Tailings Contaminate Lake

[Treblehook]

How could any reporter worth his/her salt, write a news story on this topic, as appears in Castanet, and not mention one word about what toxic chemicals/compounds were contained within the tailing pond that breached the dam? Amazing.

[Glacier]

The main one is arsenic (the major contaminant of a gold mines). The other is mercury. The mine dumped more than 400,000 kg of arsenic and 3,000 kg of mercury into the tailings pond in just the last year alone.

Quesnel Lake is the deepest lake in BC.

Areal footage: http://globalnews.ca/video/1491048/raw- ... ond-breach

[coffeeFreak]

Here is a more in-depth news report:

Residents calling it an environmental disaster: tailings pond breach at Mount Polley Mine near Likely, BC

By Paula Baker and Marlisse Silver Sweeney Global News

http://globalnews.ca/news/1490361/tailings-pond-breach-at-mount-polley-mine-near-likely-bc/

[Treblehook]

That is more than a little disturbing. Who the hell is responsible for ensuring that the engineering/integrity of these types of earthen dams is up to par. Somebody's head should be rolling as a result of this failure for sure. In this day and age, there is no excuse whatsoever for this kind of failure. It is an outrage and people should be up in arms all over the province.... or even all over the country.

[Glacier]

This is very serious indeed. These people in the following picture are from Kelowna, and yet they continued fishing at the outflow of Quesnel Lake despite the water advisory.

This is the government's way to telling the tailings to stop flowing downing the river (no word on whether or not it is going to work):

[pwjm]

I feel like people are overlooking the severe and permanent repercussions this single spill will have on our province.

This will do irreparable damage to our ecosystem. I can't even fathom the long term health concerns brought by such large deposits of arsenic and mercury in the drinking water... never mind the wildlife.

The people of this province should be up in arms over this. It should serve as a wakeup call to our entirely apathetic neighbors in Alberta who seem too comfortable with their tailing ponds being so close to a major river as well.

[Glacier]

Let's not point the finger at Alberta at a time like this. This is a wake-up call to BC where environmental regulations and enforcement are lower than all of our neighbours including Alberta.

[maryjane48]

Let's not point the finger at Alberta at a time like this. This is a wake-up call to BC where environmental regulations and enforcement are lower than all of our neighbours including Alberta.

um no we can point finger at alberta to because their ponds leak

[Liquidnails]

How could any reporter worth his/her salt, write a news story on this topic, as appears in Castanet, and not mention one word about what toxic chemicals/compounds were contained within the tailing pond that breached the dam? Amazing.

Because there's currently no information available regarding the contents of that tailings pond. I'm not sure we'll ever be told what was in there.

[wanderingman]

I feel like people are overlooking the severe and permanent repercussions this single spill will have on our province.

This will do irreparable damage to our ecosystem. I can't even fathom the long term health concerns brought by such large deposits of arsenic and mercury in the drinking water... never mind the wildlife.

The people of this province should be up in arms over this. It should serve as a wakeup call to our entirely apathetic neighbors in Alberta who seem too comfortable with their tailing ponds being so close to a major river as well.

although this situation is totally unacceptable and heads should roll over this etc its far from irreparable.The dilution as it flows down and out into the ocean and the constant flow of new water it will self flush itself
The PPM will be in range as the system spreads out and heads downstream.Its still a totally unacceptable situation

[Relentless]

This is unreal!
A state of emergency should be declared and action should be taken to stop these clowns from operating and focus on slowing or stopping impact and cleanup, every passing minute is critical. I bet they don't even have a plan on how to deal with this contamination which will have a serious impact for many decades.
And where is Christy now?

[hobbyguy]

What a disaster!

I can only hope the environmental damage isn't as bad as what happened to the Coquihalla river when Carolin spilled into it. Went from a prime fishing river to a dead ditch overnight. Still hasn't recovered decades later.

You would think we would learn from past mistakes. Doesn't seem so in the case.

This article has some disturbing details: http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Mine+waste+leak+forces+water+Quesnel+Cariboo+River+systems/10088871/story.html

"According to a 2011 article in the Williams Lake Tribune, the capacity of the tailing pond has been a concern as far back as 2009.

At that time, the Mount Polley Mine applied for a permit from the Ministry of the Environment to discharge effluent into Hazeltine Creek.

The paper reported then how Mount Polley general manager Tim Fisch explained that the “closed system” of containing the toxic effluent in the pond was “difficult as the mine accumulates more water than it can use in a year due to its location in a ‘net positive’ precipitation zone ... the amount of run-off requires dam raises and prohibits the formation of proper tailings beaches which could increase seepage and cause conditions that are ‘geotechnically unstable.’”

In 2011, Likely Matters reported the Williams Lake Indian Band opposed any permit to discharge effluent into Quesnel Lake due to environmental sensitivities.

“The tailings pond was filling out and they needed to get rid of the water,” said Olding of the dam, which he described as “earthen.” “The walls were getting too high and the water was getting too high.

“I’m not a structural engineer,” said Olding, “but it appeared from a common sense point of view that you could not continue to build that up higher and higher.”

Speculating, it looks like the "brass" knew there was a design defect in the original mine design, and they chose to look the other way and keep the short term profits flowing. The correct answer would have been to shut it down and fix the problem - but that costs money.

Such a shame because responsible mine operators will get tarred with the same brush.

[Glacier]

Earth filled tailings dams never give way overnight. This dam was having problems months ago, and should have been remedied then, but neither company nor government decided that a proper fix was in order.

This is one of the best sport fishing areas on the planet, but there aren't many people living there, so screw'em. Ya, it's supposed to be a record salmon run, but it's only the prolific Horsefly/Likely/Quesnel runs that we can kiss good-bye. No government officials are affected so it's far better use of government money to invest 6 million dollars into one of Canada's fastest growing cities (to help it grow even faster) than it is to invest in a small aging communities across the province. As the Premier's office told business folks in Bella Coola effected by the ferry elimination, "go on welfare or move." Same goes for people in Likely. If you don't like improperly monitored tailings ponds, go on welfare or move to Kelowna where there's another 6 million dollars being spend (scooped off your local resource sector meant to enticing you to move there anyway).

[Boda]

*removed*

[Logitack]

just another example of facist BC liberal incompetence and shows yet again whose interests the facist bc liberals favor!