Prince George, B.C. – There are at least four parties which are submitting environmental samples for testing in the wake of the Mount Polley tailings pond breach.

Imperial Metals, the company which is taking responsibility for the event, the province, the Williams Lake Indian Band and the University of Northern B.C. are all taking samples from the numerous waterways that were deluged by the water and sludge that poured out of the pond last Monday.  The possibly-disastrous event has also proven convenient for the university in that it has provided an instantaneous working classroom for researchers who study that part of BC.

The Quesnel River Research Centre, also known as the Max Blow Research Centre, is, by chance, located in Likely.  And staff there has been busy collecting water samples from some of the affected area since early last week.  We spoke with Dr. Philip Owens, Research Chair in Landscape Ecology in the Environmental Science Program at UNBC and asked whether samples of sludge or slurry that came out of the pond are also being taken for testing.

“We are, in a nutshell, in fact we were already doing that before the incident strangely enough.  Since we’ve been here we’ve been sampling the waters and the sediments for about a decade because we’re just really interested in this landscape and how it shifts and how it caves.  Now what we’re doing since this happened we’ve started to increase our water and sediment sampling and have focused a little bit more on that Hazeltine system.  The station has been sampling right from the get-go.  In fact I think we probably collected the first water samples and I think the first sediment samples.”

Dr. Owens says “so we have collected sediment from the bay into which Hazeltine Creek flows .  We have collected some very simple sediment samples from Hazeltine Creek but it’s very difficult to get access at the moment.  We’re restricted in what we can do because it’s so dangerous and there’s concerns about anyone getting in and rightly so because it’s dangerous.  So we have been sampling water and sediment from Quesnel Lake.  We will continue to do that and we’re now just about to set up a program for sampling from Quesnel River as well.”

Dr. Owens says they have also collected some fish.  “So we’ve got fish from before the incident and we’ll be trying to keep collecting samples of fish during the next period as well to see if there’s any change.”   Asked whether those fish were alive, and whether the centre’s staff had found any dead fish Owens says “well we’ve seen them.”  However he says the Centre’s Manager, Sam Albers, would be able to better address those questions.  Albers is away for a few days.

However Dr. Owens says “from my recollection the community, who sometime get fish anyway, have been donating them to us because they recognize that they could be very useful scientifically.  So these are ones that might have been kept in their freezer, for example, but if you cook it and eat it, you know.  So they have said well why don’t you have it because I think it could be a very useful resource.”

I mentioned to Dr. Owens that the focus so far in the sampling/testing process seems to be on water, and asked whether testing the toxicity of the sludge that came out of the pond might be the more critical and long-lasting issue.  “The sediment you’re right, the sediment is absolutely crucial here because most of the contaminants, the metals, tend to like sediment better than water because they stick to the sediment and the sediment tends to hang around in the system a lot longer than water.  It’s lying on the bed of the lake, sitting on the flood plains, it’s in the delta.  So potentially it’s going to be hanging around in the system a long time, whereas the water is flushing through and diluting.  So I think to look at the sediment in a lot of detail is really quite crucial to what might be going on here.”

Dr. Owens notes that the staff at QRC are talking with colleagues at UNBC, SFU, UBC and the University of Toronto about the condition of the sediment.  “We’ve got colleagues from the University of Toronto who have cored Quesnel Lake before for the sediment and they’re interested in coming back and re-doing that.  These are a bunch of the country’s top sediment scientists who want to come back to Quesnel where they’ve already worked before and want to do it again and see just how things have changed.”

Dr. Owens says when you “take the core of the sediment it can be metres in depth and obviously you can see how it changes through time.  And now we would be particularly interested in what the top layers are looking like.”

Dr. Owens says sediment samples have been sent for testing but there are no results as yet.  “But we’re in perhaps a very lucky position relative to that of the ministry.  I mean the Ministry of Environment have to get samples back as quick as possible to the public but we don’t need to do that so we have a little bit of a luxury of taking our time and trying to make sure that we get things done properly and can interpret everything in a more thorough way.  Certainly in the next few weeks we’ll be having our first set of samples coming through and we’ll be able to make some preliminary comments on them.”  He says some of the samples will be going to UNBC for analysis and “I’m fairly certain that we’re thinking about trying to get some independent commercial laboratories as well, ones that have some very high standards and can be fully trusted.”

The majority of the government’s comments on this disaster so far have dealt with the human water supply.  But Dr Owens agrees with those who fear the most serious and long-lasting consequences could be felt by the wildlife in the affected area.  “That’s the big concern that a lot of the local communities have and we have that concern, salmon runs and things like that.  So we will sure be looking at that and will try to look at the long-term picture as well.”

Dr. Owens says the centre staff “will be looking at the Quesnel River and it will tell us if we need to focus on the Fraser River.  Because I’ve seen there are some signals coming through the Quesnel River that, if significant, will lead us to look at the Fraser but I think at the moment we’re going to primarily focus, if we can, on the area immediately around the mine.  So that’s Hazeltine Creek and Polley Lake but again that’s very dangerous so we have to be very careful about access.  We’ve been waiting for permission to enter that land.  But I think our focus will primarily be Quesnel Lake and Quesnel River.”