From CBC.ca - six years later ... see 2008 story below this one

Mount Polley mine spill fallout: Neskonlith deliver Ruddock eviction notice, Red Chris blockade continues

Tahltan and Neskonlith oppose development of Imperial Metals mines in their neighbourhoods

CBC News Posted: Aug 14, 2014 

Neskonlith Chief Judy Wilson delivered an eviction notice to Imperial Metals at its Vancouver office, demanding it abandon exploratory work it has undertaken on its Ruddock Creek mine site. (CBC)

Related Stories

• First Nation aims to evict Imperial Metals over Mount Polley tailings spill
• Mount Polley mine spill: Layoff notices sent to 42 workers
• Mount Polley mine spill: fish safe to eat, water ban mostly lifted
• First Nations worry Mount Polley impact not as benign as claimed
• Mount Polley mine: Ex-engineers warned tailings pond 'getting large'

External Links

• Imperial Metals: Ruddock Creek
• Imperial Metals: Red Chris
• Facebook: Klabona Keepers

(Note: CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external links.)

Imperial Metals is dealing with more than just local fallout from the tailings pond breach that flooded and polluted waterways near its Mount Polley gold and copper mine in B.C's Cariboo earlier this month.

'The Mount Polley devastation has really changed things.'- Anita McPhee, Tahltan Tahltan Tribal Council president

The Vancouver-based mining company is not only issuing layoff notices this week at Mount Polley - it is also facing local opposition from First Nations groups over its two other principal mine properties in B.C: the Ruddock Creek lead and zinc property, in which it has a 50 per cent stake, and at the in-development Red Chris copper and gold property in B.C.'s Cassiar country.

At the Ruddock Creek mine site, 155 kilometres northeast of Kamloops, the Neskonlith Indian Band announced Wednesday it would be issuing an eviction notice to the mining company for exploratory work it is conducting.

"We don't want them in our watershed above our communities here," said Chief Judy Wilson.

• MORE | Neskonlith aims to evict Imperial Metals over Mount Polley tailings spill
• 42 Mount Polley mine workers to lose their jobs, says union

The lead-zinc mine, which is in the pre-application phase of the provincial environmental assessment process, is located at the headwaters of the Adams River, a sacred area to the Secwepemc people.

Wilson, who was attending a conference of chiefs in Richmond Thursday morning, delivered the eviction notice in person to Imperial Metals in its downtown Vancouver office at 3 p.m. PT Thursday.

A company photo shows exploratory work being conducted in the area of the proposed Ruddock Creek lead-zinc mine site north of Kamloops, B.C. (Imperial Metals)

Bennett, Kynoch visit Red Chris blockade

Further north, approximately 80 kilometres south of Dease Lake, protesters from the Tahltan Nation entered into the sixth full day of a blockade of the Red Chris gold and copper property.

Rhoda Quock, spokesperson for the protest group, which calls itself the Klabona Keepers, said the accident at Mount Polley spurred locals to action to protect the environment near this second gold and copper project.

A group of protesters calling themselves the Klabona Keepers began blockading the road to Imperial Metals' Red Chris mine site south of Iskut, B.C., on Aug. 8. (Klabona Keepers/Facebook)

"We are very concerned and disturbed about the tailings pond spill at Mount Polley. We see no other alternative at the moment but to have all activity stop at Red Chris until we are certain that we can proceed safely," she said in a written statement.

According to the Klabona Keepers, the Red Chris tailings pond was built on a fish-bearing lake at the headwaters of the Stikin River.

Tahltan Tribal Council president Anita McPhee said she and her members were told by Imperial Metals that the design of the tailings pond at Red Chris is virtually identical to the design of Mount Polley's pond, which has failed.

She says the government must step forward to ensure the Red Chris project won't end in an ecological catastrophe.

• Xatsull First Nation worries Mount Polley impact not as benign as claimed
• Fish safe to eat, water ban mostly lifted in Likely, B.C.

"Until the government can commit in writing to environmental standards set by the Tahltan people, then this mine cannot proceed as it stands," McPhee said. "The Mount Polley devastation has really changed things."

A photo shows the excavation of the tailings impoundment area at Imperial Metals' Red Chris gold and copper property in northern B.C. A Tahltan spokesperson said the design of the pond is the same as that of the tailings pond that failed at Imperial's Mount Polley gold and copper mine. (Imperial Metals)

Quock and McPhee said that B.C. Minister of Energy and Mines Bill Bennett and Imperial Metals president Brian Kynoch both visited the blockade on Highway 37, south of Iskut, on Wednesday.

Bennett and Kynoch reportedly committed to stopping development at the Red Chris Mine until it was deemed safe to proceed, and also committed to an independent third-party review of the mine plan.

Quock vowed the blockade would continue until such a time as the provincial government and the mine's operator can demonstrate exactly what their commitments are to ensuring the safety the environment.

* 50 per cent stake

Source: ImperialMetals.com

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From CBC.ca

Lakes across Canada face being turned into mine dump sites

Lakes are in B.C., Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, NWT and Nunavut

By Terry Milewski , CBC News Posted: Jun 16, 2008

Related Stories

• YOUR VIEW: Have you been to any of these lakes? Tell us about them.
• YOUR PHOTOS: Send us your pictures
• Frightening precedent in mine dumping approval: activist

External Links

• A map showing lakes slated to be reclassified as tailings impoundment areas (PDF)
• A map showing lakes slated to be reclassified as tailings impoundment areas (PDF)

(Note: CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external links.)

Bush pilot Doug Beaumont and environmentalist Jim Bourquin fish on Kluela Lake, downstream from the planned dump site for the Red Chris gold and copper mining project in northwestern B.C. ((Terry Milewski/CBC))

CBC News has learned that 16 Canadian lakes are slated to be officially but quietly "reclassified" as toxic dump sites for mines. The lakes include prime wilderness fishing lakes from B.C. to Newfoundland.

Environmentalists say the process amounts to a "hidden subsidy" to mining companies, allowing them to get around laws against the destruction of fish habitat.

Under the Fisheries Act, it's illegal to put harmful substances into fish-bearing waters. But, under a little-known subsection known as Schedule Two of the mining effluent regulations, federal bureaucrats can redefine lakes as "tailings impoundment areas."

That means mining companies don't need to build containment ponds for toxic mine tailings.

CBC News visited two examples of Schedule Two lakes. In Newfoundland and Labrador, the Vale Inco company wants to use a prime destination for fishermen known as Sandy Pond to hold tailings from a nickel processing plant.

In northern B.C., Imperial Metals plans to enclose a remote watershed valley to hold tailings from a gold and copper mine. The valley lies in what the native Tahltan people call the "Sacred Headwaters" of three major salmon rivers. It also serves as spawning grounds for the rainbow trout of Kluela Lake, which is downstream from the dump site. 

Lakes 'safest option': mining association

Vale Inco's proposal was the subject of a public meeting on June 10 in Long Harbour, N.L. Billed as a "public consultation" on the proposal, the meeting was attended by government officials, mining executives, environmentalists and fishermen.  

Lakes are often the best way for mine tailings to be contained, said Elizabeth Gardiner, vice-president for technical affairs for the Mining Association of Canada.

"In some cases, particularly in Canada, with this kind of topography and this number of natural lakes and depressions and ponds ... in the end it's really the safest option for human health and for the environment," she said.

But Catherine Coumans, spokeswoman for the environmental group Mining Watch, said the federal government is making it too easy. She said federal officials are increasingly using the obscure Schedule Two regulations to quietly reclassify lakes and other waters as tailings dumps.

Jim Bourquin, centre, of the Cassiar Watch Society, says the decision by federal officials to turn a fish-bearing habitat into a waste management area is "totally bizarre." ((CBC))

"Something that used to be a lake - or a river, in fact, they can use rivers - by being put on this section two of this regulation is no longer a river or a lake," she said. "It's a tailings impoundment area. It's a waste disposal site. It's an industrial waste dump."

Coumans said the procedure amounts to a subsidy to the industry and enables mines to get around the Fisheries Act.

"What Canadians need to know is that this year, from March 2008 to March of 2009, eight lakes are going to be subject to being put on Schedule Two, which is just about every mine that is going ahead this year is looking around, looking for the nearest lake to dump its waste into."

A local environmentalist who attended the Long Harbour meeting, Chad Griffiths, said of Sandy Pond: "It's easy enough to consider just one lake as just one lake, as a needed sacrifice, right? But it's not one lake ... It's a trend. It's an open season on Canadian water."  

'Open season on Canadian water': environmentalist

A test case: the Red Chris Mine in northwestern B.C.  

Steve Robertson, exploration manager for Imperial Metals, says any risk to the environment from the Red Chris mine will be carefully managed. ((CBC))

Last fall, a Federal Court judge ruled that federal bureaucrats acted illegally in trying to fast-track the Red Chris copper and gold mine without a full and public environmental review.

The decision put the project on hold, but late last week, the Federal Appeals Court reversed the decision, paving the way for federal officials to declare lakes to be dumps without public consultation.

Imperial Metals said in a release Monday that federal authorities "are now authorized to issue regulatory approvals for the Red Chris project to proceed," although the matter could still be appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

In the earlier decision, Justice Luc Martineau overturned the decision by federal officials to skip a public review, saying it "has all the characteristics of a capricious and arbitrary decision which was taken for an improper purpose."

He also found those officials "committed a reviewable error by deciding to forgo the public consultation process which the project was statutorily mandated to undergo." 

The dump site includes two small lakes in a Y-shaped valley. Imperial Metals plans to build three dams to contain mine tailings within the valley. But environmentalists say there is no way to stop effluent leaking downstream in groundwater.

James Dennis, an elder with the local Tahltan people, says he fears his grandchildren will be the ones who will have to live with polluted water. ((CBC))

Jim Bourquin of the Cassiar Watch Society, a conservation group, said Kluela Lake, immediately downstream from the site, is "one of the best trout fishing lakes in northern B.C."

 "This is a precedent-setting decision by the federal government to start using fish-bearing habitat as a waste management area," Bourquin said. "It's totally bizarre for the federal government to come here and say that this Y-shaped valley up here is no longer a fish habitat, it's no longer sacred headwaters, it's just a waste dump site."

But Steve Robertson, exploration manager for Imperial Metals, told CBC News the dump site will be sealed and that the economic benefits of the planned Red Chris mine will be enormous.

"This is a project that can bring a lot of good jobs, long-term jobs, well-paying jobs to a community that desperately needs it," Robertson said.

He added that the total investment over the 25-year life of the mine would be about half a billion dollars and that the risk to the environment will be carefully managed.

"Tailings are part of the mining process," Robertson said, "and, if treated properly, if they're built into a proper structure and kept submerged, they should be able to withstand the test of time and actually not pose a detriment to the environment."

But James Dennis, a 76-year-old elder of the local Tahltan people, told CBC News he doesn't buy that.

"We want it stopped," said Dennis, who lives in the native village of Iskut, 18 kilometres northwest of the mine site. "We want to stop the mine ... The animals will be drinking that water and they'll all be polluted too.

"Once they do the mine, they're going to leave, and we're the people who are going to live with that. Not me, but my grandchildren, the small little kids like this. That's who's going to live with the pollution."