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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 17, 2017

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Imperial Metals Major B.C. Liberal Donor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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This week marks the one-year anniversary of the Mount Polley mine spill, the largest mining disaster in Canadian history. On August 4, 2014 an estimated 24 million cubic metres of mining waste spilled from a failed tailings impoundment, flowing down the Hazeltine Creek into Quesnel Lake, a local source of drinking water and home to an estimated quarter of the province’s sockeye salmon.

DeSmog Canada spoke with local resident and fisheries biologist Richard Holmes to discuss the anniversary of the accident. Holmes said some members of his community are disappointed the mine hasn’t done more to repair the social and economic damage done to residents in the wake of the spill.

Although the Mount Polley mine, owned by Imperial Metals, has put an estimated $67 million into stabilizing the Hazeltine Creek, Holmes said the area resembles a “pretty ditch” that won’t be suitable fish habitat for at least two more years.

“It’s disappointing,” Holmes said.

“The last public meeting was about a month ago and I was really disappointed to watch the mine and their consultants and the government people act like they’d just won the lottery. There were as happy as pigs in shit.”

Holmes said the company was eager to have the mine up and running again — something the province gave them approval to do last month. The mine partially reopened in July to the frustration of locals who feel not enough has been done to make reparations for the spill.

“I felt somewhat insulted actually,” Holmes said. “Here our community had just gone through this year of frustration with both parties and their main focus was the environment, which is good, there’s no doubt about that, but their second focus, an equally important focus was on the economics of it.”

“But they've forgotten completely about the social impacts and the cultural and economic impacts on the people in the community.”

Image Credit: Water destined for Quesnel Lake gathers in a sediment pond, March 2015. Photo: Farhan Umedaly 

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Gary and Peggy Zorn lost their livelihood in the wake of the Mount Polley mining disaster one year ago today, the couple explained, after foreign tourists lost the desire to experience the region as a travel destination renowned for its wildlife.

Gary Zorn, adorned with the impressive title of “bear whisperer,” said their eco-tour grizzly-watching outfit lost hundreds of thousands of dollars the day the mine’s tailings pond breached sending as estimated 24 million cubic metres of contaminated mining waste down the Hazeltine Creek and into Quesnel Lake, a local source of drinking water.

The Zorns said in the year that has passed since the spill, the mine, owned by Imperial Metals, has only completed a superficial cleanup in the area, leaving a lingering stain on both the environment and the region’s reputation.

“It’s pretty quiet here,” Gary Zorn said. “The businesses are suffering quite a bit here in Likely because of the damage the breach has done.”

“It’s not just what the breach did environmentally to us; it’s what has happened with the bad publicity we got when this went around the world. That also hurt everybody here.”

He added Mount Polley has yet to deal with the social aspect of the accident.

“They did a lot of damage to a lot of people and are they going to address that? That’s what a lot of people here are wondering about.”

He said he questions the province’s decision to even consider giving the mine a partial start up license “when they’ve totally avoided dealing with what they’ve created.”

Gary said their guide business has been hit hard so he can empathize with the community’s need for economic stimulus — the kind a reopened mine might provide.

“I do know there are people who need jobs. There’s no two ways about it,” he said. “We’re not against mining or logging at all. I worked in mine and in the forestry industry and we worked together with these people.”

“It’s just that when I go ahead in our business and I make a mistake in the bush that affects someone else I’m expected to make that right.”

“That’s all that people here are expecting of Mount Polley. We’re called ‘Canada’s largest mining disaster’ now,” he added. “You guys screwed up. At least make it right.”

B.C. Claims "Significant Progress" Made in Mount Polley Cleanup

Last week the B.C. Ministry of Environment announced “significant progress” had been made in the first phase of the Mount Polley mine mitigation and remediation plan. According to the province the plan focused on stabilizing Hazeltine Creek and improving the quality of water entering Quesnel Lake.

The Ministry of Environment said it considered the containment of tailings, water treatment and the protection of fish “complete or suitably initiated.” Ongoing work will include an ecological and human health risk assessment, the province said.

Environment Minister Mary Polak said she acknowledges “full environmental remediation will take years,” but said the work done over the past year “is truly impressive.”

Peggy Zorn said the mine and the province are over-emphasizing clean up efforts without acknowledging the vast majority of the spill remains lingering at the bottom of Quesnel Lake.

“They’ve taken care of the aesthetics,” she said. “Things look okay but they haven’t dealt with the environmental mess.”

“They talk about the clean up that has been done. They’ve cleaned up the surface but there’s a lot of other stuff that hasn’t been done. They’ll never get [the mine waste] out of the lake so you can hardly call that a cleanup.”

Gary added, “all we’re saying is, hey, you guys created the mess. At least make an effort to straighten it out and not just what looks nice along the road.“

"Year of Frustration"

Richard Holmes, Likely resident and fisheries biologist, said he wishes there was more progress when it comes to environmental cleanup and recovery for the community on the one-year anniversary of the spill.

“We’ve managed to carry on in spite of it all, but we wish there was better news. It’s unfortunate this turned out the way it has,” he said, adding the community is divided over the outcome of the spill and the recent approval from the province to partially restart the mine.

“There are people going back to work at the mine that live here and there are at the other end of the spectrum people that were impacted or had their businesses impacted that haven’t had their needs addressed whatsoever by the company or the government.”

“We find that to be really lacking.”

Holmes also criticized the mine and the B.C. government for their self-congratulatory attitude concerning remediation and the reopening of the mine.

“The last public meeting was about a month ago and I was really disappointed to watch the mine and their consultants and the government people act like they’d just won the lottery. There were as happy as pigs in shit,” Holmes said.

“I felt somewhat insulted, actually.”

Holmes said his community was at the tail end of a “year of frustration” and to hear Mount Polley and the government so focused on making the mine profitable again seemed insensitive. “They’ve forgotten completely about the social impacts and the cultural and economic impacts on the people in the community. It’s disappointing.”

Holmes acknowledged that important environmental remediation work has been done but that both parties are likely too happy with what they’ve accomplished.

“They’ve certainly accomplished some things. Hazeltine Creek has been somewhat cleaned up," he said, adding flatly: "it looks like a pretty ditch now."

"But unfortunately it’s going to be used as a pretty ditch for a couple of years to transport waste water and it’s not going to be used for fish habitat for at least two years.”  

“They may be happy but for people who live here it’s not what we envisioned at all,” he said.

“We expect better. They’re going to be here another 12 years. We expect them to get along with all the community and not just cherry pick who they hang out with here. They seem to be really focused on looking after their employees, the rest of us be damned.”

Image Credit: Tailings waste in the Hazeltine Creek, August 11, 2014. Photo: Carol Linnitt

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Nearly one year after the catastrophic collapse of the Mount Polley mine tailings pond, which sent an estimated 25 million cubic metres of contaminated mining waste and water into Quesnel Lake, the project is permitted to partially reopen.

The B.C. government approved a permit to temporarily restart the gold and copper mine at half capacity even though the company has no long-term plan to deal with an abundance of water on site. A backlog of water, which overburdened the tailings storage pit, contributed to the accident last August according to an engineering panel that investigated the incident.

Mines Minister Bill Bennett said the province will approve the short-term permit while the mine figures out how to deal with the excess water.

“Our choice was: Do we wait for them for a year to do absolutely everything that shows they have a long-term plan, or let them operate for a few months and get people working again and allow the company to earn some revenue, given there’s no negative impact to the environment?” Bennett said.

The Mount Polley Mining Corporation, owned by Imperial Metals, has until June 30, 2016 to craft a long-term water treatment plan. The province will review the mine’s operation permit at that time.

Major Water Contamination Concerns Remain

Despite assurances from the Ministry of Environment and mining officials that no permanent damage was caused to the lake, locals remain skeptical.

Until recently Mount Polley provided drinking water to residents drawing directly from Quesnel Lake or the river. But according to locals, the mine decided to cancel that program.

Greg and Ingrid Ritson, who live on and draw water from the Quesnel River in Likely said the company has always insisted the water was safe to drink but provided them for months with bottled water.

“I think water’s one of the biggest issues we’ve got to deal with,” Greg Ritson said.

Ritson said he and his wife shower in water they draw from the lake and the effects of doing so have him worried.

“You’ve got to watch. You will find if you shower every day, you will get dry spots, like I’ve never had in my life,” he said.

“But there’s lots of people here that have horrendous problems: breaking out in skin rashes and stuff that they’ve never, ever had. And no body can tell you why. If you ask what are the long-term effects of the chemicals in the water, they’ll say ‘oh they’re fine,’” he said. “But if they’re fine why couldn’t we drink them? There seems to be an imbalance there.”

Ritson said the initial water bans warned people not to drink or bathe in the water and to keep their pets away. Now with no substantial change, he said, “we’re supposed to bathe in it. Where did they come up with that?”

Fisheries biologist Richard Holmes near his home in Likely, B.C. Photo: Carol Linnitt

Major Remediation and Fisheries Questions Unanswered

“People are still wondering what the future holds for them and for Quesnel Lake,” fisheries biologist Richard Holmes told DeSmog Canada.

“Even though we’ve been at it for months now there are still a lot of questions left unanswered.”

Sitting in his home, a five-minute drive from the Quesnel River, Holmes said he is left wondering what the spill means for his community and the lake's aquatic species.

“You saw the damage done to Hazeltine Creek when you were here in August of last year, but even though they say that’s been repaired there’s so much left to be done. “

Holmes said sediment was dispersed from top to bottom in Polley Lake immediately adjacent to the mine and throughout Quesnel Lake for many months.

“We think the impacts will be long term but we just don’t know how severe they will be.”

“We can only hope the regulatory bodies do their job and that the regulations become much stronger. We have to expect better from these people.”

Recently groups in Alaska have expressed alarm at the B.C. government’s mismanagement of mines. There are currently 10 advanced mining projects proposed or operation along the B.C./Alaska transboundary watershed that Alaskans are saying pose a significant threat to the State’s fisheries and tourism.

“The world is watching us,” Holmes said.

“We have to keep stressing to the company and the government that they can’t shortcut this remediation. Unfortunately the mining company has a mindset of bottom line: what can we do as fast as we can for the least amount of money. That has to stop.”

“Right now we’re faced with the immediate concern of getting the excess water offsite.”

Even if the mine never reopened again they’d still have this water issue on site, Holmes said.

“It’s not just about re-openeing the mine but getting rid of contaminated water on site.”

Waste material from the Mount Polley mine tailings pond at the base of the Hazeltine Creek on August 11, 2014. Photo: Carol Linnitt

B.C.’s Sockeye Salmon Still At Risk from Mount Polley Spill

Sam Albers, manager of the Max Blouw Quesnel River Research Centre, said he’s concerned with the massive deposit of mining waste that remains at the bottom of Quesnel Lake.

In a recent paper published in Geophysical Research Letters, Albers and his team of co-authors estimated the waste deposit was roughly 600 metres long, one to three metres deep and over a kilometre across.

But Albers said that estimate was based on current information made available by the mine.

“A new report, the post-event environmental impact assessment, shows that deposit is way, way bigger,” Albers said. What concerns him is the effect of mining contaminants on aquatic species.

“There are a lot of resident fish here and they have a lot of value. But there’s a ton a sockeye salmon here as well.”

In his research Albers found that during peak years the amount of sockeye salmon returning to Quesnel Lake represents as much as 50 or even 60 per cent of the province’s sockeye salmon population. That’s during peak years, Albers said, adding sockeye tend to return in “a really pronounced four year cycle,” a natural rhythm that is to this day not exactly understood.

Quesnel River. Photo: Carol Linnitt

“We had a million fish come back this most recent year and two years before that we had 700 fish come back — which is natural. But the thing is this is an important salmon producing lake.”

"The big concern,” Albers said, “is that copper and salmon really don’t mix all that well.”

“Specifically dissolved copper and salmon don’t mix well. It can get into their olfactory system — so the fish equivalent of a nose — and really mess with their ability to utilize their ecosystem properly.”

Albers said studying the levels of dissolved copper in Quesnel Lake over the long-term will be critical to understanding the impact of the spill on sockeye.

“You’ve got that huge deposit on the bottom of the lake that’s what worries me,” he said.

“This is a really important sockeye salmon lake so monitoring the sockeye food source seems like a really prudent thing to be doing.”

Image Credits: Carol Linnitt

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"I’m surprised that nobody has been killed here since the spill.”

That’s what one resident of Likely, B.C., recently told me at her home near Quesnel Lake, the site of the Mount Polley mine disaster that sent 24 million cubic metres of mining waste into the lake last August.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity she said she was warned by another community member about discussing the Mount Polley mine spill with journalists.

“Be careful, they said to me. Be careful.”

She said another woman, who lives up the road, received three separate threatening phone calls after speaking with a television crew in the wake of the spill.

“One person told her she should mind her own goddam business.”

“A small place like this is very cliquey and I don’t need that in my life.”

“That’s how bad things have gotten here.”

In the months since the spill, considered one of the worst mining accident’s in Canada’s history, residents of Likely have found themselves on one side or the other of a strong dividing line.

Sulphur pile at the Mount Polley mine. Photo: Carol Linnitt

Those eager to have the mine, a major source of local employment, up and running again are squaring off against those who say not enough is being done to understand the long-term impacts of the disaster and how another might be prevented in the future.

Imperial Metals, owner of the Mount Polley Mine, is requesting a permit to reopen the mine. According to B.C. Minister of Energy and Mines Bill Bennett, the permit could be approved as early as the end of June.

Resident Ingrid Ritson, who lives along the Quesnel River, said the mine’s misfortune has torn the small town apart.

“I think that’s what’s driving some people away — the community’s not pulling together. There’s the company people and then there are the people who are like, ‘what the hell, what are you guys doing here?’” Ritson said.

“It’s very frustrating. The most frustration comes with realizing the government’s not backing anyone. They’re just trying to cover themselves,” she added.

“You expect some kind of direction but I think they’re just as dumbfounded as the rest of us. It was like turning the keys of your really high powered car to your 15-year old son and saying, ‘have fun.’ ”

“They just turned over all this responsibility and now we have this spectacular car wreck.”

Several locals said they are frustrated with the way officials from the Mount Polley mine are engaging the community. What were initially town hall-style meetings have been replaced with kiosk-style meetings, where locals can only speak one-on-one with representatives from the mine at separate stations.

Kanahus Manuel, an indigenous activist and member of the Secwepemc First Nation, told DeSmog Canada the meetings resemble a “science fair.”

“People go from stand to stand to talk to members from the government and the mine,” she said.

Manuel added the meetings have become “intense” and described one situation where residents refused to participate. “[They] put out the chairs and said ‘no’ we’re having a discussion with everyone about everything.”

“People are so angry and mad and they don’t trust anyone,” she said.

Denise Carlson at her home in Likely, B.C. Photo: Carol Linnitt

Long-time Likely resident Denise Carlson said she began noticing a change in the way meetings were conducted in November. Carlson attributes the change to Lyn Anglin, brought in by Imperial Metals after the spill to engage the community as a Chief Scientific Officer.

According to Carlson, Anglin initiated the change in the meeting structure.

“It has really frustrated people,” Carlson said, adding community tensions were running so high at one point the mine requested RCMP officers attend the meetings.

Anglin did not respond to multiple requests for an interview. Steve Robertson, vice president of corporate affairs for Imperial Metals and the Mount Polley Mine also declined to be interviewed.

Peggy and Gary Zorn, local wildlife guides that own Ecotours B.C., said they stopped attending the meetings altogether after the changes were initiated.

Peggy said Mount Polley stopped holding the meetings at the town hall and moved them to the bar in the town lodge.

“Why are we having the meetings in a bar? We have a town hall for that,” she said.

“The businesses are suffering quite a bit here in Likely because of the damage the breach has done,” Gary said. “It’s not so much what the breach did environmentally to us, it’s what it did socially.”

Gary said he’s concerned the mine is seeking a permit to reopen operations when it hasn’t fully dealt with the negative effects the spill has had on the community.

“Should these people be given a start up licence when they’ve totally avoided dealing with the social impacts of the disaster they created?” he said. “They haven’t done anything for anyone or any business in Likely except for create a mess and dodge a bullet.”

“There’s still an awful lot of questions and we need answers. I’m not sure they can provide answers. Something like this has never happened before,” Peggy said.

“It’s really disturbing to the community here.”

Craig Ritson at his home on the Quesnel River in Likely, B.C. Photo: Carol Linnitt

Ingrid’s husband, Craig Ritson, said the community is frustrated Imperial Metals wants to reopen the mine without significant changes to its operations.

The mine’s use of out-dated wet tailings technology, which involves storing massive quantities of water and mining waste in large pits, put the community at risk, Ritson said. And now the company is opening another mine, the Red Chris Mine in northern B.C., which uses the same wet tailings process. The company chose not to employ a dry tailings process that would eliminate the need for large water-filled tailings ponds.

“They were gambling with our future,” he said.  “And now they’re doing it at Red Chris.”

“I don’t know about you but when I raised my children I said: ‘A smart man learns from his mistakes. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others,’ ” he said. “They don’t seem to be learning from anything here.”

“I’m not just talking about the mine. I’m talking about the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Mines. None of them have learned.”

“How many times can you gamble with something and not change the system before the whole thing breaks down?”

Image Credit: The Quesnel River. Residents say the river has a milky glow at times since the Mount Polley Mine spill occurred. Photo: Carol Linnitt 

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“I planned on dying here,” Skeed Borkowski, owner of the Northern Lights Lodge, told me. “But not from drinking the water.”

The lodge, located on Quesnel Lake, is one of many local homes and businesses left to hang precariously in the aftermath of the Mount Polley mine spill that released billions of litres of mining waste into the local environment, including Quesnel Lake.

On August 4th a massive tailings pond holding waste water and sediment from the Imperial Metals gold and copper mine breached, sending a mixture of contaminants including arsenic, mercury, selenium, zinc and lead into Polley Lake and Hazeltine Creek, which flows into Quesnel Lake.

“I’m 66,” Skeed said. “My wife is 64. This was the time that we were going to…take it a little easier.

“I don’t see that in the cards right now.”

The dream

The day I went to visit Skeed at the Northern Lights Lodge, eight days had passed since the spill.

“I think it hit me more yesterday for some reason,” he said. “I made my first disconnection from the lake.”

When I drove up Skeed was working next to a water pump, one of four that feeds the lodge with water pulled directly from Quesnel Lake. Seeing the water pump slumped on the lawn bothered Skeed like an exposed nerve. Surfacing those pumps was all too much like pulling up roots.

“And I’m not an emotional guy. I wrestle grizz,” he laughed. “I mean, look at this,” he said, surveying his property. “The work that we have done here, all these docks, everything you see, all these cabins…”

Skeed and his wife Sharon bought the 1942 lodge 18 years ago and spent their life savings rebuilding it into one of Canada’s premier fly-fishing destinations.

A sign welcomes visitors to the Northern Lights Lodge on the shore of Quesnel Lake. Photo: Farhan Umedaly

He walked me up to the main lodge. The exposed wooden beams were decorated with colourful flies in the kitchen. The main room had all the rustic allure of a classic fishing lodge: dark wood, stone arched fireplace, mounted moose heads, board games.

Fishing flies on the kitchen walls of the Northern Lights Lodge. Photo: Carol Linnitt

For 16 years they have been running fishing tours, Skeed said as he flipped through a photo album of past guests. “Look at them,” he said of a couple laughing, holding up a rainbow trout. “This is what we give to people.”

The fireplace mantel at the Northern Lights Lodge. Photo: Carol Linnitt

The common area at the Northern Lights Lodge. Photo: Carol Linnitt

The last cast

At the beginning of the summer Skeed and Sharon made a big decision. They were going to switch over to long-term renters and host their final full-scale fly-fishing tour.

When the couple sent out email invitations to former guests, the response was overwhelming. “In nine days we sold 42 trips,” he said, setting them up for a busy final season.

To commemorate the event, Skeed even had hats made. They read: “The Last Cast.”

“This was going to be our year,” Skeed said. “I tell people that we’re going to slow down a bit, because we’re cramming for finals. This is the time and it’s ironic that this hat says the last cast,” Skeed said, holding onto the memento.

All but one of the groups cancelled their trip. Although, Skeed said, only two individuals wanted refunds. “Everybody has become such good friends, saying ‘let’s just hold off until next year – don’t worry about it right now, you’ve got a lot on your plate,’” he said.

But for Skeed, the promise of a return to normalcy isn’t anywhere on the horizon.

The spill

Skeed said he and his wife Sharon received a phone call at five in the morning from Sharon’s brother who worked at the mine. The mine’s tailings pond breached, he told them.

“We went out on our deck and it was like standing next to Niagara Falls. I’ve done it – and it was that loud here,” Skeed said. “One of the guys in town described it like a jet and that’s what it was like. That went on…probably 12 hours.”

Skeed and his wife put their boat in the water and travelled up the lake to warn other residents and campers. When they approached Hazeltine Creek, where tailings waste was flooding into Quesnel Lake, they were stopped by rough waters and debris.

“We could view the Hazeltine from probably half a mile away and you could see the slurry and the waves boiling out over the logs at that point,” he said.

The couple settled on using a blow horn to warn others on the lake. Skeed said they didn’t know what they were facing at that point.

“We didn’t know what to expect.”

Skeed returned to the mouth of the Hazeltine a day later to survey the wreckage.

“Some of those logs, I mean, they were three feet in diameter, and they were just broken like toothpicks,” he said.

A partial view of the debris field at the mouth of Hazeltine Creek in Quesnel Lake. Photo: Farhan Umedaly

“I’ve been a logger. I’ve done a lot of things out here, being here this long. I don’t think there’s a piece of equipment out there that could break logs like that. The force was so tremendous.”

“It’s gone”

Skeed said he never received a phone call from any officials or emergency responders about the accident at the Mount Polley mine. But when Premier Christy Clark arrived in town amidst a flurry of cameras, Skeed said locals were assured things would be okay.

“The cheerleaders came to town and told us it was all going to be alright, and we’re going to make sure the tourism industry was going to be saved and they were really going to promote the area,” Skeed said.

But for a business owner like Skeed, the damage to Quesnel Lake has already been done.

“I don’t care what they do up there. Number one, they can’t fix it,” he said.

Quesnel Lake is one of the deepest fjord lakes in the world. The debris field from the Mount Polley mine spill can be seen in the distance. Photo: Carol Linnitt

The blight of an industrial accident of this scope will remain on the area indefinitely, Skeed said. He said even a basic online search of Quesnel Lake will live with a post-spill “red flag…forever.”

But of even more concern for Skeed is the amount of toxic waste that made its way into the lake, the effects of which won’t be known for some time.

“They can’t take those toxins out,” he said. “They’ll dissipate. They’ll disappear. But I will never, ever, ever drink out of this lake again. You couldn’t convince me.”

“But the reality of it is, we don’t even know what’s going to happen to this. And the unknown is what’ll keep people from coming here. If you had the choice would you want to take your kids swimming here?”

“I would never bring my family here,” he said.

Skeed’s prized fishing spot in September is Mitchell River, up the lake past Hazeltine Creek. He said he would set off with guests early in the morning before dawn, traveling up the lake in the silence to watch daybreak on the water.

“There’s times where I’ll go up there and you don’t pass a boat, it’s so pristine. And you just put a cup over the side of your boat and drink the water. It‘s astounding,” Skeed said.

The lodge provides bottled drinking water to guests on day trips, but Skeed prefers to carry along nothing more than a simple cup. He said he encouraged guests to drink the water, straight from the lake.

“I would say 30 per cent of the people after watching me do that – and it’s hard for them, they’re just not used to it — they’ll actually take a drink and they’ll go ‘that was just so cool.’ ”

“There aren’t many places like that,” Skeed said. “Especially this one. It’s gone.”

Accountability

“Everyone comes around to the, ‘well they’ve got to make this right with you.’ You know, that’s – they do have to make it right with us – but the most important thing here is our water,” Skeed said.

“I don’t know what they can do about it.”

Skeed holds up a photo of gold he and his wife, Sharon, panned at a local placer mine. Photo: Carol Linnitt

Already Skeed feels resident’s concerns are being overshadowed by officials, eager to reboot the local economy.

“You can’t suddenly bombard [people with] advertising and tourism and deny that this happened. How many people are going to be convinced [by] the government… putting on this big ad campaign?” he said, adding sarcastically, “everybody trusts the government.”

It will take a lot more than a government advertising campaign to win back Skeed’s trust.

“I misunderstood them,” Skeed said. “I possibly misunderstood them, because they mentioned about really addressing damage control and I didn’t realize it was for the mine and for themselves.”

“I thought we’d be thrown in as people that have received damage.”

He gestured to his property, “how many people do you see walking around my lawns?”

Beyond having the concerns of local businesses addressed, Skeed wants to see the provincial government and Imperial Metals, owner of the Mount Polley mine, take ownership of the accident.

“If they would only tell the truth rather than covering their own butts,” he said.

“Man up. Man up and say we made a mistake, we’re at fault. And the word is fault. It’s not ‘we’re taking responsibility for this.’ It’s not responsibility — it’s a fault issue,” he said.

“It’s their damn fault, not the dam’s fault. It’s their damn fault.”

This article is published as part of a joint-venture between the Vancovuer Observer and DeSmog Canada.

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“It’s hard to deal [with] and treat something if you don’t know what it is,” Richard Holmes, fisheries biologist with Cariboo Envirotech, said in an interview at Mount Polley Mine, home to the tailings pond that breached August 4th, sending an estimated 14.5 billion litres of mining waste into the local environment, including Quesnel Lake, a major source of drinking water in the Cariboo region of B.C.

“At this stage the impacts on Quesnel Lake are virtually unknown,” Holmes said.

Very little is known about the significance of the accident, although it has been nearly three weeks since the spill, one of the worst environmental disasters in B.C.’s history, that sent the Cariboo region into a state of local emergency.

Last week authorities rescinded a broad drinking water ban that prevented residents from bathing in or drinking the water, or eating locally caught fish. A partial drinking ban remains in place for the immediate region of the spill, including Polley Lake, Hazeltine Creek and a one hundred metre zone surrounding the spot where the billions of litres of tailings waste poured into Quesnel Lake.

It is this particular area, where sludge from the spill sits slumped into Quesnel Lake, that is of concern to Holmes.

“One of my concerns as a fisheries biologist is the sediment that’s currently located at the mouth of Hazeltine Creek and in the bottom of Quesnel Lake,” he said.

“What efforts have been made to characterize that, as far as size is concerned?” Holmes asked.

He said the company that operates the mine, Imperial Metals, is still draining water from Polley Lake into what remains of Hazeltine Creek. “There’s still some polluted water that is going to be drained into Quesnel Lake,” he said.

Currently Holmes is involved in talks with Imperial Metals and the Soda Creek First Nation, a local band that wants to play a role in clean up and remediation.

Imperial Metals should at least send down some underwater cameras to get a sense of the size of the spill underwater, Holmes said.

That could help establish “what impact the spill has had on the bottom of Quesnel Lake,” he said.

“There’s certainly the global technology available to do that.”

As of Thursday last week the B.C. Ministry of Environment did not have a plan in place to begin clean up of the spill site.

“I think they should put every effort they possibly can into fixing this situation up,” Holmes said.

Bev Sellars, chief of the Soda Creek First Nation, said her community isn’t expecting to feel the full effects of the spill until years down the road.

“This is the biggest salmon run in years,” she said. “And [the salmon] are going to have to swim through that sludge or around that sludge to get to the spawning grounds.”

“Four years down the road we’re going to see the effect that has,” she said.

“This is huge and going to affect us for years to come.”

Although Ministry of Environment testing showed contaminants in the water were no higher than historical levels, some local residents said they will not return to drinking the water yet.

Coralee Oaks, MLA from the Cariboo region and minister of community, sport and cultural development, said she understands lingering concerns.

Cariboo MLA and Minister of Sport, Culture and Community Development, Coralee Oakes addresses lingering concerns over drinking water and cleanup at the spill site.

“First of all I absolutely understand the concerns and that’s why the province and the company are going to continue doing the testing. First Nations are also doing their own independent water testing,” she said.

Sellars said the Soda Creek First Nation is pulling together resources to perform independent water testing because her community does not trust the B.C. government or Imperial Metals.

“We’re not accepting [Imperial Metal’s] or the government’s tests right now,” she said, adding there is “definitely a lack of trust” surrounding water safety.

Oakes said she can understand the lack of confidence.

“I understand what the people are feeling,” she said. “It’s going to take a long time to regain trust and confidence. That’s why we have to work very closely with the community, making sure that we’re here regularly, talking with the community to ensure that slowly we rebuild that trust.”

Oakes also said the company is responsible for funding cleanup efforts, something local residents have been concerned about.

“It is the company’s responsibility,” Oakes said. “It is their responsibility to ensure that cleanup happens in the community and they’ve assured us that their insurance and the size of the corporation that it is, they will be able to financially cover those costs.”

Environment Minister Mary Polak also stated B.C. has a “polluter-pay model” in place and that British Columbians “can expect the company will be the one paying for the cleanup and recovery.”

Although critics are expressing concern that a combination of high cleanup costs, an Imperial Metals shareholder lawsuit and potential personal suits could leave the company unable to pay.

Imperial Metals president Brian Kynoch indicated the company is relying on profits from other mining projects to fund cleanup efforts. “If it’s $400 million, then we are going to have to get mines generating to make that money to do the cleanup,” he said.

For Richard Holmes, however, it’s too late to shirk responsibility.

“If cost is an issue than perhaps they should never have had this mine open here,” he said.

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The Soda Creek First Nation, traditionally called the Xatśūll First Nation, is going to tap into band savings for a community centre to pay for independent scientists to study the local environment in the wake of the Mount Polley mine spill that sent billions of litres of mining waste in Hazeltine Creek and Quesnel Lake.

Bev Sellars, chief of the Soda Creek said ever since the spill occurred it has been difficult to find reliable sources of information.

“The reports coming out from mining and the government say everything is fine, but we don’t really believe that,” she said in an interview in Vancouver. “A disaster such as this – there are going to be long term effects.”

Major concerns for her nation have to do with the long-term effects of the spill on Quesnel Lake, which is in the traditional territory of the Soda Creek First Nation and the Williams Lake Indian Band.

“I don’t think anybody really knows how [Quesnel Lake] has been affected,” she said.

“I’m not a scientist but I know that it’s going to be drastically affected in some way, but how, I don’t know,” she added.

Last week a local drinking water ban was lifted for all affected water, excluding Polley Lake, Hazeltine Creek and where the Hazeltine meets Quesnel Lake.

Although the water ban has been mostly lifted, there are no clear plans for cleanup of the spill site yet.

And there won’t be, until Imperial Metals has completed a partial draining of Polly Lake into Hazeltine Creek, Sellars said.

At this stage, no involved party can claim the science is settled until the spill is, Sellars said.

“We were told when we met with Imperial Metals, I think it was four days after the spill, they hadn’t even started to [clean up] yet, that it would take three weeks to stop the spill before they could go and even start doing an investigation,” she said.

“It’s still spilling out.”

Sellars said word of the spill came as a shock to her community, who are still coming to terms with the news.

“We had a community meeting over at the Williams Lake Indian Band and the tears and the heartache, just people crying, worried about the spill and what that is going to do to the salmon,” she said.

“The Quesnel Lake area is an area where we go and find certain medicines and plants that we can’t find in other parts of our territory. That’s a real worry and concern.”

Sellars said she feels the provincial government has been too hasty in it’s assessment of drinking water and fish impacts.

“I think there they are too quick to say everything is fine. That it’s benign,” she said.

Bill Bennett, minister of mines for B.C., recently likened the spill to an avalanche, which happen frequently across the province every year, he said. Locals took offense to the comparison, saying it downplays the environmental damage and potential long-term consequences of the spill, which are yet to be seen.

Sellars said it’s true that avalanches occur across B.C., “but avalanches don’t have toxic material following right behind it,” she said. “Avalanches have natural materials, so there’s a big difference there.”

Sellars said a priority for her community now is to ensure they have access to independent information.

Her community has brought in a scientist who previously worked on the Exxon Valdez spill, a geochemist that worked at the Mount Polley mine and engineer Brian Olding, who wrote a technical report in 2011 warning the B.C. Ministry of Environment about the Mount Polley tailings pond.

These independent experts are warning the Soda Creek First Nation about the veracity of government and industry claims, Sellars said.

“They’re telling us that what Mount Polley and the governments are saying is absolutely not true,” she said. “So we have hired them to get our own answers and make sure that we get the answers. If they tell us everything is fine, then we’ll accept that.”

“But we’re not accepting Mount Polley or the government’s tests right now,” she said, adding there is an underlying element of mistrust.

“Definitely a lack of trust” she said. “Definitely.”

“I think it’s way too soon for anyone to say that there really are no consequences,” Sellars said, saying they’re expecting one of the largest salmon runs in years to begin next month. The salmon will have to swim directly through Quesnel Lake, which is home to 25 per cent of the province’s sockeye salmon, where the contents of the spill still linger.

Sellars said the impact of the spill is far from over.

“This is huge and it’s going to affect us for years to come. I just can’t understand how they can make statements like that,” she said, referring to the provincial government’s claim that drinking water is safe for consumption.

Sellars said the only way her community can move forward is if they can rely on the information they are given by experts.

“My community, we’ve been saving for a community hall for years,” she said. “We’re almost at the point where we can go to the bank and say we have this money and we want to build a community hall.”

“But we’ve taken money out of our own community hall money to hire our own experts because this has to be done. So that’s what we’re doing now – getting independent scientific analysis of the situation.”

This article is part of a joint-venture between DeSmog Canada and the Vancouver Observer.

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 has been 10 days since the tailings pond holding billions of litres of mining waste breached at the Mount Polley mine near Likely, B.C. sending arsenic and mercury-laced water and slurry into the Hazeltine Creek which feeds Quesnel Lake, a major source of drinking water and home to one quarter of the province’s sockeye salmon.

Yet local residents still have no idea when clean up of the spill site might begin.

On a recent trip to the spill site, DeSmog Canada learned no cleanup crews are currently working on removing the tremendous amount of mining waste clogging up what used to be the Hazeltine Creek and spreading out into Quesnel Lake.

David Karn, media relations with the ministry of environment, was unable to provide information or comment on an expected cleanup date or who would be performing the cleanup, industry or government.

Imperial Metals, also reached out to for comment, was unable to respond by the time of publication.

On Tuesday, August 12, representatives from the Cariboo Regional District (CRD) announced a local drinking water ban placed on Quesnel Lake and the Quesnel River would be lifted after sampling showed the water was safe for consumption.

A water use ban remains in effect for 100 metres surrounding the debris field at the convergence of the Hazeltine Creek and Quesnel Lake.

Coralee Oakes, local MLA and minister of community, sport and development told DeSmog Canada that regular water testing will continue and that sample results will be made available online. The CRD will continue to supply residents and tourists with free drinking water and temporary showers at a forestry camp.

But community members have expressed concern over the remnants of the spill, which sit leaching into the lake, and a large cloudy plume of suspended solids in the water, visible from the air.

Richard Holmes, fisheries biologist with Cariboo Envirotech and local resident for 38 years, said sophisticated equipment is needed to survey the extent of the spill underwater.

“We’re talking with industry about getting some underwater cameras in there,” he said.

Holmes is working with the Soda Creek First Nation to ensure First Nations are involved in cleanup efforts, once they begin.

In the meantime, locals are left to speculate about lingering contaminants in their water.

Despite the recently-lifted drinking water ban, many residents admitted they will not drink the water.

Freshwater expert and biogeochemist Dr. David Schindler said random, localized sampling of contaminated water “may not detect the damage done.”

“I understand that considerable arsenic, mercury, cadmium, lead and copper were among the elements released,” he said. “All are extremely toxic.”

Schindler said he suspects the biggest long-term threat lies in areas where sediment from the spill overlaps with spawning and rearing habitat for fish.

“In the St. Lawrence River, most of the contamination of fish with mercury occurs at a few sites where contaminated sediment is deposited and [which] fish also use for feeding or nursery habitat,” he said.

But detailed knowledge of spill sites is usually scant, he said. “Unfortunately, there is not this basic sort of information available for most sites and the sampling done after an accident is more or less random.”

“Our monitoring of habitats around all industrial sites in important aquatic systems in this country is in serious need of upgrading,” he said. “Without background information on fish populations, habitats and toxic concentrations, it is almost impossible to determine how much damage is done.”

“Sometimes it is hard to believe that the lack of pre-accident information is not deliberate,” he said.

This article is part of a joint-venture between the Vancouver Observer and DeSmog Canada.

Image Credit: Carol Linnitt

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.