Prince George, B.C. – Officials with UNBC’s Quesnel River Research Centre at Likely are still awaiting results of analysis of independent water and sediment samples taken following the August 4th breach of the tailings pond at the Mount Polley open pit copper and gold mine.

Dr. Philip Owens, FRBC Endowed Research Chair in Landscape Ecology, says some samples have been sent off for analysis and other samples that we’ve collected sit in our office, waiting to be sent off for analysis so we presently cannot shed any light on the situation.  There do seem to be a lot of independent assessment requirements but I don’t think anyone has really presented any conclusive information.”

However, Dr. Owens says there is an interesting development at the federally-operated Institute of Ocean Sciences near Sidney.  “They did some work, they have a device called a CTD, and they have detected a dense plume of fine sediment moving through the (Quesnel) lake, which is of interest because if that is the sediment, and we believe it is because they did a lot of the work in the Hazeltine bay area, that’s coming from the tailings spill then obviously there’s some implications there, particularly if that material was to have metals on it or other contaminants.  And we’ve collected some samples and we’re waiting to see what was on that sediment but we know there’s a plume moving through the water column.”   Dr. Owens says as the plume goes down through the lake “there’s a chance that it could settle and therefore be locked at the bottom of the lake for a period of time.”

The Cariboo Regional District’s order restricting access to the area of the tailings pond spill is not stopping people from getting in to take water and sediment samples.  Dr. Owens says “there’s a bunch of independent people including First Nations who are working with us to track those samples and we are, at the moment, collating them and then we’re trying to work out what is needed and what laboratories do we want send them to.  So the only ones we’ve sent off to date were sent to a special laboratory in Saskatchewan where we’re going to look at arsenic and see if there is arsenic in the sediment and in what form it might be.  At the moment most of the reporting is on total metals on either the sediment or in the water but different forms of, say, arsenic are bio-available or not bio-available and therefore some forms are more toxic than others.  So understanding speciation and the bio-availability of metals on the sediment in the water is just as important as total concentrations.  So that’s the level of work that we’re trying to do at the moment at the laboratory in Saskatchewan.”

 Dr. Owens says Environment Minister Mary Polak put together a large meeting via teleconference on August 15th to try to bring about a coherent understanding of how the many parties involved in this matter can work together. The session included representatives from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, MOE, the mine, Imperial Metals, several First Nations bands and tribal councils and the Upper Fraser Fisheries Alliance.  “The idea was to try to have a much broader research program to try and identify what we have and what we’re doing so there’s not too much overlap and also with the idea that we’ll potentially each inform the other as to what we’re doing and what we’re finding.”

Dr. Owens says while he sees the benefits of the minister’s effort he also believes it is imperative that work be done totally independent of the government.  “I think the university contingent will sit down and look at whether this is of benefit or whether it might taint the findings we get because if we have this important information that somehow is tainted by an association with somebody who is not deemed to be independent then we might lose our credibility.  So we’re going to have to think about it very carefully.  I’m sure we want to have one foot in that broader circle but it may be we keep another foot outside to enable us to have that degree of independence.”

The research chair says there was a positive development in the wake of the teleconference discussion.  He requested some of the actual tailings material from the mine and that was supplied to him.  However he says from a scientist’s  point of view he would like to have much more access to the spill area to take more samples.  “But I assume that is something that we’re going to have to talk to the mine about to ensure that if we were to go in it would be safe and that we weren’t going to risk any harm to any of our university scientists.”

Dr. Owens says access to areas of possibly higher levels of contamination is still a problem, although some people are refusing to be stopped.  “I had some students out the other day and supposedly there’s a rope in the (Quesnel) lake cordoning off getting access to close to the delta area (where Hazeltine Creek discharges into Quesnel Lake).  And while these students didn’t feel it was appropriate to go beyond it, they did say that there were a lot of people in several boats going under the rope and going into that area and collecting some form of samples.  So there are people who are doing that.”