B.C. New Democrats say citizens living near the Mount Polley disaster are facing fall rains and winter setting in without even knowing what the plans are for the massive cleanup effort that is needed
“The scale is hard to imagine,” wrote Peter Moskowitz at Vice.com, “…gray sludge, several feet deep, gushing with the force of a fire hose through streams and forest—coating everything in its path with ashy gunk. What happened on [August 4, 2014] might have been one of North America’s worst environmental disasters in decades, yet the news barely made it past the Canadian border.”
A breach in the Mount Polley mine tailings dam released water and mine tailings into pristine Quesnel Lake. The spill has been called one of the biggest environmental disasters in modern Canadian history. But now, it seems, just over a month later, that news about Mount Polley is barely making it to British Columbians, let alone any farther.
“Premier Christy Clark and the B.C. Liberals briefly swooped into Likely several days after the tailings pond failure assuring the town everything was all right, but then disappeared as the bad news rolled in,” said New Democrat leader John Horgan on September 4, 2014.
“It’s one month later, and the people in these communities are living day to day with news of water advisories, many of them out of work at the mine, and wondering where their government is,” Horgan added. “They’re looking ahead to fall rains and winter setting in without even knowing what the plan is for the massive cleanup effort.”
“It’s an environmental disaster. It’s huge,” said Chief Ann Louie of the Williams Lake Indian Band, whose members live in the Cariboo region and use the land for hunting and fishing. “The spill has gone down Hazeltine Creek, which was 1.5 meters wide and is [now] 150 meters wide… The damage done to that area…it’ll never come back. This will affect our First Nations for years and years.” –Vice.com
A sign of things to come?
Environmentalists say that “tailings ponds” are disasters in the making, reports Vice’s Peter Moskovitz, and they point to the Mount Polley spill as proof:
While [the Mount Polley] incident was notable for its size, Canadian environmentalists and indigenous activists say it may be a sign of things to come for the country, and perhaps the rest of the world as well, as mining for everything from rare earth metals to coal increases globally. —Peter Moskovitz, Vice.com
Two NDP MLAs—energy and mines spokesperson MLA Norm Macdonald and environment spokesperson Spencer Chandra Herbert—toured the area impacted by the Mount Polley Mine breach in early September and said government has the responsibility to make sure mine tailing storage facilities are built, managed and maintained properly.
As New Democratic Party Leader John Horgan prepared for his second visit to Likely, B.C. (a town in the Mount Polley area), he told The Globe and Mail that “Mount Polley will become a symbol of what is wrong with our environmental processes and our enforcement and compliance and it will have a debilitating impact on investment. The government has tried to diminish this catastrophic event and cross their fingers that another won’t happen.”
Experts have warned, time and again
Experts have warned, time and again, that provincial budget cuts to environmental regulation could result in a catastrophe, observed The Globe and Mail’s Justine Hunter, in her article “Mount Polley disaster undermines public trust.”
British Columbia’s environment minister Mary Polak told The Globe and Mail that “To date there is no evidence that cutbacks have impacted on inspections and monitoring at Mount Polley. Having said that, it is one of the questions we want answered.”
We speak with New Democratic Party environment critic Spencer Chandra Herbert and with Skeed Borkowski, owner/operator (with wife Shannon Borkowski) of Northern Lights Lodge on Quesnel Lake.
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