In October 2017, Vancouver-based Atlantic Gold opened Nova Scotia’s very first open pit gold mine, one of four it has planned for the province. The Touquoy mine, about 100 kilometres from Halifax, is named after French miner Damas Touquoy, who first worked the Moose River deposit back in the late 1800s.

Officiating at the opening ceremony, and applauding energetically at the cutting of the ribbon, was Nova Scotia’s Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Renewal, Lloyd Hines.

Years earlier, Premier Darrell Dexter’s NDP government in the province gave the mine a helping hand when then minister of natural resources, Charlie Parker, issued a vesting order allowing the mining company to expropriate land that had been in the Higgins family for 120 years.

It looks as if Nova Scotia, where small-scale, underground gold mining persisted from the mid-1800s until the 1940s, is once again pinning a good part of its future on gold. There are currently two new open pit gold mines undergoing environmental review in the province, another four potential mines in the works, and several junior companies talking up Nova Scotia gold to investors.

Chilean Metals, a Canadian-Chilean company is promoting its “wholly-owned copper-gold” properties in Parrsboro and in Fox, Lynn and Bass Rivers, along the shore of the Bay of Fundy, a place so environmentally remarkable it has been designated a UNESCO “biosphere reserve.” The junior mining company has been telling investors that a gold discovery in the area will be like a “moonshot.” Chilean Metals says it has optioned its Bass River North Project to Tejas Gold Inc.

Another junior company with its corporate headquarters in Vancouver, Resource Capital Gold Corp, is promoting its “Nova Scotia gold fields roll-up” at four “historically high-grade gold projects” it has acquired on the province’s Eastern Shore, at Dufferin, West Dufferin, Forest Hill and Tangier. The underground mine in Port Dufferin mine has already begun processing ore.

Anaconda Mining is gearing up to do open pit and underground gold mining in Goldboro, between Isaac’s Harbour and Gold Brook Lake, also on the Eastern Shore. On August 1, 2018 registered its proposed mine for environmental assessment with the Nova Scotia Department of Environment. In September 2018, the minister determined that the company would need to submit a focus report before it could make a decision.  

In recent years, government geologists in the Geoscience Branch of the Department of Natural Resources (DNR, which has now been moved to the Department of Energy and Mines) used tens of thousands of dollars of public money, both provincial and federal, to collect data on potential gold deposits in 30,000 hectares of mostly forested land stretching from the ski hill in Wentworth valley to Earltown in the Cobequid Mountains of northern Nova Scotia.

These data are going into a “request for proposals” that the Department of Energy and Mines will issue to invite mineral exploration companies to come and drill in the area, despite the fact that the “highest exploration potential” is in the watershed for the Tatamagouche water supply.

The reappearance of gold mines in the province may be a blessing to some — but for others it’s opening an all-too-familiar playbook through which international extractive companies bend politicians to their will, gaining concessions, tax breaks and land allocations that result in ever-shrinking benefits to the owners of the resource.

Meanwhile, the same well-worn tactics are being applied in the province to secure social licence and ensure mining companies are held to as little account as possible.

Open for business, or open for exploitation?

In recent years the government of Nova Scotia has been going all out to promote mining in the province. There has been a flurry of new quarries, and approvals for the expansion of existing ones throughout the province, which already has gaping holes in the landscape that cover close to 6,000 hectares.

It’s a rush for underground resources that is Made in Nova Scotia by the Government of Nova Scotia, along with a little help from the Mining Association of Nova Scotia, formerly the Chamber of Mineral Resources of Nova.

In 2015, the government announced it was redesigning its mineral promotion strategy in view of its goal of “attracting investments to the province’s mineral industry.”

The same year, the province signed a new Memorandum of Understanding to update Nova Scotia’s “Mining One Window Process,” first signed in 1994 under the Liberal government of Premier John Savage. This process makes it easier and faster for mining companies to work in Nova Scotia, including “a streamlined environmental assessment process and success with Aboriginal consultation.” It was part of a powerful sales pitch made by Diane Webber of the former Department of Natural Resources in 2014 to the mining industry about the “tremendous opportunity” that Nova Scotia offers.

The One Window Process looks a lot like the “one-stop shop” investment vehicles that the World Bank Group invented and then, together with many Western countries, promoted in a host of resource-rich and monetarily poor countries in Africa hit hard by what is known as the “resource curse.”

These investment promotion vehicles have been very useful for moneyed investors from wealthier lands seeking to get their hands on natural resources and arable land on the continent. Indeed, much of what Premier Stephen McNeil’s Liberals have been doing to try to lure investors to the province is reminiscent of what impoverished developing nations such as Sierra Leone and Mali were urged to do by creditors (also called “donor” countries) and the World Bank Group to attract large foreign investors.

A golden platter

In the past two years, the Nova Scotia government has overhauled the provincial mining legislation to “cut red tape for industry.” The new Mineral Resources Act requires “less frequent reporting on exploration licences” by industry, and for the Department of Natural Resources, frees up “more staff time to provide hands-on assistance to industry.”

What it doesn’t do is designate any parts of the province as absolutely off limits to mineral exploration and mining. It hands power to the minister to “open selected areas in the province for mineral exploration.”

This new legislation, not surprisingly, was “positively received by industry.” The Mining Association of Nova Scotia issued a press release saying that it had worked with the government on the review of the Act for several years and that they were “pleased that the government has accepted many of our recommendations for improving the Act.”

Moving ore at Atlantic Gold’s Touquoy gold mine. Photo: Joan Baxter

‘We’re going for gold’

For years, the Nova Scotia government has been funding mineral exploration in the province with its Mineral Incentive Program. In 2014, this included a grant of $50,000 to the large Canadian company, IAMGOLD (with mines on three continents) to explore for gold just south of the Cape Breton Highlands National Park. This was the same year IAMGOLD sold just one of its numerous mines for half a billion dollars.

In the 2018 budget address, Nova Scotia Deputy Premier and Minister of Finance and Treasury Board Karen Casey announced the government would be building on the success of the opening of the Atlantic Gold open pit gold mine to launch the Mineral Resources Development Fund.

So in 2018, rather than the $400,000 given out under the Mineral Incentive Program, the government would be handing out $700,000 to “increase mineral exploration and mine development.” The government press release announcing the new fund quoted a delighted prospector and owner of a resources company, who proclaimed, “We’re going for gold.”

Three of five members of the Advisory Council for the Mineral Incentive Program represent industry.

While not many Nova Scotians know it, they have also been footing the bills to send prospectors, bureaucrats and politicians to international mining and investment extravaganzas, to solicit mining companies. One of these, the annual convention in Toronto of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC), attracts thousands of “investors and 25,606 attendees from 135 countries” and bills itself as the “event of choice for the world’s mineral industry.”

In March 2018, Nova Scotia’s government and private prospectors shared a large booth at the PDAC convention in Toronto, handing out Nova Scotia tartan scarves to potential mining investors.

All of this has earned the province praise from industry. Atlantic Gold describes itself as a company that focuses on projects in “mining friendly jurisdictions,” which can only mean Nova Scotia, since it is the only jurisdiction in which it operates.

Chilean Metals promotes the province as a desirable place to work because of its “favourable tax structure” and “mining friendly provincial government.” It describes the former Department of Natural Resources (jurisdiction over mining has now moved to the Department of Energy and Mines) as a “supportive partner offering exploration assistance to the company.”

The province has also been wooing China, the world’s biggest producer and purchaser of gold, as a potential exploiter of the province’s underground. In 2017, DNR officials participated in the Canadian Mineral Investment Forum in Beijing and the China Mining Conference in Tianjin. They have invited the Chinese investment group to the province for a site tour.

Government as a regulator or a cheerleader for industry?

The province is still struggling to document and deal with toxic tailings from historic gold mines, which operated from the mid-1800s until the 1940s, and left millions of tonnes of finely ground waste tailings contaminated with mercury and arsenic, some more than a century old. Nor does it seem to be taking into consideration the long-term dangers of tailings ponds, which need to be monitored and maintained to prevent leaks, breaches, leaching, and contaminated groundwater for centuries after mines close.

But the mining industry has a powerful advocate with Sean Kirby, son of retired Liberal senator Michael Kirby, who heads the mining association. Kirby is leading the charge to convince the government and public that mining is not just safe and modern, but key for “jobs and prosperity.”

To spin what might otherwise have been an unpalatable message for environmentally aware people in the 21st century, the mining association came up with the slogan, “Not Your Grandfather’s Mining Industry” and developed “an educational site” to explain how it all works with “games, videos and fun facts.”

The mining association sponsors a video contest called “Mining Rocks” to get its message into schools across the province. Both Liberal and Progressive Conservative MLAs work with the association to hand out prizes for this contest in schools around the province. In April, MLA Geoff MacLellan, who was then Minister of Energy, helped distribute mining association prizes in a school in Glace Bay, Cape Breton.

Sean Kirby also pens frequent op-eds, extolling the virtues of the today’s mining industry, to soften up the public on why mining should be allowed in protected wilderness areas.

Kirby’s pro-mining PR hasn’t gone unchallenged. I wrote a piece for the Halifax Chronicle Herald pointing out that modern gold mining is definitely not like that of our grandfathers’ times. They are often owned by highly complex multinational corporations that operate through a maze of subsidiaries for all kinds of tax and legal reasons, making it difficult to track them down or make them accountable for environmental or human rights abuses.

These are not small underground mines around which communities grow, schools are built, and in which mining money circulates. The jobs they create tend to be short-lived, coming to an end when mines close, often after just a few years.

Kirby’s push to have protected wilderness areas opened up for mining by swapping those for other pieces of land that could be protected, earned him the wrath of the Ecology Action Centre’s Raymond Plourde. He pointed out that when the protected areas were selected, this was done in consultation with the mining industry, and that “great pains had been taken to avoid areas deemed to have the highest mineral potential.” Elsewhere on the planet, Plourde wrote, major mining companies “largely accept the need for protected areas, but in Nova Scotia it seems they just can’t wrap their minds around it.”

The government responded by saying it was not considering land swaps. But this did not appease citizens concerned about the mining association campaign to have protected land such as Kluscap Wilderness Area in Cape Breton, sacred territory for the Mi’kmaq, opened up for a quarry. They organized a protest in Cape Breton and another in front of the Mining Association of Nova Scotia’s headquarters, which is also Kirby’s residence in Ingramport, south of Halifax.

Section 21(1) of the Minerals Act authorizes the minister the authority to grant permission for anyone “engaged in duties under the Act or in geoscientific activities” to enter all lands in the province “at any reasonable time” and “pass over the land of any person by any reasonable means doing as little damage as possible.”

This means absolutely no lands in Nova Scotia are totally off limits for mineral exploration and mining. Any property owner in Nova Scotia could one day get a knock on the door from prospectors or exploration companies asking for permission to work on their property, and there is nothing they can do about it. What lies underground belongs to the government, which is keen to open the doors to miners.

Preoccupied by the (business) environment

On March 9, Nova Scotia’s then Minister of Natural Resources, Margaret Miller who was shifted back to the Department of Environment in July 2018, brought forward Bill 76, amendments to the Minerals Act, which establishes the rights and obligations around, in the minister’s words, “the responsible development of Nova Scotia’s mineral resources.” She told the legislature it fulfilled “a commitment of the Natural Resources Strategy.”

That document, “The Path We Share: A Natural Resources Strategy for Nova Scotia 2011 – 2020,” was developed with the input of thousands of Nova Scotians. It pointed out that, “Historically, mining practices focused on the economic benefits, with little attention given to the environmental impact.” It specified the need to ensure that any new mining operations include reclamation plans that stress biodiversity.

The Natural Resources Strategy also referred to the province’s water strategy, Water For Life, which committed Nova Scotia to being “a national leader in water resource management,” stating that, “Water is essential for life and will be valued, kept safe, and shared.”

Minister Miller made no mention of these goals when she brought forward the amendments to the Mineral Resources Act. She used the word “environment” once, and then only to describe the “open-for-business environment” for mining that the Act supported.  She didn’t mention the word “water,” focusing instead on how the bill “cuts red tape” for industry and reduces “barriers to industry.”

So where does this leave the citizens of this province who are concerned about the environment and their water? One answer to that question came from the province’s Auditor General in 2017, when he reported that the Department of Environment had approved 53 of 54 projects, but monitored less than half of those to ensure the terms and conditions were met.

His conclusions? “Poor monitoring of approved projects increases risks to NS environment and makes terms and conditions less useful.”

As for the “myth that mining brings jobs and prosperity,” Joan Kuyek, co-founder of MiningWatch Canada, says that is debunked when one looks beyond industry spin, at the environmental and other costs that are its legacy.

Unfortunately, it looks as if the government of Nova Scotia has been well and truly taken in by the tales of gold that the industry likes to spin, and decided it’s full speed ahead – or backwards – when it comes to mining the province.

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Canadian mining company Gabriel Resources is suing Romania for $4.4 billion through a secretive tribunal after the country denied permits for the largest open-pit gold and silver mine in Europe — a project Canadian officials advocated for, according to documents obtained by DeSmog Canada.

Since 1997, the Canadian mining company (fun fact: it was founded by a man convicted twice of heroin possession), has pressured Romania to allow the construction of the proposed mine in northwest Romania.

The mine would destroy three villages, level four mountains and displace 2,000 people.

Tens of thousands of people marched against the Roșia Montană project in 2013 — the same year the Romanian parliament rejected permits for the mine’s construction. Since then, Romania has applied for the site to be designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Location of Roșia Montană mine. Image via Gabriel Resources

Canadian Ambassadors Advocated For Mine

Hundreds of pages of documents obtained by DeSmog Canada via Mining Watch Romania  — a distinct organization from Canada’s MiningWatch — show Canadian officials have vocally advocated for the mine, which would access the largest undeveloped gold deposit in Europe.

The documents are a portion of the thousands of pages released to Eugen Melinte of Mining Watch Romaina through Canada’s Access to Information legislation. The materials contain internal Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade correspondence regarding the Roșia Montană mine going back to 2004.

A 2007 e-mail featuring the subject “Rosia Montana good news” sent from a Canadian embassy staffer to Canada’s senior trade commissioner in Romania noted that an “ardent supporter of the Gabriel Resources project” was re-elected as mayor and a “congratulations phone call might be appropriate.”

In an e-mail from 2008 a trade commissioner with Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada clearly stated: “Our embassies in Bucharest, Brussels and London have provided extensive support to Gabriel Resources, such as offering business development advice and facilitating meetings with key decision makers.”

The documents show former Canadian ambassador to Romania Raphael Girard later joined the board of Gabriel Resources, worked as a lobbyist for the company and used connections inside the ministry to push for the project.

Marta Moszczenska, the ambassador who took Girard’s place, also advocated strongly for the Roșia Montană mine.

Melinte shared documentation with DeSmog Canada showing Canadian officials used foreign diplomatic meetings to discuss the mining project with Romanian counterparts, often when mining was not officially on the meeting agenda.

“They hunt down the decision makers in unrelated meetings,” Melinte said in an interview.

“Let’s say there’s a meeting for all the Francophone countries. When the Canadian official would meet the Romanian counterpart, they would discuss particular mining projects. I found traces also in NATO meetings….NATO is about defence, not mining. Yet when they would meet, they would put this on the agenda.”

The internal documents include briefing notes prepared for then-prime minister Stephen Harper in advance of a meeting with the prime minister of Romania. Those notes included suggestions to “address the issue of Rosia Montana” and advise “a broader point should be made to the Romanian PM about the risk of creating an unfavourable investment climate in Romania.”

Bizarrely, the documents also detail a Canadian embassy recommendation that Gabriel Resources meet with Prince Charles, a vocal critic of the project.

The company was not successful in arranging that meeting, Melinte said.

“I think it is important that [the company’s] side of the story be told to the most important influencers that have already been approached by the project’s opponents,” wrote David McGregor, senior trade commissioner at the Canadian embassy in Romania, in a 2005 e-mail. “Our mandate now includes supporting [Canadian] investors.”

When asked by DeSmog Canada if the Canadian government still supports the construction of the mine, a spokesperson from Global Affairs Canada responded: “This is a matter between Gabriel Resources and the Government of Romania.”

Government of Canada, Gabriel Resources Rosia Montana ATIP Selections by DeSmog Canada on Scribd

Excerpts from documents released via Access to Information laws containing internal Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade correspondence regarding the Roșia Montană mine.

Tailings Breaches Spilled Millions of Cubic Metres of Mine Waste in Romania, Hungary

The Roșia Montană mine would produce 300 tonnes of gold and 1,400 tonnes of silver.

The process itself would require the use of cyanide to remove the gold from rock, an extremely controversial practice that in part triggered the 2013 protests. Some 200 million tonnes of mine waste, known as tailings, would be stored behind a dam proposed for the scenic Corna valley.

There have been a series of catastrophic tailings breaches in the area. In 2000, a Romanian gold mine breach spilled 100,000 cubic metres of mine waste — including 100 tonnes of cyanide — into a tributary of the Danube River, killing all plant and animal life in the water for hundreds of kilometres. The catastrophic Ajka alumina plant spill in neighbouring Hungary released one million cubic litres of waste in 2010, killing 10 people and injuring another 150.

Local residents are wary the Roșia Montană mine’s cyanide-tainted waste might leak or spill, despite the company’s assurance that the tailings dam will be “100 times safer than a usual tailing dam.”

The company continues to purchase land in the mine’s proposed region, where some residents refuse to relinquish their land rights.

Gabriel Resources failed to respond to multiple interview requests made by DeSmog Canada.

Investor-State Trade Deals Pose Threat to Environmental Protections

Romania has until 2019 to respond to Gabriel Resources’ $4.4 billion suit.

The challenge is filed via an “investor-state dispute settlement” (ISDS) based on both Canada-Romania and United Kingdom-Romania business investment treaties.

The threat to Romania’s national sovereignty and environmental protections is especially relevant in light of ongoing negotiations of trade agreements including NAFTA, TPP and CETA.

The case also highlights the exorbitant amount companies can claim through investor-state trade deals.

“It is a huge amount of claimed compensation, based mainly on the company’s hoped-for future profits if the mine were allowed to go ahead,” Gus Van Harten, associate professor at York University Osgoode Hall Law School and expert in international investment treaties, told DeSmog Canada.

“There are many other ISDS cases in which the foreign investor claims billions,” Van Harten said. “Claimants sometimes inflate the amounts at stake in a dispute as a bargaining tactic to intensify pressure on a country.”

It’s been estimated that Gabriel Resources has spent $700 million to date trying to pull off the project, including helping to fund a pro-mine documentary called “Mine Your Own Business.”

The secretive and often punitive process of investor-state compensation claims occur behind the closed doors of international tribunals.

Van Harten said investor-state dispute settlement should be abolished.

The current system serves as “an institution of globalization that is stacked in favour of the least vulnerable and against ordinary people,” he said.

Why A Canadian Mining Company Is Suing Romania for $4.4 Billion https://t.co/qZ1HN9SKoc #cdnpoli @james_m_wilt @MiningWatchRo @MiningWatch

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) October 19, 2017

Three-Quarters of Global Mining Companies Headquartered in Canada

Pressure is mounting on Romanians struggling to prevent the Roșia Montană project.

In late August, the Romanian prime minister suggested he’s strongly considering withdrawing the country’s application for a UNESCO World Heritage Site, leaving the door open for future development “maybe after 20 years, when technologies will advance and we will no longer use cyanide.”

“We will try to withdraw it, to write that we no longer support the same point of view, which will put us in a very strange position with the international organizations,” he said in a televised discussion and quoted in the Guardian. “If things remain final, it’s all over.”

Canada is home to 50 per cent of the publicly listed mining companies in the world and has no significant legislation to guide the practices of companies operating overseas.

Canada’s Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act is often criticized for its weak scope and enforcement. Since its introduced in 1999, only one individual and three companies have been convicted under the act.

Melinte said Canada also backs mining projects in South America and Greece.

“Wherever they have a mining project, they support it fully regardless of the consequences,” he said. “They’re not oblivious to the consequences: they just pretend they don’t know.”

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Water quality in a tributary of one of Southeast Alaska’s prime salmon rivers will improve once a new mine opens on the B.C. side of the border according to spokesmen for Seabridge Gold Inc, the Toronto-based company planning to open the Kerr-Sulpherets-Mitchell (KSM) mine.

The copper, gold and molybdenum mine, 65 kilometres northwest of Stewart and 30 kilometres from the Alaska border, received federal and provincial environmental assessment approvals last year and the company is now seeking a joint venture partner for the $5.4-billion project.

But the prospect of a massive mine close to a tributary that runs into the Unuk River has alarmed Alaskan fishing, First Nations and environmental groups who say the risk is unacceptable and are pushing for transboundary mining issues to be referred to the International Joint Commission.

“The long term risks of KSM far outweigh any short-term improvements to water quality the mine may create,” Chris Zimmer, Rivers Without Borders Alaska campaign director, said.

The KSM tailings pond, with a massive 239-metre tailings dam, will be built in the Bell Irving/Nass watershed in B.C., but the mine operation will be close to Sulpherets Creek which runs into the Unuk River.

“The open pits and waste rock piles are located in (the Unuk) watershed,” Heather Hardcastle of Salmon Beyond Borders said.

“They’re essentially using the Unuk, all the way up to the border as a mixing zone.”

However, Brent Murphy, Seabridge Gold vice president environmental affairs, in an interview with DeSmog Canada, said water quality in the creek is already bad because of natural erosion of copper, iron and zinc deposits.

“The acidity will basically eat your boots off,” he said.

Federal and provincial regulators agree there will not be any impact in Alaska from the mine, Murphy said.

“The operation of the KSM water management system will, in fact, improve the overall water quality,” he said, pointing to company photos of discoloured creek water.

“We will treat the water that comes into contact with the mine site and improve the water running into Sulphurets Creek and ultimately the Unuk River,” Murphy said.

But Alaskan groups say the photos are misleading and point to a 2014 report by Skeena Wild Conservation Trust that concluded KSM would release metals into the Unuk watershed that would exceed levels known to have serious impacts on salmon.

“I am especially concerned when people make statements to the effect that they can improve natural systems. Seems the height of hubris,” said Guy Archibald, Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, Inside Passage waterkeeper coordinator.

“There is more complexity in a mud puddle than science will ever understand and a massive intervention such as the KSM mine will no doubt have massive unforeseen negative consequences.”

Following the 2014 collapse of the Mount Polley tailings pond dam there has been increased concern about earthen tailings dams and the expert panel looking into the disaster recommended that mining companies should adopt best available technologies and consider dry stacking tailings when possible.

However, Peter Williams, Seabridge vice-president of technical services said location is the paramount concern when choosing how to dispose of tailings and, after considering dry stacking, it was decided the KSM site was ideal for wet tailings, with a lined tailings pond to ensure no discharge into the environment.

“We have put it into a valley and most of the walls are valley walls, so they are very strong,” he said.

“It makes this location very safe.”

The u-shaped valley will have gently-sloping dams at either end, constructed of sand from the tailings, Murphy said.

That is very different from the Mount Polley dam which consisted of a steeply-sloping ring dyke constructed of locally-sourced till material, he said.

“Most importantly, after treatment, water from the proposed KSM facility will be discharged on an annual basis, preventing the build-up of any water within the facility as occurred at Mount Polley where there was no treatment of water for discharge,” he said.

Zimmer, who emphasized that Alaskan groups are concerned about the effect of the mine on any rivers, whether Canadian or Alaskan, said one of the major worries is what happens over time.

“What happens after 250 years? What if the water treatment fails or doesn’t work as proposed — Seabridge has no contingency plans for this,” he said.

Williams said there should be no concerns after closure as, after the tailings are topped and revegetated, there will be minimal water flow.

During the six-and-a-half-year review process, Seabridge held numerous meetings with Alaskan groups and regulators, including a public meeting in Ketchikan, Murphy said.

There was also a detailed assessment by independent federal regulators so there was no need for a panel review — as requested by Alaskans — because it would duplicate work already done, Murphy said.

Neither would a referral to the International Joint Commission be the correct process, Murphy believes.

“In our opinion [the IJC] is a political dispute resolution process and we are continuing to support efforts of the B.C. and Alaska governments who are working on increasing cooperation between the two governments on transboundary projects and we encourage them to work towards a memorandum of understanding,” he said.

But Zimmer said most of the meetings were open only to agency and company officials and many questions remain — such as lack of funds to deal with major accidents or proof that Seabridge can treat water for selenium.

“The arrogance demonstrated by Seabridge’s blind faith in their engineering in the face of the forces of Mother Nature and time, is the same arrogance that resulted in the Titanic, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Mount Polley,” he said.

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Wrangell, Alaska — A fishing boat chugs across the water in front of the patio at Wrangell’s Stikine Inn, temporarily disrupting dinner conversation as residents of the tiny Southeast Alaska town tuck into heaped plates of rockfish and chips.

At the next table, where a group of friends are celebrating an 80th birthday, the talk is all about the next day’s fishing plans. The new salmon smoker is working well, there were more than 40 crabs in the pots yesterday and everyone wants to be out on the water before 9 a.m. tomorrow because there are king salmon to be caught.

Commercial and sports fishing fill the freezers and wallets of Wrangell residents but, out of mind for many of them, behind the shield of the Coast Mountains, lurks a threat that could annihilate the area’s fishing and tourism-based economy.

As Bonnie Demerjian gazes over the spectacular scenery, with snow-capped mountains, tree-covered slopes and rounded islands, she cannot understand why the entire population of Wrangell — which grows to 3,400 in summer and shrinks by at least 1,000 in winter — is not up in arms about the aggressive mining push across the B.C. border.

It frustrates her that it has taken images of torrents of toxic sludge, rushing down the valley from the Mount Polley tailings dam failure, to grab Wrangell’s attention.

“Until then, it seemed so far away. There’s pretty much a resource extraction mentality here and there has been too much apathy,” said the author, former school teacher, commercial fisher and journalist, who has lived in Wrangell since 1977.

Bonnie Dermerjian, a commercial fisher and journalist, has lived in Wrangell since 1977. Photo: Judith Lavoie.

Miner Jay Bradley, who grew up in Wrangell and now lives in Arizona, agree that most people in Southeast Alaska’s small communities would rather ignore the problem.

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“Joe Blow on the street is just trying to make his house payments and we don’t have politicians with balls enough to even try and ask Canadians to tighten up,” he said.

Demerjian, whose first book was “Roll On! Discovering the Wild Stikine River,” has been trying to raise awareness about Canadian activities in the upper part of the Stikine River for at least three years. But, despite the community’s reliance on the river, the warnings have been largely ignored in a fiercely independent part of the state where many pride themselves on a subsistence lifestyle based on fishing and moose hunting and few people want to be associated with groups seen as radical environmentalists.

“I really think it is too late now. Red Chris (mine) is already producing and it’s only a matter of time before the dam breaks. It’s the same engineers as Mount Polley. It’s not if, but when,” Demerjian said gloomily.

Red Chris, a copper and gold mine owned by Imperial Metals — the same company that owns Mount Polley — opened for business on the Canadian side of the border two days after the independent report into the Mount Polley disaster was released.

The report contained recommendations such as adopting modern mining technology and moving to dry stack tailings storage where possible, but those recommendations will not apply to Red Chris or the giant KSM project in the Unuk watershed, which were already through the environmental assessment process.

Imperial Metals plans to store tailings in Black Lake, behind a dam, and it is estimated that, over the life of the mine, there will be more than 300 million tonnes of mine waste, some of it acidic, that will require water treatment in perpetuity.

There’s a lack of confidence in B.C.’s ability to ensure safety because the Canadian rules are seen as lax, Bradley said.

“It’s like night and day. They are allowed to do so much more on that side of the border,” he said.

Demerjian finds it hard to imagine what would happen to the salmon runs if there was a dam failure.

“What happens if the river becomes polluted?” she asked.

“No one will touch our fish."

Those Wrangell residents who are becoming aware of potential transboundary mining problems are startled when shown a map, with a chain of dots showing proposed B.C mine sites, that Aaron Angerman, tribal administrator for the Tlingit-Haida based Wrangell Cooperative Association, has outside his office.

While about 10 are in the assessment process, others have not yet gone beyond being staked by ambitious would-be miners.

The Stikine provides food, recreation and jobs and any spill or leak of acid mine drainage upstream would be crippling to the community, said Angerman, who grew up in Wrangell.

“For thousands of years our people have been reliant on the river. We are the Stikine tribe. If anything happened it would be a killer for this place.”

Aaron Angerman, tribal administrator for the Tlingit-Haida based Wrangell Cooperative Association. Photo: Judith Lavoie.

Like other members of the United Tribal Transboundary Mining Work Group, Angerman wants to see the Boundary Waters Treaty enforced, better safety practices in B.C and Alaskans given an equal voice in decision-making on transboundary mines, although he worries about the impossibility of trying to stop a multi-billion industry that is supported by the B.C. government.

In the meantime, his main task is informing people about the risks.

“We need to get people together and show them what Mount Polley looks like and what the Williams Lake people are saying and tell them that this could be us if it goes badly,” he said.

“Anything that we can accomplish is better than just sitting here and waiting for a freight train to hit us.”

Wrangell and the neighbouring community of Petersburg, along with national and Alaskan native organizations and larger communities such as Juneau and Ketchikan have passed resolutions asking that the issue be passed to the International Joint Commission and that B.C. look at the cumulative impact of the mines in the Stikine, Taku and Unuk watersheds.

The  resolution sets out concerns with B.C.’s record and weakened environmental laws.

“The ongoing acid mine drainage from the Tulsequah Chief mine and the tailings dam failure at the Mount Polley mine demonstrate weaknesses in monitoring and enforcement,” says the preamble to the Petersburg resolution.

Meanwhile, Demerjian wonders what has happened to Canada’s environmental sensitivities.

“I used to think of Canadians as being much more environmentally aware and now, no one can say that,” she said.

Main Image: Wrangell, Alaska, wharf by Judith Lavoie.

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.

Officials with the Cariboo Regional District declared a local state of emergency Wednesday after millions of cubic metres of contaminated tailings water from the Mount Polley mine flooded Hazeltine Creek early Tuesday morning, spilling into Quesnel Lake. Water drinking and water use bans have been issued for Quesnel Lake, Polley Lake, Hazeltine Creek, Cariboo Creek, and the Quesnel and Cariboo River systems, up to the Fraser River, according to the B.C. Ministry of Energy and Mines.

The breach, caused by the collapse of a berm supporting a lake of mining waste that spanned four square kilometres, released an estimated 10 million cubic metres of water and slurry that contains toxic processing wastes including arsenic and mercury into salmon spawning and drinking waters.

The tailings pond at Mount Polley mine, operated by Imperial Metals, was used to dispose of 84,000 kilograms of arsenic, 10,000 kg of cadmium, 38,000kg of lead and 562 kg of mercury in 2013, according to company data released to Environment Canada.

Imperial Metals mines both gold and copper on Mount Polley.

A video released by the Cariboo Regional Discrict shows the scope and extent of the Mount Polley Mine tailings breach.

“I apologize for what happened,” Imperial Metals president Brian Kynoch told a press conference yesterday. “If you asked me two weeks ago if this could have happened, I would have said it couldn’t.”

Kynoch said the company can only speculate on the cause of the tailings pond failure and said an investigation is needed.

He said the quality of the tailings is “close to drinking water quality,” adding “there’s almost everything in it but at low levels…No mercury, very low arsenic and very low other metals.”

A screen shot from Google Maps shows the approximate location of the breach, near Likely, B.C.

The provincial Ministry of Environment in B.C. said it issued repeated warning to Imperial Metals about the Mount Polley tailings pond, according to the CBC. Ministry spokesperson Kim Franklin to the CBC her office had issued five warnings in May alone, the most recent concerning wastewater height in the pond.

Franklin also said the company requested permits to discharge increasing amounts of wastewater from the mine, which led to an independent overview in 2009.

Brian Olding, an environmental consultant who carried out the assessment, said the company allowed pond levels to get too high. “It means the water is rising so you have to build the walls of the tailings lagoon higher as you go,” Olding told the CBC.

In his report Olding said the company would need to eliminate 1.4 million cubic metres of water on an annual basis to maintain stable levels in its tailings facility.

Gerald MacBurney, a former foreman at the mine, said he warned management at Mount Polley about concerns he had with the tailings enclosure. He said Imperial Metals added five times the amount of water to the tailings pond than was originally planned for after the company decided to expand its operations.

Bill Bennett, B.C. minister of energy and mines, said the spill is a “serious incident that should not have happened.”

Bennett, who is in the area, said the company has been fairly compliant and safe throughout the years.

“From the air it’s a true disaster. It looks like a combination of a serious avalanche, [mixed with] millions and millions of litres of water having gone down a fairly steep grade. It’s changed the creek bottom from about six feet wide to about 150 metres wide, so that gives you some idea of the force of all of this water when it went down.”

“It’s unprecedented in Canada for this to happen,” he said.

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