Mt. Polley Disaster Not Likely To Negatively Impact Sector
Prince George, B.C.- The Vice President of Environment for the Mining Association of B.C., Angela Waterman, is confident the disaster at the Mount Polley mine won’t mar the mining sector “We are concerned about the incident itself, we are eager to know about the report findings what the possible cause was for the event, there has been a market reaction, but it’s not indicative of any long term reputational issue.”
Waterman says there are many possible causes for the dam breach which sent a wall of water and tailings thundering down Hazeltine Creek into Quesnel Lake “There’re many potential causes, often in combination. There are more than a thousand active or dormant facilities in Canada and the last significant breach in Canada was a gold mine in Ontario, like 20 years ago, where a beaver had blocked a spillway and the dam overtopped, releasing tailings. It’s hard to say what happened in this case, we eagerly await the report findings.”
Waterman says the Canadian Dam Safety Guidelines and the Provincial regulatory framework are among the most stringent and comprehensive in the world. She says all dams are subject to formal annual inspections and normally companies have inspections much more frequently than that. In the case of the Mount Polley mine, the Ministry of Mines says that since the Mount Polley Mine was permitted in 1995, there have been 16 geotechnical inspections conducted by ministry geotechnical inspectors. One inspection was conducted each year from 1995-2001 ( the mine then idled for 4 years, coming back on stream in March of 2005) in 2006, 2008 and 2013. Two inspections were conducted in each of 2005, 2007 and 2012.
“I can’t stress enough how stringent and comprehensive the guidelines and regulatory framework is in British Columbia and Canada” says Waterman “ and on top of that, we have the Towards Sustainable Mining Initiative (TSM) a performance framework that was pulled together by the Mining Association of Canada. MABC has adopted this performance framework and they do have a tailings protocol.”
According to the Mining Association of Canada Imperial Metals has been a member of MAC for the past two years and was “in the early stages of implementing the Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM) initiative, including the commitments to ensure the safe operation and management of tailings.”
MAC President Pierre Graton says the mining industry in Canada operates “on the basis of public confidence in sound public policy, effective regulation and responsible management practices by companies. The confidence of the public in what we do and how we do it is essential. Incidents such as this are very rare, but it is the goal of MAC members that they never occur, and we have been working hard for many years to achieve this goal. Clearly, we still have work to do."
Comments
ok, so whats this say for the failure of the dam and the process Mining put in place? is it just paper with no teeth?
So much concern for their industry because of this catastrophic accident, so little concern for the damage to the environment, it would seem.
We get it peeps, you want us all to go back to living in caves and foraging for food.
Maybe you should grab a backpack, say good bye to your mommy and daddy and go live a hermit’s life in the back country for a few years. Then come back and tell us all how evil modern civilization is.
What are you talking about Peeps. The mine and Enviro Canada is worried about Polley lake blowing through the blockage and causing more environmental damage. They are moving as quick as possible but you would have them running backhoes into the creek which would possibly make things worse. Believe it or not there are experts that know a lot more than you or i on what to do in this situation. There are also regulatory bodies that have to work on finding the cause and making sure it doesn’t happen again, doesn’t mean they are not concerned for the environment but rather quite the opposite as they want to make sure something like this does not happen again to damage the environment.
Damned if they do by peeps standards.
Anywho, after driving pretty much all the mining investment out of BC by their policies the NDP tried to save money in their purse by deregulating mining so they could slash the budget by one third. Saves them money you see as they require less staffing by having industry police themselves with the odd slap on the wrist. It wasn’t a move to bring in investment. Not just a small amount of money, close to 100 million a year kind of money.
Didn’t see Harper or Child Poverty in your post….slipping
We all forget how we come to enjoy our standard of living, and so many of us forget and are willing to bite off the hand that feeds us.
Were not killing the earth, were just killing our selves.
Time to send in a drone to see how much repair and cleanup is being done.
Posted by: oldman1 on August 12 2014 9:34 AM
Time to send in a drone to see how much repair and cleanup is being done.
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I nominate peeps.
I don’t care how much cleanup is done to the water or land in this area.I wouldn’t drink the water or eat any of the fish for a very long time,no matter what conclusion the experts come too.
Anybody else concerned that despite all the inspections, this disaster still happened?
slinky-you seem to have a lot of inside imformation-You are not one of the local MPs are you or a close relative? And by the way it is now 2014 which you have been reminded of many times before on this site.
Yes oldman it is 2014, and you can see they did more than just annual inspections in 2013 than in 1995-2001 but for some reason people think they did less. People are blaming the wrong party for industry policing themselves, even the leader of the party that set it up that way is blaming it on the current party. Unless there is a reason to change the system, which there hasn’t by the way, it remains as is. There may be movement in the caucus now to re-regulate the industry but with 14 years of non issue there was no reason to.
So recap – if you don’t like deregulation all of the sudden now that there was an accident and you want to blame someone, blame those who deregulated the industry, Pretty simple. But NDP supporters do like to find ways to blame the Liberal party
If the NDP was in power, the system would still be deregulated, and they would still try to blame the Liberals for the tragedy
I thought mine inspections had fallen by 50% since 2001. Also, hadn’t the mine been out of compliance, warned by employees, government, and outside consultants?
Co.s need to be held accountable when they are slipping. Otherwise, you will have a large tragedy and the regs will become over the top in response to preventable trajedy.
Also, a large part of Enbridge opposition is a reflection ofthe history and attitude of the co. Itself.
Yes govsux, mine inspections have fallen off. What they media doesn’t want you to know is most of the ‘fallen off’ inspections are for gravel pits, not open pit or shaft mines. The last inspection found the pond level high, that was corrected before the rupture. The engineering firm did not bid on the tender due to the pond being out of their spec. Internal employees and the engineering firm may have warned them and that is why there is a call by the minister that anyone with info to contact them. If it does turn out the company did not listen to warnings then the company will be in doo doo. There is rumor that the First Nations were involved in the warning and if so why did they not take this to the minister or chief inspector or even any of the aides?
People are also calling for shareholders heads. Little do they know is a grandmother can have shares in a mine, its a publicly traded company, anyone can buy shares at any time. There is a difference between the CEO, board, and shareholders but people seem to get that all mixed up.
Unless there is a reason to change the system, which there hasn’t by the way, it remains as is. There may be movement in the caucus now to re-regulate the industry but with 14 years of non issue there was no reason to.
slinky there needs to be maintenance and upkeep and obviously it never occurred.
slinky- I should of said preventative maintenance. This is why we take our car in every once in a while for inspections and repairs so we don’t have problems in the future.
No one has any idea what happened yet so kind of early to lay blame. Think the doom and gloomers would have learnt something by now. Wait for the facts before jumping up and down and having a tantrum.
What do you mean no one has any idea what happened. I have a damn good idea and I am sure I am right.
axman states: “We get it peeps, you want us all to go back to living in caves and foraging for food.”
Another “all or nothing” comment response from certain individuals who comment on this site? I see a pattern developing.
slinky states; “Believe it or not there are experts that know a lot more than you or i on what to do in this situation.”
So why weren’t these “experts” around to prevent this from happening?
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