B.C. Green Party leader Andrew Weaver becomes downright indignant at suggestions he has retreated even a fraction from the LNG ultimatum he first delivered during a year-end interview with DeSmog Canada.

“If B.C. starts to focus again on trying to land an LNG industry given all that has happened, I can tell you I am voting government down,” Weaver said in late December. “I am not standing by and watching us give away the farm yet again to land an industry we’re not competitive in. That’s my line in the sand.”

While Premier John Horgan was on a trade mission in Asia last week, Weaver repeated his ultimatum on Twitter, threatening to topple the government if the NDP continued to pursue “LNG folly,” emphasizing that B.C. cannot meet its climate targets if any major LNG project goes ahead.

But wait, let’s back up. What’s the deal with LNG, again?

Under the BC Liberals, B.C. pledged to build something of a liquefied natural gas, aka LNG, empire. There was just one catch — liquefying natural gas is a hugely energy intensive process. To turn gas into a liquid it must be cooled to -160°C, which involves running giant compressor stations 24/7.

Where does all that gas come from? In B.C.’s case, it comes via fracking in northeastern B.C. Post-frack, the idea was the gas would be piped to LNG facilities on the B.C. coast, where it would be liquefied and exported to Asia.

At least that was the plan. So what happened?

Former premier Christy Clark’s promise to get 20 LNG plants up and running (and three running by 2020) fizzled as B.C. came late to the party and gas prices dropped. In an attempt to woo LNG developers from all over the world, B.C. cut taxes and pollution penalties under B.C.’s carbon tax. Alas, come 2018, B.C. has not built a single LNG plant.

For the most part, B.C.’s LNG ambitions seemed dead, especially with the cancellation of Pacific Northwest LNG in July. It seemed enough of a non-issue that the Greens and the NDP didn’t actually hammer out a way to deal with LNG in their historic deal to work together (their Confidence and Supply Agreement).

On most other issues, ranging from Site C to the Kinder Morgan pipeline to the carbon tax, the two parties came to a point of preliminary agreement. But any mention of LNG was conspicuously absent from the power-sharing pact.

“It’s not going to happen,” Weaver told DeSmog Canada when asked about the absence of and language on LNG in the agreement.

“The thing about LNG is it’s non-existent here in B.C. I’ve been saying for four years, there is no market for LNG. I mean, we missed the boat on that,” he said. “So, there’s no language on that because there’s no need for language on that…because it’s simply a non-issue for B.C.”

“You cannot add 10 megatonnes of emissions and somehow think we are going to reduce by 80 per cent by 2050. There is simply no possible path to do that. It’s impossible.” https://t.co/GsfnjjcQ4L

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) February 4, 2018

Then what’s changed?

In June 2017 the Woodfibre LNG project in Squamish received federal approval, hinting at a potential revival in the LNG industry.

More recently Premier John Horgan announced his first trade mission to Asia and told representatives from LNG Canada and Kitimat LNG he’d be discussing B.C.’s LNG strategy with trade partners.

Heads swivelled to Andrew Weaver, whose vow to bring down government was now being repeated over and over and over.

With threats and replies being tossed back and forth in media reports, Weaver and Horgan appeared at loggerheads over the future of LNG.

That’s when they hopped on the phone. After a call from Horgan, Weaver told reporters he felt reassured they were on the same page.

Since Horgan hasn’t publicly backed down from looking for LNG opportunities, doesn’t that mean Weaver has retreated?

Absolutely not, Weaver replied.

“I haven’t backed up one inch. Not one inch. The thing I have been reassured of by Mr. Horgan, is that he claims that they are going to make meeting our targets a condition of anything.”

Does that mean the two LNG projects that are most advanced — Woodfibre LNG in Squamish and the much larger LNG Canada in Kitimat — could go ahead and B.C. could still meet its target of reducing emissions 80 per cent from 2007 levels by 2050?

“No, no. That’s a flat, unequivocal no,” Weaver told DeSmog Canada.

“You cannot add 10 megatonnes of emissions and somehow think we are going to reduce by 80 per cent by 2050. There is simply no possible path to do that. It’s impossible.”

B.C.’s goal is to reduce emissions by 40 per cent by 2030 — a target that Environment and Climate Change Strategy Minister George Heyman admits will be tough to meet since the province is on track to blow its 2020 targets.

By 2050, the province’s goal is to reduce emissions 80 per cent below 2007 levels. To put that into real numbers, right now B.C. emits 64 megatonnes of greenhouse gases a year. By 2050, the province will need to emit 12.8 megatonnes a year or less to meet its target.

So what about the LNG projects that have already been approved?

Woodfibre LNG in Howe Sound is a relatively small project with a price tag of $1.6 billion and plans to export about 2.1 million tonnes of LNG each year. Woodfibre is the only project that has committed to using electricity to run its compressors, making it far less emissions intensive than other plants.

The other approved project is Shell’s $40 billion LNG Canada project in Kitimat, which is awaiting a final investment decision. Researchers from the Pembina Institute estimate the project would emit 8.6 megatonnes of greenhouse gases by 2030 and 9.6 megatonnes by 2050.

It’s not known what would happen if the government decided emissions from these previously approved projects are too high to allow them to proceed.

“That’s a speculative question,” said Heyman, adding that his first task is to ask for information on emissions and then relay the information to cabinet and the premier.

The bottom line is that if the NDP government wants LNG, they cannot meet their targets and, conversely, if they want to meet their targets they cannot have LNG, Weaver said.

“It’s really as simple as that,” he said. “Before anything happens they need to have a plan to reach their targets. All this is predicated on having a plan and that is completely missing, so what I want to see in the Throne Speech/budget is a commitment to put a climate strategy in place.”

Karen Tam Wu of the Pembina Institute said if the two approved projects proceed, it will be very hard to meet targets.

“We would be in a carbon budget crunch with two projects that occupy nearly 75 per cent of our 2050 carbon budget so what tools does the government have available to grow that part of the pie?” she asked.

There are opportunities to reduce emissions in the transportation and building sectors through retrofitting homes at a much greater rate than at present and promoting an exponential uptake of zero emissions vehicles, Wu said.

What now for LNG?

Heyman said he and Weaver agree there must be concrete action on climate change, with clear targets and an action plan and, at the request of Horgan, the Climate Action Secretariat has been asked to come up with emissions profiles of different sizes of LNG plants and conditions that could minimize those emissions.

“Then we can look at that profile and see how it sits in an overall emission reduction plan. I have told Andrew Weaver that that is what we are doing and I look forward to discussing those numbers and answers when they come back,” Heyman said.

The aim will be to look at all areas where emissions can be reduced, including electrification, leak detection and repair technology and reducing fugitive emissions, he said.

“All of that changes the emissions profile…Then we need to look at an overall emissions strategy across all industrial sectors,” he said.

The NDP have also promised to undertake a scientific review of fracking, the process by which B.C.’s natural gas is produced.

The Throne Speech and budget in the coming weeks are likely to mention climate action, but a full climate action strategy is unlikely to be ready for several months, Heyman said.

“We established a Climate Action and Clean Growth Advisory Council to work with our Climate Action Secretariat and give feedback on opportunities and impacts we need to mitigate…and we can probably roll out some specific actions in the coming months, but a full-blown plan is going to take a lot of work from a lot of people and that may not be ready until the fall,” he said.

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Protected bike lanes are a favourite punching bag for Canada’s pundits and politicians.

Lawrence Solomon recently called for Toronto to “ban the bike” in one of his three columns on the subject in the span of a month. Rob Ford made a career out of condemning the “war on the car” and ripping out bike lanes. Loren Gunter of the Edmonton Sun accused the city government of inflating its usage statistics in favour of elite bike riders, then arbitrarily cut the number of riders in half to make the point that they were a waste.

Fortunately, while they may be entitled to their opinions, that privilege doesn’t extend to facts. Countless studies have been published over the years to test the impact of bike lanes — and the results are pretty clear.

So, what do we know?:

• There’s been a reduction in cyclist injuries, even while cycling volumes have increased dramatically.

• Women especially are more likely to commute by bike if they have access to protected bike lanes.

• Everyone — cyclists, pedestrians and motorists — reports feeling safer on the road.

One user group, though, is benefitting even while frequently being the most opposed to the lanes: drivers who don’t bike.

Study after study has shown the ways that drivers benefit directly or indirectly from bike lanes, and yet drivers are the most likely to disapprove of bike lanes: in Toronto, 57 per cent of drivers who don’t bike do not support the Bloor Street project.

But they should. Here’s why.

Bike lanes mean fewer conflicts

Not only do bike lanes make the roads safer for cyclists, but they also reduce crashes and near-misses between cars. In Toronto, there was a 71 per cent decrease in car/car conflicts. That’s an even bigger reduction than there was in conflicts between cars and bikes and between cars and pedestrian, both of which fell by more than half.

“The overall tenor of the street changes,” says Tom Babin, a Calgary cyclist and author of the book Frostbike: The Joy, Pain, and Numbness of Winter Cycling.

“It’s a little less car-dominated, a little more human scaled. All of that improves safety for everyone using it.”

In Toronto, there is one caveat: there was a 61 per cent increase in conflicts between bikes and pedestrians, but those tend not to be as serious (a similar study in New York found pedestrian injuries actually fell by more than a fifth)  — and crashes overall went down by 44 per cent.

One user group that is benefitting from — even while frequently being the most opposed to — bike lanes? Drivers who don’t bike. https://t.co/KIf47fY03A

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 23, 2018

Bike lanes mean less traffic

Even accounting for the traffic that diverted to neighbouring corridors, in the Bloor Street study the city found overall traffic went down. Driving times at rush hour increased by between two and four minutes.

“If you feel there’s too much congestion on the roads, you should be supportive of bike lanes,” Babin says, pointing to a city planning phenomenon known as “induced demand” in which extra car lanes, once built, quickly fill with more cars as people adjust their commutes.

“You can’t build your way out of congestion,” he says, and the opposite is true as well. When car lanes are reduced, people find other ways to get to work, and traffic is alleviated.

After the bikes lanes were built in New York, travel time at peak hours decreased.

Bike lanes improve public health

Canada’s socialized medical system means we all bear the costs of large-scale choices. Nudging people to be more active can save us all money.

An enormous British health study of more than a quarter million people found those who commuted by bike reduced their risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and all other causes of death by nearly half. Cardiovascular disease and cancer alone cost the Canadian health care system over $25 billion per year.

Another British study, this time looking at bike lanes in New York, estimated that the lanes, at a cost of more than $8 million, may have increased the probability of riding bikes by nearly 10 per cent. That’s a good deal, it concluded: “Investments in bike lanes are more cost-effective than the majority of preventive approaches used today.”

Bike lanes grow retail sales

Business owners along bike lanes have often rebelled against the idea of building them in front of their stores and restaurants. In Vancouver businesses along Commercial Drive actually collected 5,000 signatures to oppose a plan to put in a bike lane along that street.

But evidence indicates that concern is misplaced.  Establishments along the Bloor Street bike lane and the bike lanes in New York actually saw an increase in spending. In San Francisco, after four and a half years, two-thirds of businesses thought bike lanes had improved their sales. A Portland State University study found cyclists spend more money overall (except at grocery stores) than car-driving customers do — because they visit more frequently.

“When you’re riding a bike, especially in a dense urban area, it’s much easier to stop and pick up something on your way home,” Babin, who also runs a cycling website called Shifter, says.

The same goes for parking. An Australian study found that a parking spot used for a single car as opposed to the six bikes it could otherwise accommodate would only generate about a quarter as much revenue for nearby businesses.

In Vancouver, a 2011 report to the mayor from the West End Mayor’s Advisory Committee prominently featured criticisms of the bike lanes being built in the neighbourhood. But today, the West End Business Improvement Association boasts on its website that it is “one of Canada’s premier urban cycling destinations.”

Bike lanes make streets look good

In New York, bike lanes added an additional 110 trees to the streets. They also shortened crossing distances for pedestrians. In San Francisco, three-quarters of business owners thought their streets looked more attractive.

Bike lanes can also be taken to the next level, like this glowing Van Gogh-inspired Starry Night pathway in Eindhoven in The Netherlands. But, you know, one step at a time.

A Halifax survey found the most popular choice by far for a divider between the road and the bike lanes were planter boxes, adding visual appeal to what had formerly been just a lane of pavement.

Some respondents in that last survey opposed the project entirely based on what they saw as a lack of demand. That’s an argument that’s also rearing its head in Victoria. The first phase alone of Victoria’s downtown bike lane project (5.4 km of separated bike lanes, nearly as much as Vancouver and Calgary) will cost the city $14.5 million. That’s a lot of money to spend — but it’s also less than a fifth of the $85 million spent on the McKenzie Interchange on the highway out of town.

But will it be used, many people ask? Currently one in six Victoria residents walk or bike to work, and that’s the highest proportion in the country.*

“I’ve heard this comparison before that making decisions on bike lanes based on the number of people riding their bikes is like building a bridge based on the number of people swimming across the river,” Babin says.

To Babin, one of the biggest benefits of bike lanes is making biking accessible to more people.

“It gives drivers a chance to get out and ride their bikes.”

* Corrected Feb. 2, 2018, at 1:20 p.m. to indicate that one in six  Victorians walk or bike to work. The article previously incorrectly stated that one in six Victorians bike to work. According to 2016 census figures, 6.6 per cent of Victorians bike to work.

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Can the Site C dam still be stopped?

It all boils down to one B.C. Supreme Court judge who will decide whether or not to grant First Nations an injunction against the project this spring, according to legal scholars who are keenly watching a new legal case against the $10.7 billion dam.

This week West Moberly First Nations and Prophet River First Nation filed notices of civil action claiming that the Site C dam — along with two existing dams on the Peace River — infringes on rights guaranteed to them in Treaty 8, which promised they could continue their traditional way of life.

The nations requested the court declare approvals for Site C issued by the B.C. and federal governments “unconstitutional,” and asked for an injunction to halt work on a project that will destroy traditional hunting, trapping and fishing grounds, as well as areas rich in berries, herbs and medicines.

But gone are the days of the “war in the woods” in places like Clayoquot Sound and South Moresby, when Indigenous peoples were more easily able to obtain injunctions against resource projects such as industrial logging on their traditional territories.

Today it’s a much tougher slog for First Nations to get an injunction against a resource project, say aboriginal law experts Gordon Christie and John Borrows.

“There’s something really troubling about the whole situation,” Christie, a UBC law professor, told DeSmog Canada. “Looking at this as a legal scholar it just seems like a game has been built that makes it impossible for First Nations to win.”

Borrows, a Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Law at UVic’s law school, said “the deck is stacked” against First Nations in injunction hearings because now “economic interests are often given greater weight than justice issues.”

A shift began in the 1990s, said Christie, when courts became much more likely to determine that the benefits of continuing with a project lay in favour of industry proponents who were creating jobs, rather than in the favour of First Nations striving to maintain a way of life on their traditional lands.

In legal terms, it’s called a “balance of convenience” — an analysis of the costs and benefits of either continuing with an industrial project or halting it, with a single judge deciding which argument carries more merit.

“Is the British Columbian government going to suffer the biggest harm because of all the money they’ve poured into [Site C]?” asked Borrows.

“Or is the court going to say, ‘oh no, actually the greater harm is the loss of the treaty rights and the Crown’s honour?’ It’s really hard to make that calculation because you have to choose between harms and find one that’s worse than the other.”

‘Deck Stacked’ Against First Nations Seeking Site C Injunction, Experts Say https://t.co/ityYHig2qI #SiteC #bcpoli #Indigenous pic.twitter.com/69wSu7GIJ2

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 19, 2018

What happens after the injunction hearing?

If West Moberly First Nations and Prophet River First Nation are denied an injunction, their “important” and “precedent setting” case will most likely eventually wind its way through the B.C. Court of Appeal and then to the Supreme Court of Canada, a process that could take three to six years, the legal experts said.

Christie said the nations ultimately have “a very good chance” of showing that Site C infringes on their treaty rights, but at that point the damage will already have been done and “they’ll get compensation” for a “moral victory.”

Lawyers for the two nations have said a settlement could be in the order of $1 billion, based on precedents set by cases such as the 1975 settlement awarding $225 million (roughly $1 billion today) to Indigenous groups affected by the massive James Bay hydro project.

“Governments are happy just to wait and have the courts tell them down the road well, that wasn’t right and then to have to pay compensation, which really means taxpayers pay,” said Christie. “The government officials don’t pay. They don’t lose. Nothing hurts them.”

Tim Thielmann, a Victoria lawyer who is part of the new legal team assembled by the two Treaty 8 nations, said the last thing the First Nations want is to be compensated for the loss of the land.

“What they really want is the land,” Thielmann said in an interview. “We don’t think that when the indigenous signatories entered treaty that the idea would be that the Crown could continue destroying the land as long as they paid them a bunch of money after they were through with it.” 

What is Treaty 8 and why does it matter?

Treaty 8 was signed in 1899 at Lesser Slave Lake in central Alberta. It covers a huge geographical area of Canada, including B.C.’s northeast.

In May 1900, eight Dunne-Za (Beaver) leaders signed the treaty in Fort St. John, including Chief Bigfoot, whose direct descendants include First Nations members like Helen Knott who are fighting Site C.

First Nations viewed a treaty with the federal government as a way to guarantee they could continue to practice their way of life as European settlers moved into their traditional territory and competition for land and resources intensified.

The federal government, for its part, was intent on opening up northern lands for agriculture, settlement, resource extraction and transportation routes to the Klondike gold rush.

First Nations were only willing to agree to the treaty if it spelled out their right to continue their hunting and fishing traditions and way of life.

In the words of the Treaty 8 Commissioners, “… we had to solemnly assure them that only such laws as to hunting and fishing as were in the interest of the Indians and were found necessary in order to protect the fish and fur-bearing animals would be made, and they would be as free to hunt and fish after the treaty as they would be if they never entered into it.”

What happened next?

Over the next century, B.C.’s Treaty 8 nations saw vast tracts of their traditional territory taken up by industrial development.

The Dunne-Za lost the heart of their homeland in 1968 when the W.A.C. Bennett dam flooded an area the size of Kuwait. The Peace Canyon Dam, which became operational in 1980, flooded a further stretch of the Peace River Valley.

Now the rest of the valley is threatened by Site C, which would inundate 145 kilometres of the Peace River and its tributaries, destroying dozens of areas of cultural importance to First Nations, including burial sites known through oral history.

“The cumulative impact of the Bennett, Peace Canyon and Site C Dams is to turn the Peace River into a series of reservoirs, destroying the unique cultural and ecological character of the Peace, severing the physical, practical, cultural and spiritual connection the Prophet [and West Moberly] have with the Peace, and infringing Treaty Rights,” the civil action states.

Didn’t the First Nations go to court already over Site C?

West Moberly First Nations and Prophet River First Nation lost previous court cases against Site C that sought to overturn federal and provincial approvals and permits for the project.

The courts ruled that neither the B.C. cabinet nor the federal cabinet had the expertise to determine whether or not Site C violated treaty rights before green-lighting the project and issuing permits.

The rulings found that only the courts could answer the question of potential treaty rights violations from Site C.

So, until now, the courts have never examined the issue of whether or not Site C violates treaty rights.

The door opened for a civil action following the NDP government’s December announcement that it will continue with Site C because the Liberals pushed it past the “point of no return,” a rationale disputed by project finance and energy experts who said the NDP’s math was sadly lacking.

“There’s a very compelling case by multiple expert economists to suggest that the cost of terminating the project is far less than completion,” said Thielmann. 

What does this have to do with me?

Christie pointed out that all Canadians are parties to Treaty 8, a relationship in which the Crown is supposed “to act honourably.” Treaties, he said, “made Canada possible.”

“We’re the other side of the coin, the other party. Can we pressure the Crown to act honourably instead of waiting for a court to tell them after the fact ‘well, that wasn’t honourable?’ ”

“Is it really honourable to flood one of the last remaining stretches of the valley that has had such an important role in the lives of Treaty 8 nations?”

In an e-mailed statement, the B.C. Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation told DeSmog Canada that the government remains “steadfastly committed” to adopting and implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which states that resource projects should only proceed with the “free, prior and informed consent” of affected peoples.

The ministry also said it respects the right of West Moberly First Nations and Prophet River First Nation to seek redress through a legal claim, and that it will respond to their claims in court.

The Premier’s office, asked if the government is prepared to add another $1 billion to Site C’s price tag, said in an e-mail that it cannot comment on a matter before the courts.

Borrows said it is possible that a last-minute ruling will be made in favour of the First Nations.

“Even if it happens at the eleventh hour that could still see the dam built but not operationalized. That’s always a possibility.”

Image: Chief Roland Willson

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The Site C dam has lived many lives before its approval today by Premier John Horgan, from a twinkle in the eye of some BC Hydro engineers, to the target of multiple lawsuits, to two damning reports by the utilities regulator, to “the point of no return.”

Below, we’ve collected a few of the key moments in its life up to now.

• 1971: B.C. Hydro begins engineering feasibility studies for a potential third dam on the Peace River
• 1976: B.C. Hydro concludes that Site C, just upstream of Taylor, B.C., is the most feasible of the options on the table
• July 1980: B.C. Hydro releases an environmental impact statement, estimating the project might be completed by 1987 at the earliest; it also forecasts growth in power demand of 5.9 per cent for the following decade.
• Feb 13, 1981: The Globe and Mail reports that BC Hydro has applied for a water license to build Site C, then projected to cost $5.1 billion in 2017 dollars.
• May 3, 1983: BC Utilities Commission (BCUC) recommends against the project in a 315-page report, calling the utility’s demand forecasts “unreliable.”
• September 18, 1989: B.C. Hydro quietly revives Site C plan.
• November 30, 1993: BC Hydro CEO Marc Eliesen says, “Site C is dead for two reasons,” “The fiscal exposure is too great … the dam is too costly. Also it is environmentally unacceptable.”
• April 19, 2010: Premier Gordon Campbell announces the government is instructing BC Hydro to proceed with Site C. Cost is estimated at between $5 and $6.6 billion, though Campbell acknowledges the estimate is uncertain and based on old numbers. John Horgan, then energy critic for the NDP, tells the Vancouver Sun he believes the dam is unnecessary.
• May 17, 2011: Estimate of Site C cost pegged at $7.9 billion.
• May 18, 2011: John Horgan tells The Globe and Mail “The environment assessment process appears to be a sham.”
• August 2011: Environmental review begins.
• August 2013: Joint Review Panel (JRP) established to assess Site C for federal and provincial governments.
• October 14, 2014: Three-year environmental assessment complete. JRP concludes that Site C’s energy is not needed in the timeframe presented by BC Hydro. It recommends BCUC review Site C’s cost and alternatives. BC government ignores key JRP recommendations.

The Site C dam has lived many lives before its approval today by Premier John Horgan, from a twinkle in the eye of some BC Hydro engineers, to the target of multiple lawsuits, to two damning reports by the utilities regulator, to “the point of no return”. https://t.co/XxnUD4P68Z

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) December 12, 2017

• December 16, 2014: Site C receives provincial government approval. Cost now pegged at $8.8 billion.
• July 2015: Construction begins despite pending court cases launched by First Nations and Peace Valley landowners.
• January 2016: Premier Christy Clark vows to push Site C past the “point of no return.”
• January 23, 2017: Federal Court of Appeal dismisses lawsuit from West Moberly and Prophet River First Nations. Question of whether Site C violates treaty rights has still not been tested in the courts.
• May 9, 2017: NDP wins enough seats to form government, contingent on Green Party support. Green Party leader Andrew Weaver expresses strong opposition to Site C while Horgan declines to take a position, repeating a campaign promise to send project for independent BCUC review.
• May 15, 2017: Project has spent $1.75 billion.
• November 1, 2017: BCUC delivers its report saying Site C behind schedule and over budget, and power not likely to be needed. Says cost may exceed $10 billion.
• November 30, 2017: Expert panel briefs NDP government on Site C.
• December 11, 2017: NDP government greenlights Site C dam. Cost now pegged at $10.7 billion.
• December 11, 2017: Two Treaty 8 First Nations announce they will seek an injunction to stop work on Site C and will launch a lawsuit in BC Supreme Court on the grounds that Site C violates treaty rights.

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What is that yellow goop in the water? Acid rock drainage–metal leaching, or just “acid drainage”, is usually associated with mining but also happens during large building projects, like the Site C dam — basically any time a large amount of rock has been crushed, blasted, or otherwise made to have a lot of new surface area open to the air. It’s a result of sulphur-containing compounds in the rock reacting with air and water, causing the formation of sulphuric acid.

It gets worse: That acid can then leach heavy metals out of the rock, which can get into nearby watercourses. This process can go on for hundreds or even thousands of years after the mine is shut down.

So, sulphuric acid and heavy metals in the water. Got it. Why is that bad?

I shouldn’t have to explain this, let alone to myself, but here we are. With the lower pH and heavy metals such as cadmium, nickel, chromium, and arsenic, watercourses can be made unsafe for humans and animals. It can also kill the fish living in the water, as well as their eggs, insect larvae, and other organisms. It’s sulfuric acid and heavy metals… in the water.

Wait, you didn’t answer my question re: the Goop.

Fine, geez. That’s what’s known as Yellow boy; it’s when iron is leached out of rock by strong acids. When the pH comes back up, the iron comes back out of the solution as that yellow goop. Yellow boy can coat stream beds, blocking plant photosynthesis and suffocating wildlife.

Thank you.

You’re welcome. Let’s move on.

Who knew piles of rock could be so dangerous?

The mining industry does. It’s a major concern for them; a publication by the Canadian Mining Innovation Council called it “the largest environmental risk facing the mining industry.” There are even entire annual conferences on the subject.

A Canadian government program called Mine Environmental Neutral Drainage (MEND) has been working on reducing the risk and liability from acid rock drainage for nearly three decades. That liability was estimated in 1994 to be between $2 and $5 billion.

One example of an ongoing problem with acid rock drainage is the Tulsequah Chief mine in northwestern B.C. That mine shut down 60 years ago, but continues to pollute the Tulsequah River, a tributary to the salmon-bearing Taku River. Two companies have gone bankrupt while looking to restart that mine, and the lack of cleanup continues to be a sore spot for Alaskans living downstream.

What is the mining industry doing about it?

There are a number of approaches to this problem, some more technologically advanced than others. The simplest method is to just dump the tailings in water — remember, the problem comes from air reacting with the sulphides — in order to prevent contact between the air and the rock. That’s not a perfect solution, as the Mount Polley disaster showed, because if the dam holding that tailings pond fails, the problem is essentially spread throughout an entire river system.

Other methods follow a similar tack, covering the rock in various materials to keep it from reacting with the air.

There are also more complicated methods of preventing acid rock drainage, involving adding chemicals, bacteria, or bacteria-like organisms to the rock to remove the sulphates before they can react with the air and produce the acid. Mines can also add buffers, chemicals that offset the acid.

To treat ongoing problems, usually from abandoned mines, companies can add lime (a very basic chemical that lowers the acidity), divert the runoff through limestone channels for the same effect, or even use constructed wetlands to treat the water before it reenters existing watercourses.

TL;DR

Mines crush a lot of rock. Often, because of where valuable metals are found, those rocks contain sulphides, which react with air to make acid. That acid can then leach metals out of the rock and contaminate water, making it unsafe for consumption. It’s responsible for billions of dollars in environmental liabilities in Canada alone. It’s a whole thing.

Companies and governments around the world are working on solving the problem, but it’s a tough one. It can be prevented to some degree, and it can be remediated. But it takes time and money, and the problem can go on for generations. Countries like the UK are still dealing with Industrial Revolution-era acid rock drainage problems.

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