The Tsilhqot’in First Nation — currently under an evacuation order due to B.C.’s wildfires — learned Monday that permits have been issued for mining company Taseko to conduct exploration for the New Prosperity mine, an open pit gold and copper mine twice rejected at the federal level.

Monday was the outgoing B.C. Liberal government’s final day in power.

Copies of the documentation obtained by DeSmog Canada show the permit was granted to Taseko on Friday July 14th, as members of the Tsilhqot’in were under evacuation orders due to rampant wildfires in central B.C.

“I appreciate this may come at a difficult time for you given the wildfire situation affecting some of your communities, however I made the permit decision Friday, ” Rick Adams, senior inspector with the B.C. Ministry of Energy and Mines, told Tsilhqot’in representatives in an e-mail.

“It’s crazy to see that on their last day, they tell us of this decision,” Chief Roger William of the Gwet’in First Nation, one of six member tribes of the Tsilhqot’in, told DeSmog Canada.

“We’re certainly outraged about it,” he said. “Our people, they found out as we’re dealing with fire and now we’re dealing with a three-year drilling program.”

The permits grant Taseko permission to create 76 kilometres of new or modified trails, 122 exploratory drill holes, 367 excavated test pits and 20 kilometres of seismic lines near Fish Lake, also known as Teztan Biny, an area of cultural and spiritual significance for the Tsilhqot’in.

“Our community has been fighting this for over 30 years,” William, who is also vice-chair of the Tsilhqot’in National Government, said. “Fish Lake is an aboriginal rights area, a place we have land rights to, to fish, and hunt, to catch and use wild horses.”

Chris Tollefson, lawyer with the Pacific Centre for Environmental Law and Litigation, said while there is no rule preventing government from issuing permits during final days in power “there is an obligation on the Crown and on government to conduct itself in a manner that upholds the honour of the Crown.”

Provinces will often issue permits or issue approvals in advance of a federal process, which is intended to signal their support of the proponent, Tollefson told DeSmog Canada.

“During the federal review process they’ll often be a cheerleader for the projects. We’ve seen that regularly in B.C.,” he said.

“What’s unusual here is the federal regulators have been pretty clear this project has some fundamental flaws, so in those circumstances you’d expect the province would take a more circumspect approach when there’s a transition of government and when First Nation rights and title issues are clearly at play.”

According to the Elections B.C. website Taseko donated $123,450 to the B.C. Liberals between 2008 and 2014.

Chief Russell Myers Ross of the Yunesit’in and director of the Tsilhqot’in National Government said he is “speechless at the timing of this insulting decision.”

“It defies compassion that while our people are fighting for our homes and lives, B.C. issues permits that will destroy more of our land beyond repair.”

The New Prosperity mine falls within the Tsilhqot’in Dasiqox Tribal Park, a conservation area the nation has constitutionally protected rights to hunt, fish and trap within.

Granting exploratory permits within Dasiqox “demonstrates a serious attack on meaningful reconciliation,” Ross said in a statement.

The Tsilhqot’in have previously vowed to fight any provincial permits granting Taseko exploratory rights for the mine.

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The B.C. Ministry of Environment has quietly granted the Mount Polley Mining Corporation permission to drain mining waste directly into Quesnel Lake, B.C.’s deepest fjord lake and a source of drinking water for residents of Likely, B.C., as part of a “long-term water management plan.”

The wastewater discharge permit comes nearly three years after the collapse of the Mount Polley mine tailings pond spilled an estimated 25 million cubic metres of mining waste into Quesnel Lake, in what is considered the worst mining disaster in Canadian history.

No charges and no fines have been laid for the spill that cost B.C. taxpayers an estimated $40 million in cleanup costs and that B.C.’s chief mine inspector, Al Hoffman, found was the result of “poor practices” and “non-compliances.”

Some critics feel the new wastewater discharge permit simply grants Mount Polley the permission to continue polluting Quesnel Lake.

“The permit really adds insult to injury,” said Nikki Skuce, project director for Northern Confluence, an initiative based out of Smithers that aims to improve land-use decisions in B.C.’s salmon watersheds.

“Mount Polley still hasn’t cleaned the initial spill up. It’s still visible there in the lake,” Skuce said.

The permit grants Mount Polley, owned by Imperial Metals, permission to release diluted wastewater collected in the mine’s drainage ditches to be piped deep into Quesnel Lake 45 metres below the surface.

“To the layperson that might sound okay, but in digging down deeper what Imperial Metals asked for was for a huge increase in the amount of heavy metals, like selenium, copper, arsenic and others, they can release into the lake,” Skuce said.

“They come up with this plan and it’s to continue pollution, to allow for long-term pollution to go into Quesnel Lake.”

“We’re only two years into the disaster and it is not clear what the impacts are. Salmon run in four year cycles and yet they’re permitting more pollution.”

B.C. Quietly Grants #MountPolley Mine Permit to Pipe Mine Waste Directly Into Quesnel Lake #bcpoli https://t.co/Gpv8yg97dK

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 17, 2017

B.C. Government Unaware ‘What True Consultation Means,’ Say Locals

In a press release, the B.C. Ministry of Environment said the permit was granted after extensive community and First Nations consultation.

Local municipalities as well as local First Nations were vocally against the permit, however.

In a submission to the B.C. government, watchdog group MiningWatch argued the province should reject the long-term discharge permit.

“Ongoing concerns raised by members of the Xat’sull (Soda Creek) and T’exelc (Williams Lake Indian Bands), as well as formal opposition taken by local organization such as the Likely Chamber of Commerce, Concerned Citizens of Quesnel Lake, and local members of the First Nation Women for Responsible Mining clearly indicate that [Mount Polley’s] long-term water management plan, as currently proposed, is unacceptable.”

Jacinda Mack from the Xat’sull First Nation gathered 250 signatures from predominantly local First Nations who opposed the plan.

“There was extensive consultation,” Richard Holmes, fisheries biologist and resident of Likely, B.C., told DeSmog Canada, “however, the government, who should be governing fairly for all, has lost its way.”

“The government is bound by extremely weak regulations and law that applies to mining and the company took full advantage of this in spite of the overall opposition by the First Nations and especially the local residents who call this area their home.”

“The provincial government has no idea what true consultation with action really means. Consultation to them remains a catchphrase term meaning ‘this is what we are going to approve…thanks for listening to our plan,’ “ Holmes said.

“I would have supported their efforts to continue to mine if they were better environmental stewards,” he said.

Skuce, who has participated in numerous community consultation processes related to B.C. mines, said communities often feel government engagement is one-sided.

“Government often speaks about robust public engagements with communities and First Nations but quite often it’s an extremely technical one-way engagement,” Skuce, who participated in the public engagement process, said.

“It’s not a process that is meant to make people’s voices heard.”

After submitting comments to the Ministry of Environment during the public consultation process, Skuce was told by the ministry to direct her questions about the permit directly to Mount Polley.

“What is not clear is where my questions go. Are they just sent to the company? Does the government monitor the company’s intake and response to those questions?” Skuce said.

“And who is holding this company to account? Just us, the public?”

“It really sheds a light on the extent to which there is regulatory capture in this province.”

Holmes said the original permit for the Mount Polley mine in the 1990s prevented the company from discharging water from the site into nearby lakes.

“And look where we are now,” he said. “We feel deceived.”

Imperial Metals Major B.C. Liberal Donor

Since 2005 Imperial Metals and the Mount Polley Mining Corporation have donated $195,010 to the B.C. Liberals. B.C.’s political donation rules are some of the weakest in the country and place no limits on corporate donations.

Ugo Lapointe, MiningWatch Canada’s program coordinator, said it is concerning that major political donor Imperial Metals has not been held accountable for the tailings pond collapse.

“The key message to Canadians is this was the biggest mining spill in Canadian history and there have been zero sanctions and zero fines, and certainly that’s not because of lack of evidence of damage to the environment,” Lapointe told DeSmog Canada in a previous interview.

MiningWatch launched a private prosecution against Imperial Metals and the B.C. government for violation of the federal Fisheries Act. The company escaped those charges recently, after the case was blocked by federal government lawyers.

Holmes said the lack of accountability in B.C. for companies like Imperial Metals, which are also major political donors, is troubling.

“It’s a worrisome trend in a democracy such as in Canada when the corporations dictate the outcome of government decisions through their lobbying for weaker regulations to say nothing of the scandalous practice of corporate donations to our Liberal government,” he said.

Skuce said the high level of political donations in the province appear to give mining companies outsized political influence.

“It’s hard for the public to have confidence that the high contributions these companies make don’t have influence in the process,” she said, adding the circumstances make British Columbians suspicious of favourable industry permits.

“What we have in B.C. is a government trying to say to the public that everything is okay now, that they’ve fixed everything. But the story on the ground is that they’ve continued permitting pollution and aren’t going to hold the company accountable for the spill,” Skuce said.

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The B.C. government is granting logging permits in critical caribou habitat, despite evidence that B.C.’s Southern Mountain Caribou are being driven to extinction by habitat loss — a move that has driven citizens to call on the federal government to enforce the Species At Risk Act.

Among the hardest hit regions in the province is the area in and around Wells Gray Park, the scenic home to Helmcken Falls, two hours north of Kamloops.

There, people like Trevor Goward, a longtime local resident, naturalist and professional lichenologist, are sounding the alarm over the province’s failure to protect caribou.

Goward, along with a group of local citizens, is currently preparing to file with the federal government for an emergency stop to a fresh round of clearcuts in the Upper Clearwater Valley, which lies just outside of the southern boundaries of Wells Gray Park.

Canfor has obtained permits to log blocks W101 and W102 on the west side of the Clearwater River, and block T121 on the east side — all designated critical habitat for caribou. The company is sitting on nine more blocks on the east side, covering hundreds of hectares, and has indicated imminent plans to file for a number of additional permits there.

Canfor and its subsidiaries have donated a total of $884,366.08 to the BC Liberals since 2005, according to data released by Elections BC and the BC Liberals. The Council of Forest Industries, of which Canfor is a member, has donated an additional $54,815.00.

Canfor did not respond to a request for comment.

Image: Trevor Goward and Jason Hollinger

In filing their petition, Goward and his group are essentially going over the head of the province, which has jurisdiction over logging and caribou management, but not over endangered species. That constitutional responsibility for endangered species falls to the federal government, under the Species at Risk Act (SARA).

The Southern Mountain Caribou were listed as “threatened” when SARA was created in 2002. Then in 2014, they were designated as “endangered” by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.

“The province of B.C. has utterly failed to prevent logging in areas outside the Wells Gray Park where logging boosts deer and moose populations and artificially increases the number of wolves that then prey on caribou,” explains Bill Andrews, lawyer for Goward’s petition group.

A major point of divergence between the province and federal government’s approach to endangered Southern Mountain Caribou is in the treatment of “matrix habitat” — areas where caribou may not necessarily roam, but, because they are adjacent to other critical habitat, are nevertheless important to the caribou’s survival.

When matrix areas are clearcut, they attract and sustain predators, including wolves which can travel up to 100 kilometres per day — yet the B.C. government does not prevent logging in these areas, restricting industry only in those it narrowly defines as “core habitat.”

The new Canfor cutblocks fall directly within what is considered Type 2 Matrix habitat by the Species At Risk Act, meaning it should be kept relatively free of predators

“The federal government has constitutional authority to step in and protect the critical habitat of an endangered species where the province is unwilling to do so,” Andrews says.

“My clients are petitioning federal minister of environment Catherine McKenna to do just that.”

#BCLiberals Grant Major Political Donor Permission to Log #Endangered Caribou Habitat https://t.co/wazlcuTtnm #Canfor #bcpoli #bcelxn17

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 3, 2017

Caribou’s True Culprit: Habitat Destruction

While the province of B.C. has placed much of the blame for disappearing caribou on wolves, a closer look reveals the real culprit: decades of habitat loss from various forms of industry and, most notably, landmark changes to B.C.’s logging regulations under the 16-year tenure of the B.C. Liberal government.

Goward has produced a graph that lays key policy and legislative changes over declining caribou populations, revealing a stark parallel.

In 2004, the B.C. Liberals switched to the Forest and Range Practices Act, which essentially deregulated the forestry sector and put logging companies in charge of policing their own operations. As a 2011 B.C. Government and Service Employees’ Union report, “B.C. Forests in Crisis,” put it:

“Under FRPA, industry was given control over its operations, and entrusted to achieve on-the-ground results with less government supervision. Industry was allowed to define its own ‘results,’ as long as the results were consistent with general government objectives, and forest professionals would be relied upon to ensure sustainable practices (called “professional reliance”)…These policy changes significantly reduced the role of government in the forest industry. Direct government involvement in on-the-ground forest management was seriously limited, and key levers to influence industry activities were removed.”

These regulatory changes ushered in a series of devastating clearcuts throughout the Wells Gray region and all around the province.

Image: Trevor Goward and Jason Hollinger

In February, the B.C. government issued an election-time announcement, committing $27 million toward caribou recovery efforts. But the announcement downplayed a dramatic reduction in caribou numbers and plans to expand the province’s controversial wolf cull program to new caribou regions.

“It’s a policy to influence politics,” Chris Darimont, Hakai-Raincoast professor at the University of Victoria, says. “The province needs to be recognized for ‘doing something’. And despite the controversy about wolf control now, it’s easier politically than halting industry where endangered caribou roam.”

Christy Clark’s Caribou Numbers Game

In its February announcement, the B.C. government released population figures for the total of B.C.’s woodland population herds — numbers that mask precipitous declines in specific herds.

“Today there are some 19,000 caribou in the province, compared to between 30,000 and 40,000 at the turn of the last century,” the press release states. Yet only around 1,300 Southern Mountain Caribou remain across the province and many herds — including the Northern Woodland Caribou in the Peace region — are now endangered or even extirpated (locally extinct).

All of B.C.’s caribou are of the woodland variety, but there are different subpopulations within that.

South of Prince George roams a unique variety known as mountain or “deep snow” caribou. What makes the Southern Mountain Caribou special is their wintertime vertical migration into the high country. Their saucer-like hooves enable them to walk on top of 3-meter deep snow into alpine and sub-alpine habitat, where they evade predators like wolves and cougars and feed on black hair lichens which hang in abundance from the branches of spruce and fir.

It is the Southern Mountain Caribou that has experts worried the animal is being ignored by the B.C. Government.

The South Columbia herd around Mount Revelstoke, for example, has fallen from 120 animals in 1994 to just four in the 2016 census.

The Monsahee herd was recently classified as extirpated — meaning locally extinct — with just one very lonely animal noted in the census.

The province’s recent announcement acknowledges the need for habitat protection but much of the program’s focus is on “predator management” — which is more or less a lovely euphemism for killing wolves — and a maternal penning program, the effectiveness of which has been questioned.

Helicopter wolf kill programs have been taking place since 2015 in the South Peace and Southern Selkirks, but this year the province has added a new one in the North Columbia, near Revelstoke.

In 2016, 163 wolves were killed by the government’s program, a doubling from the previous year.

With the addition of a third kill program in 2017, the number is expected to grow again.

Although a portion of the $27 million is specifically set aside to support wolf culls in the Southern Mountain Caribou region, the announcement emphasized recovery work for the healthier woodland caribou north of the Peace Valley and in less industrialized portions of northwest B.C. — herds that still matter to hunters, an important voter constituency for the B.C. Liberals.

A 2017 protection study from the joint Canada-British Columbia Southern Mountain Caribou (Central Group) in B.C., found more than a quarter of the $12.5 million spent on caribou recovery between 2006 and 2016 went to predator-related initiatives — half of which was spent specifically on killing wolves.

Only $168,000, or about 1.3 per cent of the total, was spent on habitat management.

The Ministry of Forest, Lands and Natural Resource Operations (FLNRO) declined to provide details on how this new $27 million will be allocated, stating simply, “since the funding has just been announced, a detailed breakdown of how the funds will be spent is not yet available.”

Caribou in the Timber Sacrifice Zone

The province began the Mountain Caribou Recovery Implementation Program in 2008 — the goal of which was to return mountain caribou from the Prince George and the Omineca Mountains south to the Washington border to 1995 census levels by 2028.

Nearly halfway into that timeframe, the program has been a dismal failure.

Most notably, the province has resisted protecting caribou habitat in areas rich in timber resources.

Just 0.65 per cent of B.C.’s Timber Harvesting Land Base has been set aside for ungulate winter range — and of this amount, very little is prime habitat for caribou.

Those lands that are protected from logging are often impacted by heavy-duty snowmobiling, which carves a path for predators to access caribou in alpine habitat.

Forestry clearcuts and recreational activities create a cascading effect by stripping the landscape of old-growth and mature forests. What grows in their place is a mixture of brush and young deciduous shrubs and trees like willow, alder, and poplar — known as early seral forest.

Seral forest makes for poor caribou habitat but attracts and sustains lots of deer, moose and elk, which in turn attract predators such as wolves and cougars. Caribou often end up killed as “by-catch.”

The de facto response from the province has been to emphasize removing these predators rather than protecting caribou habitat from industry — the fundamental method of caribou recovery consistently recommended by the scientific community.

B.C. Liberals Walked Away from Local Use Plan

For Goward, however, the problem is much bigger than concerns over logging and its impact on Wells Gray’s mountain caribou.

“What we’re looking at here,” he says, “ is a breakdown of participatory democracy — a situation where the B.C. government called for, supported and signed into effect a land-use agreement with local residents — only to walk away from it a few years later.”

Goward belongs to the Upper Clearwater Referral Group, which grew out of a relatively collaborative land use visioning process with the NDP government in the mid-to-late nineties.

Recognizing local concerns over clearcuts, the government engaged with citizens to develop a local use plan under the Kamloops Land and Resource Management Plan (LRMP). The resulting agreement, called the “Guiding Principles,” was intended to achieve a lasting balance between industry and other user groups in the Upper Clearwater Valley.

In 2000, a year after the B.C. government signed onto the Guiding Principles, it convened the Referral Group, which it mandated to act as a watchdog committee to ensure the Guiding Principles agreement was respected by all parties.

While the B.C. Liberal Government of the 2000s maintained some contact with the group, it has steadily backed away from those earlier commitments and now, in 2016, has abandoned them entirely.

This left locals like Goward feeling frustrated and without a voice as new clearcuts loom over the valley.

Logging near the south end of Wells Gray Park since 1984. Image: Damien Gillis via Google Maps

Problem Widespread in B.C.

This problem is far from isolated to the Wells Gray region. It’s a pattern visible all across southern B.C.

In the Selkirk Mountains, caribou face an uphill battle too.

Like Goward, naturalists there see it as a problem of habitat destruction and are seeking to stem the decline by creating a new provincial park that would connect to other exiting ones and preserve some of the last truly intact sections of old-growth caribou habitat from clearcuts. (This is the subject of a new short documentary I directed called Primeval: Enter the Incomappleux.)

Craig Pettitt, a charter director of Valhalla Wilderness Society, based in New Denver told DeSmog Canada caribou can be pushed over the recovery threshold.

“Once these mountain caribou are wiped out, we can’t simply import woodland caribou from further north to repopulate the region,” explains Pettitt.

Previous attempts to transplant northern woodland caribou into southern mountain herds have proved an utter failure.

The issue also goes beyond any individual cut block or road to a bigger picture of repeated habitat destruction by many activities over a prolonged period.

This notion was underscored by an important 2015 paper published in the journal Biological Conservation, titled “Witnessing Extinction: Cumulative impacts across landscapes and the future loss of an evolutionarily significant unit of woodland caribou in Canada.”

“Currently, we are observing the decline, extirpation, and perhaps extinction of several evolutionarily significant units of woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou), an iconic and cultural keystone species,” the authors note, drawing on 11 years worth of data and observations on declining caribou populations.

“The cumulative impacts of multiple anthropogenic activities are now recognized as one of the most pressing problems facing the conservation and management of wildlife across North America and beyond.”

The authors look at habitat destruction through the lens of cumulative impacts — the piling on of various layers of industrial development on the natural landscape — or, as Goward’s group refers to it in a new website dedicated to raising these issues, death by a thousand (clear)cuts.

A similar situation has unfolded in B.C.’s Peace region where decades of road building, logging, mining, dams, power lines, conventional gas and fracking have heavily industrialized two thirds of the landscape, leaving little contiguous habitat for species like caribou.

While cumulative impacts are an important legal consideration in decisions on resource projects in the U.S., in Canada, they aren’t given much weight in environmental reviews, as the Joint Review Panel into Site C Dam sharply pointed out in its final report, noting “the Panel recommends that the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency undertake, on an urgent basis, an update of its guidance on cumulative effects assessment…”

Mountain Caribou. Photo: David Moskowitz/Mountain Caribou Initiative

As conservation biologist and wolf expert Paul Paquet puts it, “A long history of shortsighted and misguided accommodation of the forest industry has conspired to deprive mountain caribou of their life requisites and placed their survival in jeopardy. Their future now depends on our repairing the environmentally destructive mistakes of the past while stopping those of the present.”

It also depends on British Columbians demanding their government put the survival of an iconic species ahead of the interests of deep-pocketed donors.

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An ugly thread of misspent taxpayer dollars, environmental destruction and conflict-of-interest — backed by a government beholden to the mining industry — runs along the recently completed Northwest Transmission Line, charges acclaimed explorer and scholar Wade Davis.

The $716-million transmission line, budgeted in 2010 at $404-million, snakes 344 kilometres into B.C.’s wilderness, from north of Terrace to Bob Quinn Lake, and, to the alarm of downstream Southeast Alaska residents, the line is opening the area to mining in the headwaters of vital salmon-bearing rivers.

Those concerns have grown exponentially since the Mount Polley tailings dam collapsed in August 2014, sending 24-million cubic metres of toxic debris flowing into Hazeltine Creek and Quesnel Lake, and groups in B.C. and Alaska are warning that a Mount Polley-type disaster in the area known as the Sacred Headwaters, where acidity is likely to be high, would wipe out the multi-billion dollar fishing and tourism industries on both sides of the border.

Davis, a writer, former explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society, anthropology professor and B.C. Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of B.C., is appalled at the B.C. government’s decision to encourage mining in the ecologically rich northwest corner of the province and at the lack of government oversight as the pricey Northwest Transmission Line was carved through the wilderness.[view:in_this_series=block_1]

“It’s industrialization of the wilderness. It’s the story of politicians more concerned about the next election than the next generation,” he said.

Davis, who sometimes visits 30 countries a year, loves the wild beauty of B.C.’s northwest corner, which has the world’s largest population of stone sheep, grizzly bears, caribou and wolves.

“It’s not for nothing that it is called the Serengeti of Canada,” he said.

A Sweet Deal for Imperial Metals

All of which makes it inexplicable that the government would forego future high-end tourism opportunities by encouraging mining on a site such as Todagin Mountain where the Red Chris mine, owned by Imperial Metals — the same company that owns the Mount Polley mine— opened in February, he said.

An Energy and Mines Ministry spokesman, responding to questions by e-mail, said the province, Imperial Metals and Tahltan Nation — which approved a co-management agreement with the company in April — have been working to develop wildlife management strategies “to take care of this resource for future generations.”

That does not satisfy Davis, who owns the closest private property to the $650-million Red Chris copper and gold mine and believes the Liberal government has bulldozed ahead with the power line without a proper review and despite public concerns.

“The government was 100 per cent engaged in an effort to make this happen to the point of deceiving the Canadian people and certainly squandering their tax revenue,” he said, questioning the influence of party fundraisers.

Murray Edwards, controlling shareholder of Imperial Metals Corp. — a major donor to the B.C. Liberals — organized a $1-million fundraiser at the Calgary Petroleum Club for Premier Christy Clark shortly before the last election.

B.C. Government Committed to Mining Expansion

It is expected that mining companies will push for concessions, but it is also expected that the government will ask the important questions to minimize environmental damage, said Davis, who has frequently worked with industry and says he has no objection to responsible mining.

“But, here we have a government that is ideologically committed to making (Red Chris) go ahead,” said Davis, who speculates that Imperial Metals was given an easy ride to avoid the perception of a power line to nowhere.

Financial experts believe it was essential for Imperial Metals to get cash flow from Red Chris as soon as possible because Mount Polley remained closed for nearly one year and cleanup costs are estimated at between $67-million and $100-million. In May, the company reported a loss of $33.4 million during the first three months of the year.

The Northwest Transmission Line was billed by government as the engine that would drive economic development in the province’s northwest by powering up revenue-generating mining operations in the richly mineralized area.

So far, Red Chris is the only mine drawing power from the line. After a provincial review, the mine received provincial approval in June to operate the tailings storage pond, which has the same unlined earth and rock dam design as Mount Polley.

Red Chris is likely to be followed by Seabridge Gold’s Kerr-Sulpherets-Mitchell (KSM) mine, in the Unuk River headwaters, which will be one of the world’s largest open-pit copper and gold mines. KSM has received federal and provincial approval and is tying up funding for the $5.3-billion project while obtaining permits. The mine is expected to employ more than 1,000 people for 50 years.

The transmission line is also bringing power to the Tahltan community of Iskut, whose 350 residents previously relied on diesel, and to the $725-million, 195-megawatt AltaGas Forrest Kerr run-of-river independent power project.

AltaGas contributed $180-million of the cost and Imperial Metals contributed $69 million of the $209 million cost to build the Iskut extension. BC Hydro then purchased the extension for about $52 million.

Davis charges that the environmental insensitivities of Imperial Metals were revealed during the extension’s construction when the company clearcut to the edge of the scenic Stewart-Cassiar Highway, instead of leaving a buffer zone of trees as shown in the original plans.

Cutting trees adjacent to the highway is allowed and the company had all necessary permits, according to the ministry.

“As much as possible, the cutting is contained within the right-of-way of the highway to reduce impact to the visual quality of the surrounding landscape. In some instances, due to geotechnical and safety concerns (i.e. slope stability,) the power lines are located away from the highway,” said the ministry spokesman.

Taxpayers on the Hook?

The Iskut project enabled the province to obtain $130 million from the federal Green Infrastructure Fund. But, according to Davis, that is something that should make taxpayers uneasy when they look at the bill of almost $400,000 per resident and he questions labelling the project as green when, during construction, the equivalent of 14,000 logging truckloads of wood were burned.

BC Hydro has said the timber was burned because it was marginal and the long distance to roads and markets made selling it uneconomical.

 A Mining Association of B.C. study estimates the transmission line will attract $15-billion in mining investment, 10,000 jobs and $300 million in annual tax revenue.

However, energy economics expert Marvin Shaffer, adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University, would like British Columbians to look carefully at those figures, especially as the province decided to go ahead with the project without a B.C. Utilities Commission review.

“The rate policy in B.C. effectively subsidizes new mines and this was a line that was heavily subsidized,” he said.

Metal mines require large amounts of electricity. The standard industrial rate charged in B.C. is $40 to $50 per megawatt hour, but the draw on power means more power sources are needed and producing electricity from new sources, such as the Site C dam, will cost about $90 per megawatt hour, Shaffer said.

“An individual mine will consume up to 10 per cent of the output of Site C and the price doesn’t cover even half the cost of a new supply,” he said.

“The government argues that it is economic development, so then you have to ask: what are the benefits in subsidizing mining developments?”

Many of the jobs are likely to go to people living outside the province, Shaffer said.

“There might be some stimulus, but it’s not as if it’s going to be employing a lot of British Columbians who would otherwise be unemployed,” he said.

Image Credit: BC Hydro

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Imperial Metals is experiencing troubled times.

After the catastrophic breach of a toxic tailings pond at its Mount Polley mine on August 4th, British Columbians across the province have called into question the safety of the company’s other mega mine projects.

The Red Chris mine, located in B.C.’s northwestern corner is now under intense scrutiny by protestors from the Tahltan Nation who are blocking access to the company’s site, saying they won’t leave until independent reviewers address mine safety concerns.

On August 8th, the Klabona Keepers, headed by a group of mostly women elders, set up two camps, blocking each of the two access roads to the mine. Trucks are parked across the roads and makeshift wooden barricades have been erected to keep company vehicles from entering.

Located on Toddagin Mountain, near the Tahltan village of Iskut, the Red Chris mine is scheduled to begin operations later this year.

Like Mount Polley, Red Chris is an open pit copper and gold mine. And, like Mount Polley, the Red Chris mine is expected to produce millions of tons of toxic tailings over its projected 28-year life span.

The company has set aside a pristine mountain lake called Black Lake as a tailings holding pond. Black Lake is located above lakes and creeks which drain into the salmon bearing Iskut and Stikine Rivers – the lifelines of the Tahltan people.

For the elders, the current blockade is not only a show of solidarity with those affected by the Mount Polley disaster, but an act of self-defense.

One of two roadblocks blocking access to the Red Chris Mine. Photo by Albrecht Berg.

During initial consultations between Imperial Metals and the Tahltan, the company allayed environmental concerns by pointing to their safe track record at Mount Polley. The Red Chris mine would share the same design, the company said.

Now, in the wake of the Mount Polley spill, locals fear the Red Chris mine poses a similar danger to the environment, fish and wildlife.

Following the Mount Polley spill Imperial Metals’ President Brian Kynoch said, “If you asked me two weeks ago if that could happen, I would have said it couldn’t happen.”

During a visit to the Red Chris blockade, one of the elders at the camp, who, like her peers, prefers to be identified simply as Klabona Keeper, told me: “When you live off the land, when the land is your kitchen, the consequences of the kind of thing that happened at Mount Polley, are unimaginable.”

Elders sit around the fire at one of two blockades. Photo by Albrecht Berg.

The main demand of the protestors is a reliable guarantee that the kind of catastrophe seen at Mount Polley will never happen at Red Chris.

“We want an independent review of the tailings pond system by a third party independent of both the government and Imperial Metals,” the elder said.

The current standoff has brought into focus a whole range of issues around the Red Chris project. Mistrust is growing around the promised benefits of the Red Chris project.

Author and anthropologist Wade Davis, who has called the area home for the last 40 years, said the Red Chris project is a massive threat to the local landscape.

Standing in front of his home on the shores of stunning Ealue Lake, which is part of the watershed threatened by the mine, he explained that Todaggin Mountain is home to the world’s largest population of enigmatic stone sheep.

Anthropologist Wade Davis at his home on Ealue Lake. Photo by Albrecht Berg.

“This project, a hundred years hence, will be seen as one of the greatest acts of folly in history of Canadian public policy,” Davis said.

Concerns over the future of the mine have also brought new emphasis to working conditions at the mine which one Tahltan employee described as problematic.

“They can fire us without prior notice, while we have to hand a two-week notice in order to quit,” he said.

Complaints of racism against Tahltan workers have also surfaced. According to Imperial metals, 18 per cent of workers at the site are Tahltan.

“Why not 50 per cent?” one of the elders at the blockade responded when questioned on the issue.

“After all, this is Tahltan country,” she said.

Many of the locals view the Red Chris project as a showcase for how the extractive sector functions in the province.

A Red Chris Mine sign with blockaders in the background. Photo by Albrecht Berg.

B.C. subsidized the construction of a 300 kilometre-long power line to Iskut for the mine, using $750 million taxpayers dollars.

The official rationale for the North West Transmission Line was to break the reliance of 300 Iskut residents on diesel-generated power. Yet critics see the project as nothing more than a gift to Imperial Metals.

Provincial support for the Red Chris project is also seen in a new light, after significant campaign contributions for the B.C. Liberals from Imperial Metals came to light. Murray Edwards, the largest stakeholder of Imperial Metals and Calgary Flames owner, hosted a private fundraising dinner for Christy Clark’s campaign in Calgary ahead of B.C.’s May election. 

Since the events at Mount Polley, Imperial Metals and the B.C. government have engaged in significant damage control, with Minister of Mines Bill Bennett likened the spill to an avalanche.

Edwards pledged $100 million to the Mount Polley cleanup to keep a reeling Imperial Metals from going bankrupt.

Company President Brian Kynoch and Minister Bennett paid a joint visit to the Red Chris blockade on Wednesday. Both promised to halt construction until concerns were met.

But so far, the elders remain skeptical. Until they see written commitments to safety standards set by the Tahltan, they are determined to stay.

The mood at the camp is cheerful, yet forceful. Campfire conversation drifts from hunting stories and cookie recipes to political tactic.

One elder joked, “We can always go Mohawk style.” The others chuckled, but agreed they prefer to avoid unnecessary escalation.

The Tahltan have a long history of blockading.

In 2005, during a standoff between Fortune Minerals and Tahltan elders over a proposed open pit coalmine, 15 Klabona Keepers were arrested for defying an injunction to clear the very same access road now blocked by many of the same veteran blockaders.

While the battle over Fortune’s coalmine continues, the Klabona Keepers succeeded in stopping Royal Dutch Shell from going ahead with plans to extract coalbed methane in the same region. Shell withdrew from the region in 2012.

When asked how long they were willing to keep up the current blockade, all the elders answered simply, “For as long as it takes.”

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.