One year after 24 million cubic metres of mine sludge and water swept into rivers and lakes below Imperial Metal’s Mount Polley mine in B.C., Southeast Alaskans will gather to commemorate the tailings pond breach and bless the Stikine River.

Those at the Aug. 2 gathering in Wrangell, where the salmon-rich Stikine runs into the ocean, will also be looking for ways to ensure there is no Mount Polley-style disaster in the B.C. headwaters of the Iskut River, a major tributary of the Stikine, where Imperial Metals has opened the Red Chris mine.

The ceremony will be hosted by Wrangell Cooperative Association, and tribal administrator Aaron Angerman said he hopes other Southeast Alaskan communities will follow suit and hold their own ceremonies.

“I am frightened to think that what happened at Mount Polley could happen here in our backyard now that the Red Chris mine is operational — that the fish we’ve relied on traditionally for thousands of years could be contaminated or disappear, that the local commercial fishing industry could be decimated and that we could see the local businesses that rely on the industry close doors,” he said.

Red Chris — one of about 10 B.C. mines planned for the transboundary area —  opened for business two days after the first report into the Mount Polley disaster was released.

Despite a recommendation in that report that companies should consider dry stack tailings storage Red Chris is using a tailings dam similar to Mount Polley.

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

Raw footage from the Mount Polley mine spill. Credit: Cariboo Regional District

Lax B.C. Mining Rules Cause Concern

Anxiety about perceived lax mining regulations in B.C and lack of Alaskan input into mine approvals close to salmon-bearing rivers, escalated after the Mount Polley breach. Many Alaskan groups and local politicians are now pushing for the matter to be referred to the International Joint Commission for a ruling under the Boundary Waters Treaty, which says water flowing across the boundary should not be polluted.

The Wrangell ceremony will kick off with a procession through downtown Wrangell followed by a blessing of the waters in front of the Tribal House.

Tribal leaders, government officials, conservation groups and community members will then hold strategy sessions.

“I hope the Aug. 2 ceremony highlights how concerned people are on both sides of the border about major risks to the Stikine River and other transboundary rivers from large-scale and risky mine developments in B.C.,” said Oscar Dennis, Iskut First Nation spokesman.

Speakers will include Jacinda Mack, Northern Shuswap Tribal Council mining team coordinator, who lives and works in the area affected by the Mount Polley breach.[view:in_this_series=block_1]

Mount Polley Spill Impacts Linger as Mine Reopens

On Wednesday the province released its first phase progress report on Mount Polley remediation, but Mack said in a news release that First Nations concerns were not fully addressed before the government allowed a partial re-start at Mount Polley and many are losing faith in the process.

“It appears that it is simply business as usual. There have been no fines, no criminal charges, no approved long-term water treatment and management plan and the company still gets permitted to operate. It’s a disgrace,” she said.

It is too soon to know the long-term impacts, but life around Mount Polley will never return to the way it was, Mack said.

“It was described as a feeling of death in our community when the disaster happened,” she said.

The province has given Imperial Metals a conditional permit to reopen Mount Polley with restrictions. The company must give the provincial government a long-term water treatment and discharge plan by next June.

Mining Accidents Worsening, Finds Report

In another acknowledgement of the Mount Polley anniversary, Washington D.C.-based Earthworks Action has released a report by David Chambers, a mining specialist with the Center for Science in Public Participation and Lindsay Bowker of Bowker Associations Science and Research in the Public Interest, which finds that catastrophic mining spills are increasing in frequency, severity and cost.

The report shows that the Mount Polley failure is part of a global trend of industry and regulators failing to implement best practices to minimize environmental and financial risks.

The analysis finds that half of the serious tailings dam failures in the last 70 years occurred between 1990 and 2009 and says the increasing rate of tailings dam failures is directly related to the growing number of tailings storage facilities larger than five-million cubic metres.

The report predicts 11 catastrophic failures between 2010 and 2019, costing a total of $6 billion, or $543 million per spill.

“More mining waste disasters like Mount Polley are inevitable,” Chambers said, adding that, as most mining companies cannot afford or cannot secure insurance to cover catastrophic failures, damage is often not repaired or taxpayers dollars pay for remediation.

“As a result of the Mount Polley investigation, mining companies and regulators know they have to change mine waste disposal practices to minimize the risk of future disasters,” Chambers said.

“Unfortunately, as evidenced by the recent approval for mines in the Alaska/British Columbia transboundary area, they are failing to do so.”

Image Credit: Cariboo Regional District 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No one will touch our fish."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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