Proposed reforms to B.C.’s mining act are a positive step but taxpayers are still on the hook for costly clean-up costs, according to Calvin Sandborn, legal director of the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre.

Sandborn, who has been at the forefront of efforts to reform B.C.’s antiquated mining laws, said while the proposed changes to B.C.’s mining regime address a lack of independent oversight of the industry, they don’t tackle the long laundry list of problems associated with B.C.’s growing mining industry.

That’s because the proposed mining reforms, released last month and now open for public comment, deal only with the Mines Act and not the Mineral Tenure Act, which allows mining claims to be staked by nearly anyone in the world who has access to a computer, even if those claims lie within Indigenous traditional territory or sensitive ecosystems. 

The suggested changes also don’t address ballooning liabilities associated with mining operations. The Environmental Law Centre has pegged the liability costs for old mines in B.C. at $1 billion, while a report from watchdog group MiningWatch Canada estimated the figure to be closer to $3 billion.

“You need to have a guarantee that, when the mine closes up, it’s not going to leave the long-term problems that we’ve seen all over the province,” Sandborn told The Narwhal

“When are they going to ensure the polluter pays rather than taxpayers picking up the tab? The history of mining in B.C. has been that companies come in and get the quick profit and just leave the cost to the taxpayers.” 

This provincial map shows the location of selected major exploration projects, selected proposed mines and mines producing metal, coal and industrial minerals in 2018. Photo: British Columbia Geological Survey

B.C.’s regulation of mining under fire since Mount Polley Mine disaster

Regulation of B.C.’s mining industry has been under fire, both in Canada and internationally, since the 2014 Mount Polley disaster saw 24 billion litres of contaminated mining waste flow into waterways around Quesnel Lake and Hazeltine Creek after a tailings dam collapse.

Mount Polley mine disaster, August 2014. Image: Cariboo Regional District / Youtube

Public anger grew when no charges were laid against Imperial Metals even though a panel of experts found the company at fault due to an unstable foundation. Taxpayers ended up shouldering $40 million in cleanup costs and, in 2017, the company was given permission to discharge mine waste directly into Quesnel Lake.

The Mount Polley dam collapse led to fears in Alaska of similar disasters at Canadian mines along the border above prime salmon-bearing rivers. Alaskans are also dealing with pollution from the abandoned Tulsequah Chief mine, on the Canadian side of the border, close to the salmon-rich Taku River.

A wall separating the containment pond from the Tulsequah River has eroded and Tulsequah Chief mine wastewater now drains directly into the river. Photo: Colin Arisman / The Narwhal

The suggested reforms would separate mining permitting powers from inspection and enforcement duties to alleviate an apparent conflict of interest.

A new statutory decision-maker would be responsible for permitting, while health, safety and enforcement responsibilities would remain with the Chief Inspector of Mines.

The reforms also include the creation of a new oversight body, an Audit Unit, to perform independent mine inspections and beef up the capacity of staff with the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources to hold mines accountable for health and environmental safety.

New powers for the ministry would give inspectors and auditors the authority to bring equipment or people to mine sites when needed, including technical experts and representatives from Indigenous communities.

Earlier this year, the Environmental Law Centre joined more than 30 mining advocacy and legal organizations earlier this year in calling for sweeping changes to B.C.’s mining laws.

The 69 detailed changes recommended by those groups include expanding civil liability for companies to ensure they pay for pollution, mandating clear risk-based inspection policies for all mines including closed and abandoned sites and requirements for independent analysis of water treatment systems that take into account the full long-term costs of a mine’s lifecycle.

Sandborn said it is important to separate regulation from granting mining rights, “so you don’t have the mine promoter agency regulating people they have lured to the province.” 

But it’s unclear how effective the province’s proposed changes will be at separating promotion and enforcement, Sandborn said.

“It’s not as separate as it is in some jurisdictions where it is different agencies, like Alaska and Ontario. … It’s somewhat of a response to the very fundamental problem the Auditor General pointed out, but we’ll see how separate those agencies end up being.”

Earlier this year reps from 30 mining advocacy and law organizations proposed almost 70 recommendations to change B.C.’s outdated mining laws. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

In 2016, Carol Bellringer, B.C.’s auditor general delivered a damning report that concluded the province is not properly prepared to protect the environment from the mining industry. Bellringer found that a major problem is mining companies do not post enough security deposits to cover potential reclamation costs if a firm defaults. She estimated the fund is short more than $1 billion.

Sandborn said he is surprised that, after all the bad publicity, the government is not quickly bringing in effective reforms that look after taxpayers’ interests.

“This is a small step, but my bigger worry, from what I hear within government, is they’re going to blow it on the big issues.” 

The government has boosted the budget of the mines ministry by $20 million over three years to hire more inspectors and conduct more inspections. Talks are being held with industry, Indigenous communities and non-governmental organizations about changes to the Mineral Tenure Act, but more consultation is needed, according to government documents.

Changes to the Mineral Tenure Act, which the reforms do not touch, are essential to stopping mineral claims arbitrarily overriding land use plans that have been put together by stakeholders agreeing on the best use of different areas, Sandborn said.

“Mining claims can go in on Indigenous territories and cultural sites and sensitive watersheds,” he pointed out.

An updated policy for mine reclamation securities is expected later this year, with the presumed aim of ensuring clean-up costs are covered if a mining company fails to live up to its obligations.

In Alaska, mining companies are required to provide 100 per cent security upfront before a mine is permitted to operate. B.C.’s regulations are far laxer.

For instance, Canadian mining giant Teck Resources was required to pay full security for an estimated $560 million in reclamation costs for its Alaskan mine. Teck’s five B.C. mines, which have been plagued with selenium pollution problems, have unsecured reclamation costs of $700 million dollars in total.

For decades B.C. failed to address selenium pollution in the Elk Valley. Now no one knows how to stop it.

Sandborn said he is getting troubling signals that the B.C. government may not join other jurisdictions such as Quebec and Alaska in requiring 100 per cent bonding. 

“Proposals I have seen that were being floated around in the ministry were saying that we would give bonding credit for rocks in the ground. If there were potential minerals in the ground that could be applied to the bond, which is an absolutely bizarre notion that would be absolutely unacceptable and unenforceable,” Sandborn said.

Meanwhile, controversy continues to boil over Taseko Mines’ repeated attempts to explore for copper and gold on sacred land within Tsilhqot’in traditional territory, despite the unwavering opposition of Tsilhqot’in National Government. The New Prosperity Mine was twice rejected by the federal government, but granted an exploration permit by the province’s former BC Liberal government.

In other disputes, Imperial Metals, the same company responsible for the Mount Polley disaster, wants to drill in the Skagit headwaters, adjacent to Manning Park, angering groups in Canada and the U.S, who, again point to B.C.’s poor regulation of the mining industry.

A hiker on Silverdaisy Peak in the area known as the ‘Doughnut Hole’ in the headwaters of the Skagit River. In 1996, Skagit Valley was given a provincial park designation, merging the area with Manning Park, but the middle was left out because of mineral claims that have existed since the 1930s, creating the area known as the ‘Doughnut Hole,’ now the subject of an application for a mining exploration permit by Imperial Metals. Photo: Wilderness Committee

Clock is ticking for public input

Jill Weitz, campaigner with Salmon Beyond Borders, an Alaskan-based group advocating for the protection of transboundary watersheds, said she commends the province for soliciting public comment. But there is a lack of clarity within the process, she said.

“The province doesn’t do a good job in outlining how this will become a part of a bigger, broader process to update B.C.’s archaic mining laws,” Weitz old The Narwhal.

The cutoff for British Columbians to have their say on provincial mining regulations is Friday, October 25. 

There is still time to fill out a survey or email feedback to minesactproposal@gov.bc.ca.

Written submissions will be posted publicly, making it simple to see whether the government has received an earful on needed changes.

In an emailed statement to The Narwhal, the mining ministry said all feedback received will be considered, including in any future legislative, regulatory or policy changes. The ministry will also release a “What We Heard Report” summarizing the overall feedback.

“The intention is for government to introduce the Bill into the Legislature in 2020 should it wish to do so,” the ministry said.

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.

It’s been five years since the Mount Polley tailings dam burst and spilled 24 million cubic metres of mining waste into critical salmon habitat in the Fraser River watershed, but B.C. hasn’t learned its lesson, according to a new report released on Tuesday.

If another mining accident happened today, B.C. taxpayers would still be at risk of paying the clean-up bill according to the report released by the First Nations Energy and Mining Council, which calls on the B.C. government to compel mining companies to provide funds for cleanup.

“The lack of financial assurance for mining disasters is a serious policy gap in British Columbia — one that increases the risk of another Mount Polley,” said report author and economist Jason Dion. “By implementing smart financial assurance requirements, B.C. can better protect the public while still ensuring a thriving mining sector in the province.”

The cost of cleaning up B.C.’s abandoned mine sites was pegged at more than $500 million in 2016.

Financial assurance is a system of ensuring funds are available to pay for a cleanup even if a company goes bankrupt. It screens out companies that can’t afford the risk of their own projects.

British Columbia currently relies on a phased system of financial assurance, in which companies do not have to put up the full estimated clean-up cost up front; companies can rely in part on the value of the untapped commodities in the ground, an approach that is vulnerable to commodity swings, company bankruptcies and technological innovations at competing mines elsewhere in the world, Dion says.

Two tailings dam failures expected each decade under current regulations

The expert panel that reviewed the cause of the Mount Polley mine disaster warned B.C. can expect two dam failures every 10 years unless mining laws are updated. Nearly five years later, no fines and no charges have been laid against the mine’s owner Imperial Metals, which is now on precarious financial ground. One economist has estimated that British Columbians are on the hook for a $40 million clean-up bill for the Mount Polley disaster.

“B.C. has a polluter-pay policy under its Environmental Management Act, but that’s not the reality on the ground,” said Allen Edzerza of the First Nations Energy and Mining Council.

“By accepting our recommendations, the government would not only ensure that polluters pay when there are disasters, it would also reduce the risk of another Mount Polley by giving mining companies a financial incentive to reduce risk in their operations.”

The recommendations would bring the mining sector into line with other heavy industrial sectors — pipelines, offshore oil and gas production, tanker traffic and nuclear power generation — which must provide financial security against the risk of disaster, in many cases up to $1 billion, according to the report.

A June report from the First Nations Energy and Mining Council found that British Columbia does not need to reinvent the wheel in terms of mining rules. It can emulate other jurisdictions such as Quebec and the United States.

A case in point: in 2013 Quebec tabled legislation requiring all new mines to provide a guarantee sufficient to cover the estimated costs of clean up. A mining operation today must provide a financial guarantee in three separate payments in the earliest stages of mine life: 50 percent of the total amount within 90 days of mining plan approval, with two payments of 25 percent each, made on the subsequent anniversaries of approval.

‘The power exists to do it today’

These changes could be made in B.C. with a stroke of the pen, says report author Dion, a researcher at Ottawa’s Ecofiscal Commission.

“The power exists to do it today,” he says of requiring any new B.C. mine to put up a full clean-up cost with cash or other secure financial instruments. “Under this scenario, only the mines that could afford to clean themselves up would go forward, from now on. This is definitely low-hanging fruit.”

This spring, the B.C. Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources confirmed it was engaging industry and First Nations on legislative changes to the Mineral Tenure Act, specifically around changes to placer mining and mineral tenure rules. In late July, a spokesperson for the ministry confirmed that there are also plans to change B.C.’s reclamation security policy this year, although details and more specific timelines were not provided.

The Quebec policy shift, part of a wider body of reforms, is noteworthy because a big multinational mining company operating in Quebec today needs to put up full clean-up costs upfront, regardless of how much money it has in the bank. Meanwhile in B.C., mining giant Teck Resources has unsecured reclamation costs of $700 million for its mines.

Tulsequah Chief mine polluting for decades

Emulating the Quebec approach could eliminate the conditions that created the fiasco at northern B.C.’s Tulsequah Chief mine. In that instance, a large company developed the mine and later sold it off, only to be taken over by a succession of small players without the means to clean it up.

The Tulsequah Chief, which has been polluting a shared Alaska-B.C. transboundary salmon river for decades, has not only strained B.C.’s reputation and relationship with Alaska, but B.C. taxpayers are now on the hook to pay for clean-up.

Water pits filled with acid mine drainage at the Tulsequah Chief mine in northwestern B.C. The mine has been discharging waste into the transboundary salmon-bearing Taku River for 60 years. Photo: Chris Miller via CSM Photos

B.C. also gives its Chief Inspector of Mines, an unelected bureaucrat appointed by the ministry, a large amount of discretion in setting the terms of financial assurance, which appears to occur on an ad hoc, mine-by-mine basis without posted guidelines. The province did not facilitate The Narwhal’s request for an interview with Herman Henning, B.C.’s new Chief Inspector of Mines. Henning’s LinkedIn page as of July 24 showed his current occupation as a “self-employed mining consultant.”

Edzerza of the First Nations Energy and Mining Council cautions that more is necessary than simply insisting on full up-front reclamation costs. Mechanisms are also needed to ensure that estimated reclamation costs reflect the real clean-up cost — including when a mine expands beyond the originally permitted size.

‘No negative effect’ from Quebec’s strengthened reclamation policy

In Quebec, political will was required to make the policy changes. Government faced criticism from a wide range of industry-related groups in the lead-up to the changes, including warnings that tougher bonding rules would make the sector internationally uncompetitive.

But more than five years later, the sky has not fallen in Quebec.

“There has been no negative effect on investment attraction,” wrote Sylvain Carrier, a spokesman for Quebec’s Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, in an email to The Narwhal. “This policy change had a positive effect on public confidence, fostering social responsibility, and on mining investment.”

Carrier says that in 2014, the year after the changes were made, total mining investment in Quebec was $2.9 billion; last year, it was more than $3.1 billion.

“We can say with reasonable confidence that [the Quebec changes] haven’t led to the kind of major crash in mining sector investment that some might have predicted when the policy was put on the table,” says Dion. “It might mean less mining investment, but given the risks and costs of remediating some of these mines, if they cannot pay their own costs down the line, that might make sense.”

Dion cites the latest Fraser Institute’s annual survey of mining companies, sent to 2,600 global mining professionals, which ranked Quebec fourth out of 83 mining jurisdictions in terms of “investment attractiveness.” British Columbia came in at number 18.

The Quebec Mining Association (Association Minière du Québec), one of the groups that cautioned about the changes in advance, declined comment for this story.

Should B.C. have a Superfund program?

One approach to paying the massive costs of future disasters, recommended in the June report from the First Nations Energy and Mining Council, is for British Columbia to create something akin to the U.S. federal government’s Superfund program.

Superfund is the name given to 1980 federal U.S./ legislation that empowers the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to clean up contaminated sites, forcing parties responsible to either perform cleanups or pay for government-led cleanup work.

At its outset, Superfund was funded by excise taxes on the petroleum and chemical industries, which makes it a useful model to consider for raising money to deal with future industrial disasters in B.C. Dion says it might be possible to “pool risk” across industrial sectors that are provincially regulated — for example, requiring mining and natural gas fracking companies to pay into a single disaster clean-up fund.

“We think the Superfund [approach] should be looked at closely as a model to replicate,” Edzerza said. “Because as we found out with Mount Polley, you’ve got to scramble to find funds to initially respond, and then to assess [damages] and do restoration work.”

Such an approach creates an industry-wide incentive — a sort of peer pressure — to ensure that all companies across a sector don’t let operations slip, because each company is indirectly on the hook for costs if a disaster occurs.

While this pooled risk approach is commonplace in many sectors, not a single province or territory in Canada currently uses such an approach to pay the cost of mining disasters.

— With files from Emma Gilchrist

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.

It’s a strange arrangement: surrounded on all sides by provincial parkland, B.C.’s notorious ‘Doughnut Hole’ is a sensitive, unprotected pocket of land the size of Manhattan.

It’s also the location Imperial Metals is eyeing for a major new mine.

The B.C. mining company responsible for the Mount Polley disaster applied late last year for a five-year exploration permit for the area located between the Skagit Valley and E.C. Manning provincial parks and next to the headwaters of the Skagit River, Washington State’s prime chinook salmon river.

The application, which comes on the heels of a controversial decision by Crown corporation BC Timber Sales to allow clearcut logging last year in the Doughnut Hole, has incensed conservation and community groups on both sides of the border, which are accusing the province of breaking the 1984 High Ross Treaty between Canada and the U.S.

‘Not Imperial Metals. Not these headwaters.’

The treaty also forged the Skagit Environmental Endowment Commission, a watchdog group jointly funded by B.C. and Seattle’s public utility and designed to protect the integrity of the watershed.

Leo Bodensteiner, U.S. co-chair of the commission and professor of environmental science at Western Washington University, told The Narwhal he fears B.C. is not living up to its responsibility to protect the Skagit from development.

“There should not be a mine in the headwaters of the Skagit River and there should not be a mine by this company in the headwaters of any river,” Bodensteiner said.

“The actor in this case is Imperial Metals and, if you are familiar with the Mount Polley disaster, you know they are bad actors,” he said.

The Mount Polley copper and gold mine, northeast of Williams Lake, was the site of the 2014 catastrophic collapse of a tailings dam, which sent 25-billion litres of mine waste and sludge into nearby waterways.

An investigation found the collapse was caused by a badly designed dam with construction failing to account for glacial silt under the pond, but no fines have been levied or charges laid and mine waste is continuing to pollute Quesnel Lake.

Bodensteiner was part of a delegation of commissioners that met recently with Doug Donaldson, B.C.’s minister of forests, and separately with Michelle Mungall, B.C.’s minister of mines.  

Donaldson told the delegation he would halt logging plans and look at decommissioning logging roads and restoring the area within the next two years, Bodensteiner said.

The ministry confirmed to The Narwhal that “all future logging plans are currently on hold.”

But many are left to wonder whether the hold is permanent or temporary.

The meeting with Mungall left the group less optimistic, Bodensteiner said, noting the Imperial Metals application is now being sent out for public comment.

Map showing the location of the ‘Doughnut Hole’ between Skagit Valley and Manning provincial parks. The Doughnut Hole lies within the headwaters of the Skagit River. Map: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

The strange history of the Doughnut Hole

The history, leading to the unprotected area in the middle of provincial parkland, is complicated.

In 1996 Skagit Valley was given a provincial park designation, merging the area with Manning Park, but, smack in the middle, a 6,000-hectare parcel — which became known as the Doughnut Hole — was left out because of mineral claims that have existed since the 1930s and most of which are held by Imperial Metals.

A small mountain lake, the source for the Silverdaisy Creek, is located just below the Smitheram-Silverdaisy pass in the Doughnut Hole. Photo: Wilderness Committee

The Skagit River flows from B.C., through Washington State to Puget Sound and is home to endangered bulltrout, in addition to salmon. Hydro dams on the lower reaches of the Skagit provide Seattle with much of its electricity.

The Skagit Environmental Endowment Commission has four members appointed by Seattle and four by B.C. with a mandate to conserve and protect the wilderness area in the watershed and to acquire mineral and timber rights in the Upper Skagit Watershed “consistent with conservation and recreational purposes.”

The High Ross Treaty came into being because of a public outcry in 1942 after Seattle negotiated an agreement with B.C. to raise the Ross Dam by 36 metres, which would have flooded more than 5,000 acres of prime B.C. wildlife habitat and recreational land.

The crux of the 1984 treaty, which ended decades of negotiations, is an agreement by Seattle City Light (the city’s publicly owned electricity utility) not to raise Ross Dam until 2065, in exchange for Canada providing cheap hydropower.

Doughnut Hole development ‘inconsistent with the spirit’ of the treaty: Seattle mayor

Despite the treaty, late last year B.C. quietly approved logging in the Doughnut Hole without alerting the commission.

The move brought a sharp rebuke from Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, who wrote to Premier John Horgan saying she was gravely concerned that fish in Washington state could be threatened and that the logging was “inconsistent with the spirit and intent” of the High Ross Treaty.

Durkan has now renewed her call to B.C. to abide by the treaty, saying in a statement that mining “would harm the integrity of a watershed that is critical to millions of people in Seattle and our region.”

In an emailed statement to The Narwhal, B.C.’s ministry of mines said senior officials are meeting regularly with their Seattle counterparts and members of the joint commission to “share information and understand their concerns.”

“The premier has also spoken with the mayor of Seattle and expressed B.C.’s interest in continuing to support an open and collaborative working relationship between the two jurisdictions,” the email said.

The ministry also told The Narwhal Imperial Metals’ application is being sent out for consultation and feedback from ministries and other agencies.

A public comment period is expected for early May, prior to a decision being made by an independent statutory decision maker.

In its application Imperial Metals noted it has not contacted First Nations, but a ministry spokesman said the province will be consulting “potentially affected First Nations.”

Imperial Metals, which did not return calls from The Narwhal, plans to use roads built during last year’s logging for access and has applied for a five-year exploration permit, with five surface trenches, drill pads and one or two “mother holes” of 2,000 metres, with “daughter holes” drilled directionally off the deep holes.

A detailed map of logging and mining areas in the Doughnut Hole area. Map: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

“The cuttings from the drill will be collected in a settling pond and the water recycled or a newly designed water recycling machine will be used to remove the cuttings for disposal,” the application states.

The commission has an opportunity to propose conditions for Imperial Metals’ permit, according to Bodensteiner, who said the group is considering whether one condition could require the closing of all existing logging roads.

“That would mean they would have to build their own roads, which would be financially prohibitive. It would call them out,” Bodensteiner said.

Two years ago, the commission paid for an economic report which indicated the proposed Giant Copper mine would not be economically feasible, Bodensteiner said. Imperial Metals has also struggled financially, with experts warning the company may be on the brink of bankruptcy, and the company selling off a 70 per cent stake in its Red Chris Mine to Australia’s Newcrest Mining.

Bodensteiner said that, in their meeting, Minister Mungall indicated she would be open to hearing the commission’s suggestions for conditions.

A clearcut in the Doughnut Hole. Imperial Metals proposes to extend the logging road to access sites for drilling and trenching. This photo was taken from Silverdaisy ridge, looking south into the protected lands of Manning Provincial Park and the U.S. Photo: Wilderness Committee

‘No Mount Polley in Manning Park’

The application is already provoking strong reactions from both sides of the border.

A letter to the commission from more than 20 U.S. conservation, recreation and wildlife organizations sets out “strong opposition to any and all resource extraction activities” in the headwaters of the Skagit River, which supplies 30 per cent of the freshwater to the Puget Sound.

“Neither the previously allowed logging activities, pending timber sales, nor this latest mineral exploration permit are in alignment or in keeping with the spirit and intent of the Treaty,” says the letter, which is signed by groups such as Washington Wild, Washington Environmental Council and Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition.

“It is essential that all proposed or future timber sales … be permanently terminated and that the proposed mineral exploration permit be denied as these activities fundamentally risk and create irreparable harm to the entire Skagit watershed, including downstream impact in the United States,” it says.

The area is critical habitat for imperilled species such as bull trout, grizzly bears and spotted owls as well as supporting the largest populations of steelhead and Chinook salmon in Puget Sound, says the letter.

Slash piled at a clearcut in the Doughnut Hole beside Manning Park, in 2004. The clearcut area in this photo is within endangered spotted owl habitat. Photo: Wilderness Committee

“These fish are a critical food resource for the imperilled southern resident killer whales and are central to the culture and integrity of several tribes both in the United States and Canada who have treaty rights to these important resources.”

Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans recently announced a number of measures, including fisheries closures, to protect Pacific chinook salmon stocks, which are experiencing distressing population declines.

Despite confusing timelines for public input, B.C.-based democracy group Dogwood Initiative has prepared an online petition headed “No Mount Polley in Manning Park” calling on the B.C. government to reject the exploration permit.

The petition, which already has 5,000 signatures, should serve as a warning to the province that there’s going to be a significant number of concerned British Columbians, said Dogwood’s communications director Kai Nagata, adding that reaction so far has been visceral.

“In light of Mount Polley and the ongoing contamination of Quesnel Lake and the sad attempt at a cleanup and the failure of accountability mechanisms, the public is extra concerned about this company building a full-scale, open-pit mine at the headwaters of the Skagit River,” he said.

“The idea that the company that is responsible for the Mount Polley disaster wants to put its dirty mitts anywhere near Manning Park is alarming to a great number of British Columbians,” Nagata said.

Dogwood is not opposed to mining, but mines have to be developed in a way that respects Indigenous rights and the taxpayers of B.C., Nagata said.

“What we have seen from Imperial Metals is they are all-too-willing to take advantage of the weaknesses and loopholes in B.C.’s mining laws to benefit their bottom line, so it’s an issue of trust,” he said.

Joe Foy, national campaign director for the Wilderness Committee, said it was a major problem when B.C. Timber Sales allowed logging in the area, but Imperial Metals looking for gold would be a nightmare.

“In our view, Imperial Metals, with the assistance of the [Skagit Environmental Endowment Commission], needs to be sitting down with the B.C. government and talking about how B.C. can regain control from Imperial Metals in the Doughnut Hole and the next thing that needs to happen is the Doughnut Hole and the rest of the Skagit need formal protection,” he said.

Imperial Metals’ exploration a bargaining technique?

Since 2015 the commission has held discussions with Imperial Metals in an effort to purchase the mineral tenures, but has not yet been able to get a price from the company.

Some individuals, including Ken Farquharson, a former Canadian commissioner of the Skagit Environmental Endowment Commission, speculate the exploration application is a bargaining technique.

Farquharson, who was involved in the original efforts to protect the Skagit in the ’80s, said an evaluation of Imperial’s claims by a mining consultant concluded that copper deposits were small and there would be severe permitting problems.

However, Imperial is now claiming that last year’s logging road construction uncovered a gold vein they want to explore, Farquharson said.

“I think they should be entitled to do their exploration, because they still have a valid claim, but the time should be severely limited, say to six months,” he said.

There should also be strict restoration conditions, especially as Imperial has not yet cleaned up from its activities in the area in 1996, Farquharson said.

Even if exploration goes ahead, it is unlikely the Giant Copper mine will ever become a reality, he said.

“I don’t think any government would be able to stand up to the outcry … What we desperately need now is help to persuade Imperial, either through the government or from public opinion, to sit down and negotiate a price. Once we have a price we can talk about where the money will come from,” he said.

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

This is the second part of a two-part series on the impacts of the Mount Polley mine spill, four years later. Read part one of this investigation.

Kim Goldforth and I are standing on the shore of Quesnel Lake, at the very spot where the 2014 tailings spill ripped a new confluence into the side of this great fjord, when two men approach us from the land side.

We were just about to get back on Goforth’s fishing boat anchored at the outflow of Hazeltine Creek, but turn to face them instead. “Don’t take any shit from these guys,” said Goforth beneath his breath.

The two men are not Mount Polley staff as we expected, but a fisheries team from the Northern Shuswap Tribal Council, which represents four nearby First Nations communities. Four years after 25 million cubic metres of metal-rich tailings spilled into the lake, they are here to assess and observe fish, or in the case of Hazeltine creek in front of us, the lack thereof.

Kim Goforth, resident of Quesnel Lakes’s Mitchell Bay, aboard his boat at the mouth of Hazeltine Creek. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

A sign posted by the Mount Polley Mining Corporation notifies the public of game cameras posted around the mouth of Hazeltine Creek. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

While these signs stating ‘no public access’ can be found all around the Hazeltine Creek, locals say the land is crown land and therefore accessible by the public. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

Fisheries coordinator Dave Feil is unimpressed by the millions of dollars the company has spent on landscaping and rebuilding the Hazeltine streambed. He is interested in the health of salmon that migrate up the Fraser and end up here, because these fish are intercepted all along the way by many First Nations.

Concerns about metal accumulations in the fish, which is subsistence food for so many, is top of mind. Unlike the nearby Gibraltar mine, owned and operated by Taseko Mines Ltd., he tells us, Mount Polley, owned by Imperial Metals, won’t pay for them to test and measure metal accumulations in the fish that live and rear in Quesnel Lake.

What about the return of more than 800,000 sockeye to the Quesnel Lake system this year? Isn’t that good news?

Feil laughed, “that’s the running joke right now: ‘Mount Polley has made everything so much better!’ ”

Anger over continued dumping

When I meet Doug Watt at the Likely Pub late later that night, there are points when he speaks in a low voice, so as not to be overheard by the owners, who support the mine. He estimates there are 25 to 30 families in the area that rely on Mount Polley for income, so his advocacy has come at a personal cost.

He worked for six years at Mount Polley as a metallurgist, preceded by stints at Gibraltar, Equity Silver and the Snip mine up in the Stikine. Now he is channeling 45 years of mining knowledge into his work for the Concerned Citizens of Quesnel Lake.

There are two things that rile Watt about the four-year anniversary of the Mount Polley disaster: mine owner Imperial Metals has not paid a cent in fines, and the province continues to allow the company to dump tailings effluent into the lake.

This disposal goes back to at least 2015 — occurring by direct releases into Hazeltine Creek, and through a pipeline that drains deep into the lake offshore of Hazeltine creek.

Watt says the company broke the terms of its April 2017 discharge permit almost immediately after it was issued. The B.C. Ministry of Environment confirmed that in a single month, the company was caught three separate times — exceeding maximum levels for dissolved aluminum, total copper and dissolved cadmium.

The lower portion of the remediated Hazeltine Creek, which now contains a series of contained settling ponds.

An aerial view of the lower portion of Hazeltine Creek. The discharge pipeline right of way can be seen trailing alongside Hazeltine Creek, centre left, tracing a line to the tailings pond and the Mount Polley mine.

A sign posted by the Mount Polley mine at the mouth of Hazeltine Creek warns visitors of the buried pipelines entering Quesnel Lake. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

A stake marks the pipeline that runs from Mount Polley mine’s tailings pond to the mouth of Hazeltine Creek. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

Upturned trees, placed in the ground in an effort to provide perches for birds of prey as part of remediation work at the mouth of Hazeltine Creek. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

And since 2017, the province has issued the company six advisories and two warnings for various infractions, all in the form of written notices.

The permit clearly states that breaking the terms is a violation of the Environmental Management Act and “may lead to prosecution.” Under Section 120(6) of the Act, a permit holder breaking the rules is liable on conviction to a fine up to $1 million or imprisonment for up to six months, or both.  

Meanwhile, the Administrative Penalties Regulation also specifies fines up to $40,000 per incident per day for failure to comply with a requirement of a permit.

But somehow, as with the spill itself, the company continues to break rules that on paper have strong deterrent penalties, but in practice have no teeth. At least so far.

Quashing the permit?

A major preoccupation of the Concerned Citizens group is to get Mount Polley’s 2017 discharge permit revoked. One of the members, Christine McLean, has taken the fight to the Ministry of Environment’s Environmental Appeals Board. (She has a hearing in May 2019).

It was through this process that she learned Mount Polley has requested a relaxation of the permit rules for dumping effluent into the lake.

Mount Polley mine’s owner Imperial Metals did not respond to an interview request. The B.C. Ministry of Environment confirmed the company “contends the [existing] permit is too restrictive,” including how water is tested in the lake.

“It’s so demoralizing when the government allows the same company that let this disaster happen, to lay a pipe into the lake and discharge directly,” McLean told me later. “It’s adding insult to injury.”

Daniel Selbie, who heads up the lakes research program for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, has been studying metal accumulations in Quesnel Lake fish. He says the 2017 decision to allow the discharge has made the task of determining the impacts of the 2014 spill on the wider ecosystem that much harder.

“Now there is water that’s been discharged into the west basin, which is coming from the mine, which has higher levels of metals,” he said. “It complicates the picture.”

He added that the decision to approve the discharges was made by the provincial government. “I can tell you many, I won’t say who, were opposed to it.”

Mist clings to the forested slopes above Horsefly Bay on Quesnel Lake. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

A dead, spawned salmon floats in the shallow waters of Quesnel Lake near the start of the Horsefly River. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

A lone loon rests on Quesnel Lake’s Horsefly Bay. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

They can’t catch Lionel

The next morning, photographer Louis Bockner and I tour the disaster site and surrounding wilderness by road. At 10 a.m. our guide Lionel Guiltner pulls up to the Hazeltine Creek bridge crossing, riding a battered quad with a chainsaw strapped to the back.

It’s hard to imagine anyone knows the unmarked dirt roads and game trails that snake through this area like Guiltner, a former school teacher who lives nearby. Not even giant wind-blown trees across the trail stop him — he just fires up the chainsaw and moves on.

During the first months after the spill, Mount Polley staffers regularly stopped and threatened him as he rode through Crown land in this area. It never got violent, but their policy was to keep all eyes off the disaster site. This in turn earned Guiltner’s scorn. (Years later, he’s still indignant — “I have been wandering this area for 40 years!”)

None of the staffers in their giant pickups could chase him through the labyrinth system of trails he knows so well — if they turned him back at one spot, he would reappear somewhere else nearby, moments later.

“I’m not against mining…” he begins. This is a common preface in this area, but it’s not intended to mask environmentalist sympathies.

Mining is in the blood here: back before the B.C. mainland was a British colony, there were 5,000 people in nearby Quesnel Forks.

The two communities closest to the spill — Likely and Horsefly — wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the influx of mostly placer miners that began after 1860, when gold was found on the Horsefly River. In turn, fishing, ranching and forestry followed as sustaining industries, but mining continues to be the bread and butter.

Much of the area around Quesnel Lake and the Horsefly river has been worked over by miners over the last 150 years.

At one point the mainstem of the Quesnel river itself was dammed to excavate the riverbed for gold (salmon be damned), and just above Likely, the Bullion gold mine used pressurized water to erase entire mountainsides along the same river.

The Mount Polley gold and copper mine was built in 1997, filling an economic vacuum left by the decline of forestry. In the ’70s and ’80s there were three sawmills around Likely, but they are long gone. Guiltner, a retired school teacher, says there were 125 kids going to school in Likely in the 1980s; today there are 12.

So Mount Polley is a necessary neighbour to many, but locals like Guiltner also consider them a lousy neighbor. “They get away with too much,” he spits.

Inexplicably, our guide “cannot walk and talk at the same time,” which means we spend much of our tour standing around, but I’m surprised how much we get to see. First we visit the banks of Polley Lake, a large kidney-shaped lake directly west of the tailings dam.

A reflection along the muddy road that leads to the mouth of Hazeltine Creek. Photo: Louis Bockner/ The Narwhal

Sunrise on Quesnel Lake near the mouth of Hazeltine Creek.

Sunrise light on Quesnel Lake. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

When we’re confronted by pick-up trucks driven by Mount Polley staff, Guiltner announces his intention to go on through. They wave us through.

Eventually we’re standing at the base of the new tailings dam, a mountain of rock and earth, near the very point that breached in 2014. Back in late 2015, an investigation led by B.C.’s Chief inspector of Mines concluded that the dam failed because the strength and location of a layer of clay underneath our very feet was not taken into account in the design.

Guiltner shares a hopeful theory. Mount Polley has given the entire B.C. mining industry a black eye and it’s the peers of Imperial Metals that are most likely to influence the company behind the scenes, forcing them to do a better job of running their mine.

“If anybody is going to have an impact, it’s the mining fraternity,” he says, motioning up at the colossal tailings dam. “They are all watching this.”

Water woes separate friends and family

We drive back to Likely along an old logging road that skirts Quesnel lake, just in time to make our meeting with a retired insurance executive and part-time placer miner named Craig Ritson.

He’s bought up all the placer mining claims closest to his home, for the fun of and profit of finding gold, but also to ensure no yahoos come in and mess the place up.

His huge, beautiful home is located on a street that runs right along Quesnel lake — this line of well-kept, water-front lots is the closest thing this area has to suburbia.

There was one reason Ritson chose this place to live back in 2002, he tells us: “It had the best water in the world.” Four years after the disaster, he continues to drink water from the lake, although doing this entails a lot more effort now.

Down in the basement Ritson shows us the mini water treatment plant he devised after the 2014 breach. Lake water flows into a pressure tank and through two filters, which trap particles 50 and two microns in size respectively. Then it goes through an ultraviolet treatment system to kill bacteria like fecal coliform.

Craig Ritson sits in his home on the banks of Quesnel River in Likely, B.C. Ritson installed a UV filtration system for his drinking water in an effort to mitigate the pollution in Quesnel Lake following the Mount Polley Mine spill. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

Craig Ritson shows the $52 filter that provides the main filtration for his home’s water. Depending on the time of year he may replace the two filters once a month. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

All in, the system costs about $400 a month to run. The filters last anywhere from 17 days to 1.5 months depending on usage, before clogging up with fine gray silt.

While Ritson has stayed, his former neighbour and mining partner Doug Brassington, who was visiting during our interview, has moved to Salmon Arm. Water was the reason. After the spill, he felt it was impossible to trust the safety of the water. The only source of information was the company, he says, and by that point, he didn’t trust them.

Brassington misses life here immensely, but doesn’t regret leaving, especially since they started dumping effluent back into the lake.

“I know people all along this street who drink water from the lake. People still eat the fish. Who’s protecting those people? Nobody.”

Though retired, Ritson maintains the air of an executive, chairing a board meeting around a great dining table with panoramic views of the water and sprawling lakeside property.

“First Doug moved his family, then my son Brett…” he chokes up with emotion and can’t speak for a moment. “…now my son has moved his family away as well.”

He recovers quickly and becomes the executive again.

Jacinda on the Horsefly

Running right through Horsefly, B.C., population 150, is the river of the same name, which in early September is packed with crimson sockeye.

As we watch from a bridge in town, a hyper-aggressive female chases off other fish, defending her egg nest (called a “redd”) to the end. The humpbacked males meanwhile will fertilize as many redds as they can until they die.

Jacinda Mack. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

On the day I arrived here, Jacinda Mack was here too, to see the returning sockeye. Born and raised in her mother’s home community at Xat’sull near Williams Lake, Mack is one of the women behind Stand For Water — a project of First Nations Women Advocating Responsible Mining, a movement to raise awareness of the threats mining poses to water in the Pacific northwest.

Her mother, former Xat’sull Chief Bev Sellars, launched a private prosecution against the Mount Polley owners, a case that was killed by the province in January 2018. But that’s not the end of it: Mack tells me the Xat’sull First Nation and others from the Secwepemc, as well as Tsilhqot’in and St’at’imc First Nations have all filed suits against the company.

“All are waiting on the ongoing [federal government] criminal investigation to see if any culpability or evidence will be disclosed that may impact their legal actions against the company.”

The Mount Polley disaster had one notable positive effect on the world, according to Mack.

“Before the disaster people were largely unaware about anything to do with mining. It was out of sight and out of mind,” she says. “But there’s been more scrutiny of British Columbia mining in the last four years than since the goldrush.”

She says B.C.’s outdated mining laws have to change, and points to lawyer Mark Haddock’s recent recommendations to the province, which call for changes to the current system of “professional reliance” employed by resource companies like Imperial Metals.

It’s a system of relying on industry-hired specialists — like consultant biologists that test water quality — to produce science that government itself used to do. An underlying problem with this, is that when a company pays the wages of consultants (and the consultants rely on continuing work), there is undeniable pressure for science to conform to the interests of the company. The B.C. government announced reforms to the “professional reliance” system on Monday.

This issue is highly relevant to the Mount Polley disaster. In late September 2018, the regulatory body that oversees B.C.’s engineers accused three engineers — former Mount Polley contractors who worked on the dam — of  “negligence and/or unprofessional conduct in the course of their professional activities.” Meanwhile the company, by this reliance on consulting experts, appears to have escaped direct responsibility for the tailings breach.

“You can view the Mount Polley disaster as a failure of government in terms of their approach of self-regulation,” says federal NDP Fisheries Critic and B.C. MP Fin Donnelly, who before politics, swam the 1,375 kilometre length of the Fraser twice, to draw attention to salmon and the wider ecosystem. “This has to change.”

A dead Sockeye Salmon on the banks of the Horsefly River near Quesnel Lake. Photo: Louis Bockner / The Narwhal

Donnelly says two positive outcomes are still possible four years after the disaster. One is to change the system of professional reliance brought in by the BC Liberals, and second, for the federal government to hold the company accountable for the spill.

“It’s an outrage that there have been no charges laid for the breach.”

Fines and the captains of industry

Over breakfast on my last day in Likely, a biologist named Richard Holmes tells me the company could be on the hook for anywhere between $150,000 and $8 million if convicted under the Fisheries Act — which deems it a serious offence to release a substance “deleterious” to fish.

The 2014 dam breach was already Mount Polley’s second offence under this legislation — the first happened when the company damaged a rainbow trout spawning creek that flows into nearby Bootjack Lake.

Holmes says that in addition to not pressing charges, the province rejected the B.C. Auditor General’s 2016 recommendation that called for a separation between the B.C. Ministry of Mines and Energy’s dual role as promoter and regulator of mining.

Biologist Richard Holmes on the banks of the Quesnel River. Photo: Christopher Pollon / The Narwhal

But that was then.

Will the NDP government do a better job of regulating resource extraction?

Holmes is a good person to ask.

The independent biologist, who works mostly with First Nations on fisheries issues, was in a boat with then-NDP opposition leader John Horgan in the days following the disaster. (At the time, Horgan suggested the BC Liberals were involved in a “cover-up.”) He recalls the experience left Horgan visibly shaken.

“The regulatory base we have to work with has not changed,” says Holmes of the transition of political leadership. “Mining, forestry, aquaculture — it hasn’t changed. Power is entrenched with the businesses operating in the province which stand to make money.”

Holmes thinks the real power in B.C. lies with captains of industry like Jimmy Pattison, or even oilsands billionaire Murray Edwards, who owns 40 per cent of Imperial Metals and threw the now-infamous million-dollar Calgary fundraiser for B.C. Premier Christy Clark in 2013.

“It will be tough to change that.”

After breakfast we walk across the road to the Quesnel River, where I take a few clumsy photos of Holmes on the bank before I depart for good. His eyes are shut for most of them, squinting at the blazing sun, which illuminates the backs of a few sockeye struggling against the powerful river. Two bald eagles circle above us through the morning mist, completing the near postcard perfection of the scene.

If you didn’t know Mount Polley’s new tailings dam was perched high above all of this, you would never suspect anything was wrong.

Update, November 7, 2018 11:35am pst: The word slurry has been replaced with effluent in this piece to more accurately reflect the nature of the tailings being deposited into Quesnel Lake.

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.

Imperial Metals, the owner of the Mount Polley and Red Chris copper-gold mines in British Columbia, is “totally on the brink” of bankruptcy according to a mining accounting expert.

“They’re not even close to making money,” Thomas Schneider, an expert on financial reporting of environmental liabilities and assistant professor of accounting at Ryerson University, told The Narwhal. “It’s just a matter of ‘can this company make enough cash flow.’ And they’re just coming off a strike.”

“This company is on the brink,” he added. “There’s no two ways about it.”

Imperial’s share price was at press time $1.33, down from over $18 per share in early 2014.

The company is currently surviving on debt, paying $75 million per year in interest expense. Interest payments are being made by issuing shares to creditors rather than cash — yet another bad sign. Recently, Imperial issued 3.1 million shares valued at $1.97 each to pay off interest of $6.1 million. But shares are now $1.33, meaning that similar attempts may require the issuing of even more shares to pay interest, which could lead to dilution and an even lower share price.

Schneider said that it “looks to me like a downward spiral.”

The company’s latest quarterly financial statement reported a net loss of $36.6 million. These losses were blamed primarily on the recent two-month strike at Mount Polley and lower-than-expected recovery at Red Chris, exacerbating an already weak financial position from a few years of low copper prices and the sizable impacts of the tailings disaster.

Copper prices have continued to decline since the start of the trade war between the United States and China in early July.

The big date that Schneider said to watch is October 1: by then, the company needs to have re-negotiated a $200-million credit facility — a type of loan from investors — some $44.1 million of which is currently used to secure letters of credit for reclamation costs at its mines.

If the group of creditors decide to walk away rather than continue finance the struggling company, Schneider said Imperial Metals will suddenly face massive unfunded reclamation costs.

In a recent conference call with investors and analysts, Imperial’s chief financial officer said: “We are in discussions with our lenders and continue to work on financing alternatives and solutions for this debt.”

Imperial Metals did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

‘Holy cow, what are we financing?’

A spokesperson for the B.C. ministry of energy, mines and petroleum resources said in an e-mail that the province’s chief inspector of mines can demand payment in full in the case of a non-renewal of letters of credit.

The company’s reclamation costs are now estimated at $100.9 million with only $14.3 million secured in cash. Schneider said that an immediate requirement to secure the remaining amount would “for sure trigger bankruptcy.”

The figure of $100.9 million is the result of a “discount rate” that estimates the present value of future liabilities based on anticipated rate of return of investments. The higher the discount rate due to perceived risk, the less that has to be set aside today.

According to Imperial Metals, the full “undiscounted” cost of its environmental liabilities is $173.6 million.

“When are the creditors going to say ‘holy cow, what are we financing?’ We’re financing the B.C. government not to have to do the clean up, so why don’t we just walk away and let the government do the clean up?’ ” Schneider said.

The company’s second quarter report for 2018 indicated that it was planning to pay for $28.4 million of the $100.9 million in future site reclamation provisions in “mineral property, plant and equipment.”

The company may be required to cover that amount in cash, which would likely require them to take on even more debt. Another $14.3 million is held as reclamation deposits, up from $4.7 million in 2016.

An estimated $86.3 million in reclamation costs are expected to be paid between 2018 and 2046, leaving about $14.7 million after 2046. Schneider said the undiscounted liabilities after 2046 may be around $100 million.

“How many equity investors care about a liability that the company has to pay in 2046?” Schneider said.

“Who really cares about it? We do. The government does. The people do. At the end of the day the equity investors don’t give a damn, and the longer you can put this stuff out the better it for the equity investors and the worse it is for the general public.”

‘The whole clean up thing is a real misnomer’

It’s unclear if that figure of $100.9 million is even enough to pay for future costs.

Imperial Metals acknowledged as much in its latest annual report: “The actual costs of reclamation set out in mine plans are estimates only and may not represent the actual amounts that will be required to complete all reclamation activity. If actual costs are significantly higher than our estimates, then our results from operations and financial position could be materially adversely affected.”

For many, the Mount Polley mine is the most immediate concern when it comes to clean up. The 2014 tailings breach released 25 billion litres of waste into nearby waterways and forests.

In 2017, Imperial Metals estimated a total of $67.4 million had been spent in clean-up costs for the Mount Polley spill. Of that, $15.5 million has been paid directly by government departments, with another $23.6 million eligible for tax refunds.

A field of debris and dried sediment at the mouth of what was Hazeltine Creek one week after the collapse of the Mount Polley tailings pond. Photo: Farhan Umedaly, Vovo Productions

The company increased its rehabilitation provision for the Mount Polley mine by $5.8 million in 2017. Schneider said that amount is the company’s best estimate of what is required to finish cleaning up Mount Polley, with $3.6 million of it being spent in 2018.

But local residents said in interviews with The Narwhal that the catastrophe is far from over.

“The whole clean up thing is a real misnomer,” said Jacinda Mack, co-founder of Stand for Water and member of the Xatśūll (Soda Creek) First Nation. “All they did was re-engineer. Everything is still in Quesnel Lake, Polley Lake, in the forest. And they say it would be more disruptive to try to remove the tailings. But if those tailings were filled with gold, they would find a way to remove those tailings.”

“Communities have received zero compensation,” Nikki Skuce, project director of Northern Confluence, said. “There’s been no fines or charges. Reclamation isn’t done. We don’t know what the long term impacts are on salmon and the water of Quesnel Lake.”

Douglas Watt, a retired metallurgist and member of the Mount Polley Mining Corporation’s public liaison committee, said it could take up to 1,000 years for the “totally devastated” Hazeltine Creek to return to what it used to be. The biggest concern for local residents, he said, is that Mount Polley received a permit in April 2017 to discharge effluent into Quesnel Lake until the end of 2022.

Watt said that immediately after the mine received the permit, the publicly announced life of the mine went up by another four years, to 2026. He said that within a few months of receiving the permit, the mine was already out of compliance with some of the permit’s conditions — and that it’s still out of compliance to this day.

“Our biggest fear is that they’re going to now ask the ministry for a permit amendment to continue to discharge their effluent beyond 2022,” said Watt, who worked for Imperial Metals in the late 1980s. “I’m pretty sure they’re probably working on that now.”

On August 15, it was announced that the B.C. Environmental Appeal Board will hear an appeal of the permit from a member of Concerned Citizens of Quesnel Lake at the end of January 2019.

Jacinda Mack in Victoria to speak with MLAs about mining reform in B.C. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Multiple lawsuits against Imperial Metals quashed by courts

Multiple lawsuits have been filed against the company for the spill, but all have been quashed.

Time has run out for criminal charges to be pressed in B.C. However, federal charges can still be laid sometime in the next year.

In 2017, Bev Sellars — the former chief of Xatśūll First Nation — filed a private prosecution against the company, but the B.C. Crown Prosecution Service halted the case after it concluded there wasn’t a high enough chance of conviction.

Ugo Lapointe of MiningWatch Canada also launched a federal private prosecution for alleged contravention of the Fisheries Act, but that was similarly stayed before he had the chance to present evidence in a court hearing.

“We’re concerned with not only the clean-up of the spill but the actual closure of the mine site and the clean up of the whole mine site,” Lapointe said in an interview with The Narwhal.

“You’re now dealing with a company that is not super financially viable, and it’s an increased risk for the public.”

A recent economic analysis by the Ecofiscal Commission found mines in B.C. often operate without adequate reclamation bonds and assurances, creating a major liability for the province’s taxpayers.

Majority owner of Imperial Metals donated more than $850,000 to BC Liberals

Imperial Metals’ majority owner, N. Murray Edwards, currently boasts a net worth of $2.9 billion, making him one of the wealthiest Canadians.

Companies owned by Edwards have historically been major donors to the BC Liberals, who governed the province for 16 years until one year ago.

Dermod Travis, executive director of IntegrityBC, wrote in an e-mail that total donations to the Liberals by companies owned or controlled by Murray Edwards total more than $850,000 since 2005.

That includes $199,180 from oilsands giant Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., $179,440 from Imperial Metals, $99,500 from Horizon Construction Management and $90,000 from CNR ECHO Resources.

In 2013, Edwards helped organize a million-dollar fundraiser for former premier Christy Clark’s re-election.

In 2004, an order in council forgave $2.9 million owed to the B.C. government by Huckleberry Mines, of which Imperial Metals then owned 50 per cent.

In 2017, then-interim leader of the federal Conservatives Rona Ambrose vacationed with Edwards for close to two weeks in the Caribbean.

Environmental liabilities may be underestimated

There’s also the strange situation of Imperial’s Huckleberry Mine, a copper mine that closed operations in late 2016 but may reopen in 2019 if copper prices increase.

Until April 2017, a syndicate of Japanese companies owned the other half of Huckleberry, but Imperial took it over after the syndicate couldn’t pay $77 million that it owed to the project. It was primarily because of that acquisition that the company declared a net profit in 2017. That followed consecutive years of significant losses, including losses of $96 million in 2015 and $54 million in 2016.

But Schneider said that it appears the estimated $22-million future reclamation liabilities for Huckleberry was improperly reported in the annual report, potentially requiring a reissuing of the financial documents.

The possible misreporting had to do with the “discount rate” used in reporting reclamation costs.. Schneider said Imperial Metals should have used a “risk free” discount rate of 3.2 per cent on reclamation liabilities at Huckleberry — but instead used a “credit risk adjusted interest rate” of 6.3 per cent.

That choice lowered the reported present cost of the liability. Schneider said it could end up as a difference of $20 to $30 million than if the company had used a “risk free” rate (let alone undiscounted rate).

In the end, the Huckleberry reclamation could end up costing as much as $100 million. The mine has an identified potential for acid rock drainage, which if triggered can result in significant impacts on ecosystems and wildlife.

Schneider said that Imperial Metals should potentially have to restate its financial figures, preferably providing an undiscounted amount. That would give investors and the public a far better idea of what the real costs might be.

Deloitte, which audited the company’s financial statements, refused to answer a question about the discount rate, writing: “Our policies and our code of professional conduct prohibit us from discussing any information about clients or the work that we do for them.”

The manager of investor and industry education at the British Columbia Securities Commission also said in an e-mail that “we do not comment about specific companies or market participants.”

Imperial Metals could still be rescued

It’s not known if Imperial Metals will end up declaring bankruptcy.

The creditors may renew the $200 million credit facility in October, hopeful for improved cash flows from the mining operations. Schneider said that creditors may not want to take the assets over given the company’s very high debt-to-equity ratio.

“Maybe things are in place and all will be fine — we shall see,” Schneider said.

Or Edwards or the companies he controls — which currently own 40 per cent of the company and more than $200 million of Imperial’s debt — could come to the rescue.

Lapointe of MiningWatch Canada said Imperial Metals has “pulled similar financial stunts” before, and that Edwards or affiliates will often bail companies out.

Sustained lobbying efforts could also help.

“The companies that are in bad financial situations like this for a number of years tend to lobby the government even more and try to leverage any kind of political support they can get to then get any possible subsidies or tax breaks or lower securities,” Lapointe said.

In 2016, the B.C. government introduced a deferred payment program for up to three-quarters of monthly electricity billing depending on the price of commodities.

At the end of June, Imperial Metals owed $73.5 million to the utility company. Of that, $51.4 million is to partially reimburse BC Hydro for the cost of building the controversial $736 million Northwest Transmission Line, with the remaining $22.1 million for deferred electricity costs.

But Lapointe said that if Imperial Metals does end up collapsing, another company could come along, strip it of valuable assets and leave clean-up for governments.

“Even by clearing the debt away by folding it into bankruptcy, the projects may be so marginal and high cost that the new company will be able to run the mine again for four or five years and then call it off again,” he said.

‘It’s a very tense relationship’

It didn’t have to happen like this.

Skuce said that the mining rules in Alaska and Quebec require full payment within two or three years of a mine opening, which limits public liability and dissuades high-risk projects from proceeding.

Lapointe said that Quebec’s new measures, introduced in 2013, require half of securities to be paid during the permitting process and the other half during the first two years of operation.

“Typically, the more financially risky a project or company is, the more risky it is for the environment and communities,” he said. “It’s pretty simple logic: they’re scrambling to survive. They’ll prioritize the money to survive, which is the operations and revenues. And they’ll often cut corners on everything else, including putting in place the best technologies or environmental practices or best design because they cost more money.”

Meanwhile, Mack said her community isn’t receiving regular updates from the company, and are instead instructed to check its website. But things aren’t up to date, she said, and information is often only available for a short period of time before it’s removed. As a result, she said that community meetings have dwindled from 150 people shortly after the disaster to only a handful of dedicated members.

“I would say it’s a very tense relationship,” she said. “A lot of people have stopped attending meetings out of frustration and anger.”

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.

When it seemed clear the newly minted B.C. NDP government would not pursue charges against Imperial Metals, owner and operator of the Mount Polley mine, for a 2014 tailings pond collapse, one woman decided to take matters into her own hands.

Bev Sellars, former chief of the Xat’sull (Soda Creek) First Nation — in whose territory the tailings pond released an estimated 25 million cubic metres of mining waste into Quesnel Lake — filed a private prosecution against Mount Polley on August 4, 2017, the final day charges could be laid.

Sellars made the case that Mount Polley has violated 15 rules under B.C.’s environmental and mining laws. She brought the private prosecution into play with the hope the province would take over the charges.

But this week B.C.’s Crown Prosecution Service quashed the case, saying there wasn’t enough evidence to proceed.

Sellars said the news came as a shock.

“I don’t understand how they can say there wasn’t enough evidence,” Sellars said. “Anyone can go out there or look online and see there was a spill. And there were consequences of the spill.”

The tailings pond collapse caused a spill that lasted over 12 hours. The massive deposit of mine waste that entered Quesnel Lake, a source of drinking water for residents of Likely, B.C., contained mercury, arsenic, selenium, copper and other heavy metals and remains settled on the lake’s floor to this day. Quesnel Lake is one of the deepest fjord lakes in the world and is home to a quarter of the province’s sockeye salmon population. The long-term effects of the spill and its contamination of fish habitat is still uncertain.

While the time limit has run out for criminal charges to be brought in B.C., federal charges under the Fisheries Act can still be laid for another 18 months.

However, Sellars is worried  federal charges won’t be laid.

“If there are no federal charges, then it’s just a free for all. Go out and pollute. So what if you have breaches of your tailings ponds? There’s nothing anyone can do,” she said.

“This is setting a dangerous precedent.”

ICYMI: Canada Has Second-Worst Mining Record in World: UN

“I think British Columbians and First Nations are rightly horrified that B.C. doesn’t appear to have the political tools or the political will to enforce consequences for the people who are responsible for this disaster.” https://t.co/UvPWhvrFeq

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) February 3, 2018

ICYMI: B.C. Quietly Grants Mount Polley Mine Permit to Pipe Mine Waste Directly Into Quesnel Lake

Kai Nagata, energy and democracy director for the democracy advocacy group Dogwood, said the quashed case presents an opportunity to reflect on B.C.’s ability to effectively regulate mines.

“I think British Columbians and First Nations are rightly horrified that B.C. doesn’t appear to have the political tools or the political will to enforce consequences for the people who are responsible for this disaster,” Nagata told DeSmog Canada.

“That the province would pass off the consequences to the feds reinforces that we don’t actually have the power in our own land to protect local people, freshwater and public health and safety.”

Nagata said there is a separate set of rules for international mining corporations that are well connected and operate in a regime that was designed for the early years of the Canadian colony.

B.C.’s mining laws were written nearly 160 years ago.

“I think it’s time to take a really close look at the rules that govern mines in B.C. and update them to a standard that reflects all the progress we’ve made in this province over the last 150 years.”

ICYMI: B.C.’s 150-Year-Old Mining Laws Are Absurdly Outdated. Guess Who Benefits From That?

Private prosecution cases are reviewed by the Crown counsel and “if our charge assessment standard is met we can assume conduct and prosecute as with any prosecution on behalf of the Crown,” Alisia Adams, spokesperson for the B.C. Prosecution Service, told DeSmog Canada.

If that standard is not met, charges are stayed, she said, adding the service doesn’t generally allow a private prosecution to proceed to trial, but they will take a case over should it proceed.

The B.C. Conservation Service Office is actively investigating the tailings pond collapse, but has missed the three-year deadline to press charges under both the B.C. Environmental Management Act and the B.C. Mines Act.

“I can say that we are aware that there is an ongoing investigation that’s continuing but because of that we can’t speak too much to the specifics of this investigation,” Adams said.

Patrick Canning, legal counsel for Sellars said he was frustrated and disappointed at the decision.

Canning said he supplied plenty of evidence to the Crown prosecutor, such as public investigations and reports filed after the incident, photographic evidence and video statements from several witnesses who were on Quesnel Lake the morning of the spill.

Canning added the Prosecution Service could have sought further evidence, as is common practice when criminal charges are brought from bodies like the RCMP.

The Ministry of Environment also could have directed the Conservation Service Office to share the findings of its ongoing investigation with the Crown prosecutor, he said.

When asked if the B.C. Ministry of Environment had done so, spokesperson David Karn indicated the results of that investigation will be forwarded to federal prosecutors.

“The Public Prosecution Service of Canada will consider all of the information gathered during the course of this investigation should charges be recommended under the Fisheries Act or other legislation,” Karn said in an e-mailed statement.

Ugo Lapointe, executive director of MiningWatch Canada, said B.C. is setting a troubling standard.

“Truly, we are not seeing a clear and strong signal from the Crown in B.C. that they want to enforce B.C. laws.”

ICYMI: British Columbians Saddled With $40 Million Clean-Up Bill as Imperial Metals Escapes Criminal Charges

Lapointe brought a federal private prosecution against Mount Polley and the B.C. government in late 2016. More than 41,000 individuals signed a petition in support of those charges.

The federal prosecution service stayed those charges in the spring of 2017, but can lay new charges or revive Lapointe’s charges until August 2019.

“Let’s contemplate for a moment that a disaster like Mount Polley with clear damage to B.C. water and B.C. forests, clear damage to fish habitat that has been documented in multiple reports — if it’s not possible to bring about charges under B.C. law, what does that tell us about B.C. law?”

Sellars said she is troubled that she does not have the opportunity to forge ahead with her private prosecution now that it’s clear the Crown will not take over her case.

“If they didn’t want to take it forward, that’s fine, but they should have allowed me to do so,” Sellars said.

ICYMI: “They’re Getting Away with It”: Locals Say No Blame Means No Compensation for Mount Polley Mine Spill Victims

Andrew Gage, staff lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law, said it’s problematic that B.C. does not allow citizens to carry forward private prosecutions.

“The absurdness of the ongoing B.C. investigation is they’ve had three years and still they couldn’t make the deadline [to press charges]. Yet, here you have someone who made that deadline and they quashed those charges.”

“The reason private prosecutions are sometimes viewed as a check and balance or safeguard to the legal system is because sometimes people don’t trust the government to do all the investigation and prosecution — to do their job, essentially,” Gage said.

“That certainly seems to be the case here.”

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.

Premier John Horgan said this week he’s anxiously awaiting a court decision on charges against Mount Polley mining corporation brought in a private prosecution by former Xat’sull chief Bev Sellars for violations of B.C.’s environmental laws — but B.C.’s role in that case is still unclear.

B.C.’s crown prosecution service is responsible for the final decision on whether and how B.C. will proceed with the case regarding the 2014 tailings pond collapse that released 24 million cubic metres of mining waste into Hazeltine Creek and Quesnel Lake, a source of drinking water.*

Sellars filed the case on August 4th, 2017 — the last day a case under provincial law could be brought against the company due to a three-year statute of limitations — as a means of holding open the legal door for government, which had only recently come under NDP power.

The courts are expected to make a decision on the fate of the private prosecution by the end of January.

“By filing a private prosecution on August 4th, I preserved the right to prosecute Mount Polley Mining Corporation for destroying the environment on which we all depend,” Sellars told DeSmog Canada in an e-mailed statement.

“I did so to uphold Canadian law, traditional law of the Xat’sull people, and for the sake of the next seven generations to come. I hope the province will do their part.”

At a press briefing on Tuesday, Horgan told DeSmog Canada the province is awaiting the court’s decision.

“I think all British Columbians were mortified that three years would pass with no consequences to the most horrific mine disaster in B.C. history,” the premier said. “I remain concerned and I am anxious to hear what the courts say,” he said, adding there is still time to press charges under federal laws.

The province still has the capacity to pursue charges under the Fisheries Act, which “have far greater penalties for non-compliance,” he said.

“What the province can and should do is fortify the regulatory framework which this industry is working within.” https://t.co/HsA8mRuRWx

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 17, 2018

“So this isn’t the end of justice or consequences for the failure,” he said.

Patrick Canning, counsel for Sellars, said the provincial Crown could still choose to take over the case or have the charges amended, adding the province’s ability to pursue provincial charges is still practically as open now as it was before the deadline of August 4, 2017.

The B.C. Conservation Officer Service is participating in an ongoing joint provincial-federal investigation into the Mount Polley disaster alongside the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Environment Canada.

Canning said the B.C. Ministry of Environment could direct the findings of that investigation to the provincial Crown.

In an e-mailed statement to DeSmog Canada, B.C. Ministry of Environment spokesperson David Karn said, “While the statute of limitations for the Environmental Management Act may have passed, the investigation continues.”

“Be assured that both levels of government are committed to a thorough investigation within the timeframe of the federal statute of limitations.”

Karn suggested a “choice of charges would have to be made in any event,” suggesting government must select between provincial or federal laws.

Yet Canning said there is no legal basis for such a choice.

Sellars said as a grandmother her duty is to protect the environment for future generations.

“Indigenous people’s law stresses that you have to take care of the land for seven generations ahead,” she said.

“It’s not too late for the province to see that justice is done.”

Sonia Furstenau, environment critic for the BC Green party, told DeSmog Canada regardless of how the province chooses to treat violations of provincial or federal rules, government should take steps to rebuild public trust in B.C.’s regulatory regime.

“What the province can and should do is fortify the regulatory framework which this industry is working within.”

While one can acknowledge that mining plays an important role in B.C.,  given what we’ve seen with the Mount Polley mine, the situation in Shawnigan Lake and a similar issue now unfolding in Campbell River, it’s important to acknowledge a loss of public trust in industry and the government’s ability to regulate, Furstenau said.

“What I’d like to see from the premier is assurance that this industry can operate in a way we can trust, to demonstrate the environmental impacts won’t outweigh the benefits of the jobs and materials that are being produced in these mines.”

* This story has been updated to clarify that the decision on how to proceed with the Mount Polley case lies with B.C.’s Crown prosecution service.

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.

A leading credit rating agency’s financial downgrading of Imperial Metals Corp. is sending alarm signals through B.C. and Alaska groups concerned about the future of mines operated by the company.

Moody’s Investor Service has reassessed Imperial Metals’ “probability of default rating,” with financial analysts stating the company is at imminent risk of not being able to pay its debts. The company’s rating is “judged to be speculative, of poor standing, subject to very high default risk and may be in default on some, but not all, of their long-term debt obligations,” according to the service.

Imperial Metals, based in Vancouver, owns the Mount Polley Mine near Williams Lake — the site of the 2014 tailings pond collapse — and the Red Chris Mine, a large open-pit mine near the border of Alaska which uses the same tailings pond infrastructure as Mount Polley.

Operations at a third site owned by Imperial — the Huckleberry Mine, near Houston B.C. — have been on hold since last year because of low copper prices, according to the company website.

The company has seen its stock price plummet over the last year and recently completed a new debt financing plan after lenders granted a waiver to avoid default, according to Bloomberg News. The major shareholder is oilsands tycoon and Calgary Flames co-owner Murray Edwards, who previously helped arrange $150-million in loans for the company.

When asked about its financial situation, a company representative referred DeSmog Canada to an Imperial Metals annual report.

Communities and Taxpayers Left Holding the Bag for Bankrupt Mines

Alaskan and director of Salmon Beyond Borders said Imperial Metals’ shaky finances underline the need for binding protections for everyone living downstream from mines in transboundary watersheds.

“We know (B.C.) needs much greater financial-bonding legislation, so to find out that this company is in a dire financial position is just super troubling. We know there is no money available to reclaim the Red Chris Mine, so if the company goes bankrupt, it would be very, very troubling,” Hardcastle said in an interview.

“We need a robust financial assurances mechanism in these shared watersheds.”

ICYMI: In Photos: The Canadian Mining Boom You’ve Never Seen Before

The 2015 annual report of B.C.’s Chief Inspector of Mines (the most recent year available) shows that, like other mining companies in B.C., Imperial Metal bonds do not cover estimated liabilities.

The total bond for Mount Polley was $23.6 million, but the liability estimate is $35.3 million, for a shortfall of $11.7 million.

And that liability estimate should probably be much higher, said Ugo Lapointe, Canadian coordinator of MiningWatch Canada.

The Huckleberry bond was $37 million and the liability estimate $59 million, for a shortfall of $22 million. Red Chris posted a bond of $12 million with a liability estimate of $18 million, meaning a shortfall of at least $6 million.

So Imperial Metals has $73 million in bonding for a total reclamation estimate of at least $103 million, Lapointe said.

B.C.’s Underfunded Mines Represents Over $1 Billion Taxpayer Liability

Last year, B.C.’s Auditor General Carol Bellringer, who, in a report, slammed the B.C. government for failing to adequately monitor mines, said the fund that is supposed to cover reclamation costs is short more than $1 billion.

Another 2016 report by independent economist Robyn Allan found B.C.’s out-of-date mining regulations allow companies to chronically underfund mine remediation and disaster costs, ultimately leaving the burden to taxpayers. Allan estimates B.C. mines represent an underfunded liability of $1.5 billion.

There are over 84 abandoned contaminated industrial sites in B.C., mostly from mining, that will cost an estimated $508 million to remediate, according to the Crown Contaminated Sites Program. Responsibility for these sites falls to the province because the owners and operators of the projects “no longer exist,” according to the B.C. government.

Between 2014 and 2016 the cost of contaminated sites in B.C. rose 83.4 per cent. The spectre of financially unstable mining companies adds to the growing concern that B.C.’s mining boom along the Alaska border is occurring without regard for long-term cleanup and remediation costs.

Imperial Metals remains responsible for continuing cleanup and remediation around Mount Polley, where 24 million cubic metres of contaminated sludge and mine waste swept into lakes and rivers after the collapse of a 40-metre high tailings dam.

The Red Chris mine, which opened in late 2014 and has a 25-year lifespan, has a tailings impoundment seven times the capacity of Mount Polley.

Locals Fear Repeat of Tulsequah Chief Debacle

But Alaskans can already point to a glaring example of how badly things can go wrong when mine reclamation activities aren’t adequately funded.

The Tulsequah Chief Mine, on the Canadian side of the border, has been leaking acid mine drainage into a tributary of the salmon-rich Taku River for 60 years. After two company bankruptcies and frequent promises to clean up the mess, little has happened.

Chris Zimmer of Rivers Without Borders has a sinking feeling that, if Imperial Metals gets into deep financial problems, Red Chris could be a repeat of the Tulsequah Chief.

“We saw this happen at the Tulsequah Chief where we ended up with an abandoned mine pouring acid mine drainage into the river for 60 years. That was exactly the same process,” he said.

The fears are that either the company could go bankrupt and walk away from the mess at Red Chris or, if they are short of money, they will start cutting corners, Zimmer said.

“The government needs to step in and keep a very good eye on this site and what the company is doing,” he said.

Jacinda Mack, coordinator of First Nations Women Advocating Responsible Mining and a member of the Xat’sull First Nation, is already keeping a wary eye on Imperial Metals’ finances.

“I am very concerned with this new information about Imperial Metals,” Mack told DeSmog Canada.

“Will Imperial Metals walk away from their Mount Polley Mine and abandon their responsibilities to clean up and treat the pollution from the ongoing disaster — such as what happened with owners at the Tulsequah Chief?”

“They haven’t been very forthcoming at all about this financial situation…It is really frustrating when they are ignoring things like the lake colour changing and algal blooms that never happened before,” she said.

There are many questions that need answers, such as why B.C. is not requiring Imperial Metals to pay the full cost of the Mount Polley cleanup, Mack said.

“What is B.C. going to do to ensure Imperial Metals meets health and safety requirements and their commitment to clean up Mount Polley Mine?” Mack asked.

Hardcastle is also pushing for more oversight of the transboundary mines, which are among the largest in North America.

“We need to know how we can prevent these mines from getting so far along before there are more protections in place,” she said

Alaska Politicians Pushing for Input on Transboundary Mines

The concerns are echoed by Alaska’s congressional delegation and a letter sent to U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, signed by Alaska Governor Bill Walker, Lt. Governor Byron Mallott, Senator Lisa Murkowski, Senator Dan Sullivan and Congressman Don Young, says U.S. economic interests could be threatened by B.C. transboundary mining and “inadequate financial mechanisms to assure long term management of toxic wastes and redress for damages from potential releases.”

The letter emphasizes concerns about the development of large-scale hard rock mine proposals and operations in B.C. “and their potential catastrophic effects on Alaska’s communities and habitats surrounding the transboundary rivers.”

The Alaskan politicians want the State Department to push Canada for more input on transboundary mine proposals, development of a database to track cumulative effects on water quality and a decision on whether the issue should be referred to the International Joint Commission.

Mallott and Alaska tribal representatives met with B.C. officials in early November and are planning to go to Ottawa next year to hold further talks on transboundary watersheds, Mallott said in an emailed statement. He will also go to Washington in January to meet with State Department officials.

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.

“If you’re in Vancouver this is way out in the middle of nowhere, but way out in the middle of nowhere is our backyard.”

Those are the words of Frederick Otilius Olsen Jr., the tribal president of a traditional Haida village on Prince of Wales Island, Alaska.

When I met him, he had travelled to Ketchikan, Alaska, to meet with officials about the risk posed by the mining boom across the border in British Columbia.

He stood on the boardwalk overlooking Ketchikan’s fishing fleet and waved his hands animatedly while he told me about how his culture — and southern Alaska’s economy — depends on salmon.

The week before, I’d spent several hours flying in a small fixed-wing plane over B.C.’s mining boom to capture never before seen images of the province’s largest and most remote mines.

Door removed, I captured hundreds of frames as we passed over the Red Chris copper and gold mine, which began operation in late 2014. Its tailings pond and dam rises impossible and angular out of a soft, sloping valley.

Set within the vast and largely intact headwaters of northwestern B.C.’s greatest wild salmon rivers, the Red Chris mine is just one of 10 mines either in operation, in development or in advanced exploration stages in this region.

It is owned and operated by Imperial Metals, the company responsible for the Mount Polley mine disaster in central B.C. If the name seems familiar, it’s because in 2014, a tailings dam at Mount Polley collapsed, resulting in one of the worst environmental disasters in Canadian history. All told, 24 million cubic metres of contaminated mining waste flooded into a lake —  a source of drinking water and salmon-spawning ground that feeds the Fraser River.

A new study from the United Nations Environment Programme notes Canada has had seven known mine tailings spills in the last decade, only one less than China, which tops the list.

“The increasing number and size of tailings dams around the globe magnifies the potential environmental, social and economic cost of catastrophic failure impact and the risks and costs of perpetual management,” says the report.

A view from the sky gives perspective on both the enormity of the mines but also their proximity to Alaskans who, living downstream, fear they may unfairly suffer the consequences of another Mount Polley style accident.

“This is our Amazon right here and they’re not making any more of it,” Olsen Jr. said.

The following photo essay was made possible by 103 readers, who donated more than $10,000 to bring this unprecedented assignment to life.

B.C. and Alaska share some of the world’s most productive salmon rivers. However, the region is also home to some of the largest untapped gold and copper reserves in the world. Gold is mined primarily for use in jewelry, while copper conducts both heat and electricity well, so has many uses, including in electrical equipment such as wiring, motors and solar panels.

The Todagin Plateau on the edge of Imperial Metals’ Red Chris mine is thought to have the world’s highest density of stone sheep. It is the traditional Tahltan hunting grounds for moose, sheep, goats and caribou.

The wall of the Red Chris tailings dam is 105 metres high, about the height of a 35-storey building. Tailings are the byproducts left over from mining and include finely ground rock particles, chemicals and water. The rock particles and other chemicals sometimes undergo chemical reactions during storage that generate additional byproducts, such as acid, that can more easily leach into waterways.

In recent years, B.C. has experienced an explosion in mine growth on the Alaska border. Red Chris and Brucejack mines are now in operation, while KSM and Galore Creek have the required approvals and are in development. Schaft Creek is currently under review and four more mines are in the advanced exploration stages. Unlike Mount Polley, much of the waste in these transboundary projects will be potentially acid generating, making it much more toxic.*

The Red Chris tailings pond is an unlined, earthen centre-line type tailings dam — the same design Imperial Metals used at the ill-fated Mount Polley mine. An independent panel that reviewed the Mount Polley spill predicted two additional tailings dam failures could occur every 10 years in British Columbia if mine waste disposal practices aren’t improved. One of the panel’s key recommendations was for B.C. to move away from allowing liquid tailings ponds. There are currently more than 120 tailings dams across British Columbia.

When the Red Chris gold and copper mine opened in late 2014, it became the first mine of its type to operate in the transboundary region. The Narwhal (formerly DeSmog Canada) requested a tour of the Red Chris mine but was told by an official that Red Chris does not provide “unsolicited tours.” Red Chris is owned by Imperial Metals, the same company responsible for Mount Polley. The largest Imperial Metals shareholder is oilsands billionaire and Calgary Flames co-owner Murray Edwards, who organized a $1-million Calgary fundraising dinner for former B.C. premier Christy Clark’s 2013 re-election campaign.

The Mount Polley mine had a total tailings storage volume of 44 million cubic metres. B.C.’s massive transboundary mines require much higher volumes of waste storage. The tailings facility at Red Chris can store up to 305 million cubic metres of mine waste. Galore Creek will have a storage volume of 424 million cubic metres, Shaft Creek of 588 million cubic metres and KSM a staggering 1,213 million cubic metres.

Frederick Otilius Olsen Jr. is the Haida Tribal President of the Organized Village of Kasaan and chair of the Southeast Alaska Indigenous Transboundary Commission. “We have been trying for years to get the B.C. government to adequately address our interests and concerns, but other than nice words and vague promises, we seem to be getting nowhere,” Olsen Jr. said. “It takes a little wisdom, but sometimes to do something different, you have to do something you never did.”

The tailings pond at the Red Chris mine has a capacity of 305 million cubic metres — seven times more than the Mount Polley tailings dam, which collapsed three years ago. In the case of Mount Polley, British Columbian taxpayers ended up on the hook for $40 million of cleanup costs. No fines were levied and no charges have been laid against Mount Polley.

The Red Chris mine has an expected daily throughput of 30,000 tonnes of ore for the 25-year lifespan of the project. The Canadian government did not conduct a comprehensive assessment of the environmental impacts of the project, a process that would have opened the mine proposal to public input.

This is the view northeast across Todagin Creek, wetlands and Tatogga Lake with the road to Red Chris mine on the right. If any tailings escaped from the south dam of the Red Chris tailings pond, this is the point where the tailings would enter the Iskut river system.**

Melanie Brown, left, is a fourth generation commercial fisherman in Bristol Bay, Alaska. Heather Hardcastle, right, is director of the conservation organization Salmon Beyond Borders and a commercial fisherman in Juneau, Alaska. “We share these waters and we share these fish. There has to be an international solution,” Hardcastle said.

Massive braiding and bars from glacial sediment inputs on the Iskut river. Alluvial flood planes such as this are highly vulnerable to disruption.

A view of what is called the “Grand Canyon” of the Stikine River. Considered one of the last truly wild rivers in British Columbia, its 600-kilometre length encompasses mountain peaks and glaciers and supports some of the continent’s richest salmon habitat and wildlife populations.

If you look closely at this photo, you’ll see the drill pads perched on the mountainside (low centre right) and camp (centre left) of the Spectrum GJ gold-copper project, located 30 kilometres west of the Red Chris mine. It is just one of many examples of the lengths mining companies are going to open new mines in the isolated region.

A helicopter nearly disappears in the expanse of this glacier near the Brucejack gold mine. B.C.’s glaciers lose an estimated 22 billion cubic metres of water every year, feeding the province’s rich river systems.

A view east across Brucejack mine site and Brucejack Lake. Brucejack is an underground gold and silver mine. It will create 300 permanent jobs during its 22-year life. Owner Pretium has taken steps to minimize tailings risks by backfilling about half its mine waste in a paste mixed with cement in the underground mine. The other half will be stored in Brucejack Lake.

The Brucejack mine required the construction of an 11-kilometre glacial highway up the centreline of Knipple Glacier. The glacier retreated 300 metres between 2000 and 2011.

The Brucejack mine encampment. Potentially acid generating waste rock from the mine is stored underwater in Brucejack lake.

Joe Williams is a member of the Tlingit and former mayor of Ketchikan Borough, Alaska. He is also the owner and guide of Where the Eagle Walks, a walking tour business. Williams worries mining in the region has affected the health of oolichan populations. “The Department of Fish and Game say we can’t fish it anymore, even when it is out in the bay. It’s a sad thing. Now none of my kids know how to make oolichan oil and we can’t get it for me to teach them.”

Red Chris Mine went ahead after Imperial Metals’ largest shareholder Murray Edwards helped arrange $150 million in loans and crown corporation BC Hydro paid most of the costs for the $746-million Northwest Transmission Line into the region.

The proposed KSM mine site is in the foreground with Brucejack gold mine in the background. KSM sits atop one of the world’s largest undeveloped gold reserves. Once built, it will become one of the largest gold and copper mine in North America, with three open pits and two underground mines. The project initially entailed mining under an active glacier, but that glacier has now retreated. The project will require the construction of two 23-kilometre-long tunnels to deposit mine waste into a tailings impoundment. At 239 metres tall, the tailings dam wall for KSM will be higher than the Shangri-La, the tallest building in Vancouver and the tailings pond will hold 27 times more waste than was held in the Mount Polley tailings dam.*** 

The Tulsequah Chief mine, a zinc and copper mine close to the Alaska border, has been leaking acid mine drainage into the Tulsequah River since it was first shut down in 1957. Attempts to re-open the mine have failed, along with several promises to clean up the site.

Other jurisdictions, such as Alaska and Quebec, demand large financial securities, paid up front to ensure companies are held responsible for any damage.

“If we were to put the bar higher and require payment of financial securities ahead of permitting and ahead of mining, this would be one one way to get rid of the mines that would be marginal and you would end up with the mines that are safest,” Ugo LaPointe of MiningWatch Canada told The Narwhal.

Although most of the mines in this region have a life expectancy of 20 to 50 years, their toxic legacy continues far beyond. This contaminated tailings pond of the Premier gold mine in the Salmon Valley is one example. Originally built in 1910, it operated steadily for 50 years and sporadically for a few years after that. It opened again in 1989 to close once again in 1996. This toxic tailings pound is currently being upgraded to today’s standards so it can be reopened in the future.

A grizzly bear fishes for salmon in Fish Creek, Alaska, just downstream of the Premier gold mine.

Ketchikan, Alaska, just across the border from British Columbia has dubbed itself the “salmon capital of the world.” Ketchikan’s economy is based upon government services, tourism and commercial fishing.

The last catch of the season is offloaded and processed at Alaska General Seafoods in Ketchikan. Alaska’s fishing industry employs nearly 60,000 workers, of which nearly half are fishermen.

Salmon canning at Alaska General Seafoods processing plant in Ketchikan, Alaska.

The initial mechanical processing and canning of salmon at Alaska General Seafoods in Ketchikan, Alaska.

Chief Shakes Tribal House in Wrangell, Alaska. Coastal indigenous cultures are closely tied to salmon and have flourished here for more than 10,000 years.

Brenda Schwartz-Yeager is a fourth generation Wrangell-based Alaskan. As the owner and operator of Alaska Charters and Adventures, Schwartz-Yeager is a confident navigator of the ever-changing Stikine River. “What makes the Stikine so special and unique is its vast wildness,” she said. “We just don’t have many places of this size, and scope, and wildness left on the earth.”

Icebergs and Castle Mountain as seen from Shakes Lake, which feeds the Stikine River in Alaska. Traveling the lower Stikine in 1879, American conservationist John Muir called it “a Yosemite 100 miles long.”

— With files and additional reporting from Emma Gilchrist and Carol Linnitt

This photo essay was funded by The Narwhal readers like you. Want more journalism like this? Become a member today.

Updated on Oct. 30, 2017, at 7:05 p.m. PST. The transboundary map in this article was updated to reflect the fact that the Galore Creek mine is in the development stage, rather than operational as previously stated.

Updated on Nov. 2, 2017, at 10 a.m. PST to correct the lake in the photo to Tattoga Lake, not Todagin Lake. Thank you to the reader with the sharp eye who pointed this out to us.

Updated on Oct. 31, 2017, at 10:45 a.m. PST. The article was updated to reflect the fact that the KSM mine will no longer require mining under an active glacier, as that glacier has now retreated from the proposed pit area. The description of of KSM has also been corrected to refer to the project as one of the largest undeveloped gold and copper mines in North America, rather than the largest undeveloped open-pit gold and copper mine in North America.

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

This week marks the three-year anniversary of the Mount Polley mine disaster, which sent 24 million cubic metres of mining waste into Quesnel Lake, making it one of the worst environmental disasters in Canadian history.

It’ll be a stinging reminder of the tailings pond collapse for local residents, especially considering no charges have been laid against Imperial Metals, owner and operator of Mount Polley.

Come August 5 it will be too late for B.C. to lay charges, given a three-year statute of limitations — however federal charges can be laid for another two years.

But here’s the thing: under the federal Fisheries Act, Mount Polley can receive a maximum of $12 million in fines: $6 million for causing harm to fish and fish habitat and $6 million for dumping deleterious substances without a permit into fish bearing waters.

Compare that with the estimated $40 million in Mount Polley cleanup costs borne by B.C. taxpayers. And take into account that in 2016, Imperial Metals generated over $428 million in revenue and owns more than $1.5 billion in assets, according to the company’s annual report.

“Fines and sanctions are pitiful for environmental damages in Canada, and it’s part of the systemic and structural problem for ensuring greater environmental protection,” Ugo Lapointe, Canadian coordinator for MiningWatch, told DeSmog Canada.

“There’s little incentive for corporations to comply with environmental laws, or invest in more protective measures, if the consequences for failing to comply are cheaper.”

U.S. Environmental Fines Dwarf Canada’s

For examples of more meaningful environmental penalties, Canadians need look no further than the U.S.

In 2016 a Florida fertilizer manufacturer’s tailings pond drained millions of litres of wastewater into an underlying aquifer when a giant sinkhole appeared under the impoundment, tearing through the pond’s liner.  

The company was fined $2 billion USD for improper waste and chemical management (that’s 167 times the maximum fine Mount Polley could face under the Fisheries Act).

In 2014, Alpha Natural Resources was ordered to pay $27.5 million USD for thousands of environmental violations at the company’s 79 coal mines and 25 processing plants across the States. The company was also ordered by the EPA to pay $200 million in upgrades to its facilities to avoid future infractions.

Meantime back in Canada, the largest fine in Canadian history for an environmental infraction was for $7.5 million.

That penalty was handed out in 2014 to owners of the Bloom Lake mine in Quebec who pled guilty to 45 separate charges under the Fisheries Act.

The second largest fine in Canada, at $4.4 million, was just handed out to Prairie Mines in Alberta for the release of 67 million cubic metres of tailings waste into two creeks that feed into the Athabasca River. That spill was nearly 40,000 times smaller than the Mount Polley disaster. Of that total, $3.5 million was paid in federal penalties, with the additional $900,000 paid in provincial fines.

The third largest fine of $3.4 million was handed out to Teck Metals for three offences under the Fisheries Act after the company released effluent into B.C.’s Columbia River.

Mount Polley Disaster Didn’t Change the Way Mining is Done in B.C.

The absence of provincial fines or charges in the wake of the Mount Polley mine spill worries Nikki Skuce, director of Northern Confluence, an initiative that aims to improve land-use decisions in B.C. watersheds.

“It just seems incredible for what is called the largest environmental disaster in B.C.’s history, there are no fines, no charges, no penalties,” Skuce told DeSmog Canada.

“Our laws are that weak.”

Further increasing concern is the fact best practices, including recommendations made by the Independent Expert Panel on Mount Polley, haven’t consistently been applied in the approval of new mines along the B.C./Alaska border.

Ten new mines are approved or under construction along the B.C.-Alberta border, including Imperial Metals’ Red Chris mine which was approved with a wet tailings pond impoundment similar in design to Mount Polley.

After the Mount Polley tailings spill, experts recommended the use of safer, but more costly, dry stack tailings.

“The Independent Expert Panel on Mount Polley concluded that we can expect two failures every decade if ‘business as usual continues,’ ” Skuce said, adding multiple wet tailings impoundments have been approved at mines of much greater scale than Mount Polley.

“With no full bonding requirements and potential fines low under B.C. and federal laws, companies have few incentives to invest in techniques like dry stacking that lower reclamation costs and reduce risk of spills,” Skuce said.

“Why use best practices and best available technology if you may never be held accountable if disaster strikes?”

Image: Mount Polley mine disaster. Photo: Cariboo Regional District via Youtube

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.

B.C.’s new Minister of Environment, George Heyman, says he identifies with the many British Columbians eager for the outcome of the single ongoing investigation into the Mount Polley mine disaster that sent 24 million cubic metres of mining waste into Quesnel Lake on August 4, 2014.

“I have spoken with the Parliamentary Secretary to the federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change. We are in agreement that British Columbians deserve a rigorous and independent investigation to determine exactly what went wrong and to ensure any person or company that broke the law is held responsible,” Heyman said in a press statement released Wednesday, two days before the provincial statute of limitations for Mount Polley expires.

As B.C. approaches the three-year anniversary of the incident, British Columbians, including local residents directly impacted by the spill, have expressed disappointment that Imperial Metals, owner and operator of Mount Polley, has received no charges and no fines for the disaster, considered one of the worst environmental incidents in Canadian history.

“A disaster like this should never have happened in B.C., and it must never happen again,” Heyman said.

#MountPolley Investigation Still On, Federal Charges ‘In Play,’ Says BC Environment Minister https://t.co/p5xLwzp1Lr @GeorgeHeyman #bcpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) August 3, 2017

As DeSmog Canada recently reported, while B.C. has reached the expiration date for provincial charges, the statute of limitations has not run out for federal charges under the Fisheries Act.

While two provincial investigations in the Mount Polley spill have been conducted, neither recommended charges or fines be levied against the company.

Yet one investigation is currently ongoing by the B.C. Conservation Service Office alongside the Department of Fisheries and Environment and Climate Change Canada.

Heyman said the current investigation is “complex and thorough.”

Information gathered during the investigation will be brought to the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, “should charges be recommended,” Heyman said.

“Potential charges under the federal Fisheries Act remain very much in play and, in fact, potential penalties are more significant.”

Under the Fisheries Act, Mount Polley could face $6 million in penalties for causing harm to fish and fish habitat and an additional $6 million for dumping deleterious substances without a permit into fish bearing waters.

“While the three-year anniversary of the disaster also brings us to the statute of limitations on provincial charges, British Columbians should know the overall objective continues to be ensuring a complete investigation,” he said.

“I have full confidence in the work of these law enforcement officials and I know that many concerned British Columbians join me in looking forward to the outcome of this important investigation.” 

Image: B.C. Environment Minister George Heyman. Photo: Stephen Hui via the Pembina Institute. Used with permission.

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.