of asbestos

For decades, however, some companies have fought efforts to regulate asbestos, even tampering with the science behind our understanding of its health effects. And, sadly, a recent court ruling indicates that the tampering may have been more widespread than anyone previously knew.

Recently, a New York Appeals Court ruled unanimously that that Georgia Pacific, a subsidiary of Koch Industries, must hand over internal documents pertaining to the publication of 11 studies published in reputable scientific journals between 2008 and 2012. At issue in the case: whether the firm can be held accountable for engaging in a “crime-fraud” by planting misinformation in these journals intending to show that the so-called chrysotile asbestos in its widely used joint compound doesn’t cause cancer.

Science falsely presented as independent research—with lawyers suggesting revisions

Here’s what we know. The articles were published in the following scientific journals: Inhalation Toxicology, The Journal of Occupational & Environmental Hygiene, Annals of Occupational Hygiene, and Risk Analysis. The studies were authored by conflicted experts who were hired by Georgia Pacific; the company’s lawyers were involved throughout the process and, even more alarming, these conflicts of interest were not disclosed in the studies. As a result, the articles in question were untruthfully presented as independent, bona fide research.

The court noted that the studies were intended to cast doubt on the capability of chrysotile asbestos to cause cancer and that the authors did not disclose that Georgia Pacific’s lawyers participated in lengthy discussions of the manuscripts and suggested revisions. As Justice Richard Andrias wrote in the court ruling demanding the internal documents that will shed light on the extent of wrongdoing, “The public has an interest in resolving disputes on the basis of accurate information.”

The difference between funding for science and paying for specific scientific conclusions

Of course, there is no surprise that companies such as Georgia Pacific have scientists working on research. Private companies are a significant funder of science, especially as public funding options for scientists have decreased. But there is a bright line between the funding of science—whatever outcome it reaches—and paying scientists to reach a specific scientific conclusion. Such efforts to manufacture false scientific evidence as part of a legal or marketing strategy are reprehensible.

The process of science has both a logic and rhythm to it, from research and analysis, to peer review, comparison and publication for consideration by other scientists. It is about discovery, building knowledge and understanding of the natural and human world. Many in society— and many, many companies—have benefited from this open process of science. But everyone is threatened when companies manipulate the scientific process itself in the name of marketing and profit—and, most disturbingly, when the actions put people directly at risk as they did in this case.

Ghost-writing scientific papers undermines science and threatens public safety

Asbestos is but one case of “ghost-writing” of counterfeit science for academic publications in an effort to market or cast doubt on scientific results. Recently, the editors of the Public Library of Science (PloS) Medicine, a respected open-access scientific journal, published a series of articles highlighting how widespread the problem has become in the pharmaceutical field and the difficulties academic journals are facing as they try to combat the problem.

Perhaps the most telling article in the series was written by a former ghost-writer who detailed her company’s role in creating scientific papers and presentations solely as a marketing tool. According to her account, her company was unconcerned about discovery and expanding knowledge, but rather sought to push its drugs to new markets – effective or not, dangerous or not.

As a scientist, it goes against my teaching and experience to accept that ghost-writing of fraudulent scientific papers in the name of commerce should be allowed to continue unabated. Not only does it undermine the entire scientific enterprise, it poses an enormous potential threat to the public. Everyone, knowingly or not, is affected by scientific evidence about what is safe, what can help or hurt them, and how best to keep their families safe. Everyone makes choices, and should be free to do so, based on this information.

Deliberately falsifying science isn’t just a financial matter for shareholders and company managers. It has real impacts—potential life-and-death impacts in the case of asbestos. Companies: by all means, market your products; tell us why you think they are good choices. But keep your lawyers, public relations, and marketing people out of the science we depend on. There are lives at stake.

About the author: Andrew Rosenberg is the director of the UCS Center for Science and Democracy. He leads UCS's efforts to advance the essential role that science, evidence-based decision making, and constructive debate play in American policy making. Subscribe to Andrew's posts.

Image Credit: Asbestos Mine in Canada by jaharris1001 via The Photo Forum.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.