Ministerial bafflegab
doesn’t lessen the impact of the Mount Polley tailings spill
“Perceptions” by Gerry
Warner
“Tailing dams at operating mines have not ever
failed in British Columbia. This is the first time. It is hard to plan for
something that never happened,” said Mines Minister Bill Bennett in a front
page Cranbrook Townsman story Aug. 12.
Huh!
Assuming
the quote is correct, and a former Kimberley resident said he heard Bennett say
the same thing to the Vancouver media last week, Kootenay Bill must be having
hallucinations over the mammoth Mt. Polley spill or he’s completely ignorant of
the mining history in B.C.
Don’t
believe me? Punch tailing dam breaches into Goggle and see for yourself.
The
International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD) lists six pages of mine tailing
dam breaches around the world – close to 200 in all – with six of the breaches occurring
in BC at Invermere, Granisle, Pinchi Lake (two) and Kimberley. At the time, the
only non- operating mine was the Mineral
King Mine west of Invermere, but it leaked anyway.
But
yes, you read correctly one of the breaches occurred March 4, 1948 at the
Sullivan Mine tailings pond above Marysville which released more than a million
cubic metres of chemical-laced tailings when a dam wall broke during early
spring run-off and washed out the railway tracks and the power line connecting
the mine to the mill and almost drowned three security guards who barely
escaped the ocean of sludge, according to a 1948 story in the Cranbrook
Courier.
More
spills, including the ones in BC, are listed in The Chronology of Major Dam
Failures which says “the challenges associated with tailings storage are ever
increasing.” Despite this, ever since the Mt. Polley mine discharged 14.5
million cubic metres of mine processing water and sand into Quesnel Lake,
reports have been circulating that inspections of the tailings pond fell off
dramatically after Liberal government cutbacks began in 2001 and repeated Environment
Ministry warnings about environmental issues and high tailing levels behind the
dam were ignored by Imperial Metals Corp., the owners of the mine.
In
an interview with the Vancouver Sun Tuesday, Bennett said the Mt. Polley spill
can no longer be seen from the air. That’s comforting, I suppose.
Out
of sight; out of mind. Bennett also insisted the Mt. Polley breach wasn’t an
environmental disaster and compared it to the “thousands” of avalanches that
occur in BC every winter. Really! Naturally occurring avalanches of snow being
compared to a tailings pond breach spilling toxic chemicals like arsenic and
poisonous metals like mercury, cadmium and lead. Now that’s a stretch!
But
maybe this is what to expect from a mines minister that doesn’t know the
history of tailing pond breaches in the province even when they occur in the
riding next to his. Bennett accuses his critics of “taking cheap political
advantage” in the aftermath of the Mt. Polley spill. That’s pretty rich coming
from a mines minister brazenly trying to downplay the seriousness of the
biggest tailings pond spill in the province in recent years. At 530 metres
(1,739 ft.), Quesnel Lake is the deepest in BC and one of the most pristine.
Who in their right mind thinks the purity of this salmon-spawning lake is going
to be helped by having 14.5 million cubic metres of mine sludge dumped into it?
But
what’s really sad here is that Bennett’s bluster may be damaging the very
industry he so zealously supports. According to the Mining Association of BC,
mining contributed $8.9 billion to the BC economy in 2010, provided more than
45,000 direct and indirect jobs and paid $938.6 million in taxes and royalties
to all levels of government. I grew up a Cominco brat myself and owe my
university education to Cominco. And I can tell you that Trail, BC, where I
grew up, is a green and beautiful town today thanks to the millions, if not,
billions spent by Teck-Cominco to clean the smelter up from the bad old days.
An
industry as advanced as this needs a mines minister that can deal forthrightly
with the public and better knows his own portfolio.
Gerry Warner is a
retired journalist and Cranbrook City Councillor, who in his younger days,
worked in a few mines himself. His opinions are his own.
Remember, Bill Bennett is a fishing lodge guy from Ontario. He didn't arrive in B.C. until relatively recently. So, presumably Bill can scamper back there if he and the multi-national corporations ruin our ecology while plundering our resouces as fast as they can.
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