"Through research and extensive environmental monitoring, Imperial strives for improvement of both its own practices and the practices of the mining community. Mount Polley develops a comprehensive environmental monitoring plan on an annual basis."
- imperialmetals.com
So, who wasn't walking the talk in August when Imperial Metals' Mount Polley tailings pond breached and allowed millions of cubic metres of mine wastewater and debris to cascade into Hazeltine Creek and on into nearby Quesnel Lake?
Did the breach occur because Imperial paid insufficient attention to earlier engineering cautions and more recent employee warnings? Did provincial government inspections fail to recognize the portent of a May 2014 event at the pond?
The entire provincial mining industry wants the answers due on Jan. 31, when provincially appointed independent experts are expected to release the results of their investigation into the disaster.
Meantime, on Aug. 18, the provincial chief inspector of mines ordered companies to conduct a dam safety inspection of 98 tailings ponds at "60 operating and closed" mines in the province to be carried out by "an independent, qualified, third-party professional engineer not associated with the facility."
Collaterally damaged by these developments, Pacific Booker Minerals was blindsided by an Aug. 19 notice from environment minister Mary Polak that she had suspended the environmental assessment of the company's Morrison Copper/Gold project. The ministry did so "pending outcome of the Independent Expert Engineering Investigation and Review Panel in relation to the tailings dam breach at the Mt. Polley mine."
Pacific Booker Minerals' application had been prepared and signed off by Harvey McLeod, a professional engineer the Association for Mineral Exploration British Columbia calls a "leader in integrating socioenvironmental responsibility with the engineered aspects of tailings and waste rock."
Despite that, and regardless of the fact that the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office had concluded the proposal showed no significant adverse effects, Minister of Energy and Mines Bill Bennett said the action was taken because panel findings on the Mount Polley breach might point to the need for design changes before the project could be approved.
Bennett's reasoning is understandable but the timing could not have been worse because the decision on its muchdelayed application had been completed and was due out that day. Any additional requirements could have been accommodated during the normal phase of project design.
Or as Booker director and chief operating officer Erik Tornquist told me last week, "EAC s (environmental assessment certificates) are conditional certificates that allow a project to move to the next step; companies still need to have project designs approved and permits are still required for every phase of the project.
"Pacific Booker Minerals is not yet an operating company, so it doesn't have a tailings dam; nor does it have a detailed tailings-dam design, since it has not yet begun the engineering phase of the project."
According to information received from the environment ministry, Booker's "is the only assessment suspended pending the outcome of the work undertaken by the Independent Expert Engineering Investigation and Review Panel."
Before continuing, we should consider some of the facts presented in professional services firm PwC's 2013 annual report Digging Deep: The mining industry in British Columbia.
In 2013, the industry paid government and government agencies $511 million - equating to around 27 per cent of net earnings and an increase of $7 million over 2012. There were 10,720 people working directly in the industry that year, at an average salary and benefits of $114,600.
Bennett estimated direct and indirect jobs at over 30,000 and, more recently, the industry's Aboriginal Mentoring and Training Association announced it had just placed its 1,000th graduate in a well-paid job.
Back to Pacific Booker: The company began the pre-application exploration and testing stage of the environmental assessment process in 2003 and Booker's formal dance with government ministries began in 2005. Since that time, the music has often been discordant and the government choreography has changed with the winds.
In 2011, Steve Thomson — minister of forests, lands and natural resource operations — sought the advice of an outside consultant who spent a mere two weeks reviewing Booker's 17,000-page certificate application before issuing a negative opinion.
When the province refused to issue an environmental assessment certificate for the proposed Morrison mine project, the company launched a B.C. Supreme Court lawsuit on Feb.13, 2013. Reminiscent of more recent court findings in the teachers' dispute, on Dec. 8, 2013 B.C. Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Affleck struck down the government's Sept. 2012 rejection of Booker's $2-billion proposal saying "the ministers' decision" to refuse the certificate "failed to comport with the requirements of procedural fairness."
In other words, the government had failed to deal in good faith; quelle surprise!
We all were devastated by the August Mount Polley tailings pond breach. But the PwC report shows that, much as we deplore the strip-it-and-run mining activities of the 19th and early 20th centuries, we'd be beyond foolish to suggest that the mining industry just disappear and leave us to our undisturbed environment. What we should do instead is demand that our governments - free of financial and political bias and conflicts of interest - carry out their responsibilities to establish, monitor and enforce workable industry standards to the nth degree.
If we and they would only do that, the apparently avoidable Mount Polley devastation will mark a turning point to a better future for the mining industry, in British Columbia and around the world.
