Mount Polley spill not an environmental disaster: mines minister
Posted August 12, 2014 7:35 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
LIKELY (NEWS1130) – The Mount Polley tailings pond breach last week may have released more than 14 million cubic meters of water and mine waste into creeks and lakes in the Cariboo, but BC’s mines minister says it is not an environmental disaster.
Bill Bennett has compared the dam collapse and resulting tailing pond spill to the “thousands” of avalanches that happen every year across the province and told the Vancouver Sun his assertions should be proven in the coming weeks.
Speaking on News1130, Bennett says the preliminary environmental testing has been “pretty good,” with samples from Quesnel and Polley Lake meeting all national and provincial specifications for drinking water.
“We know what was in the tailings sand and we are not too, too concerned about that at this stage, although we have to do a lot more testing. We know that the water in the tailings pond that went down the creek into the lake was very close to drinking quality. There was one thing that was out of whack, in terms of drinking quality,” he told the News1130 Evening Show.
“We have tested the lake six or seven days in a row and our samples are coming back quite positive so, to me, what we need to do is really focus on clean-up and investigating this accident, bringing some independent oversight into it, and finding out what happened.”
Bennett promises to give more details on the investigation later this week.
“We have to put together an investigation that passes the ‘smell test’ with the public, make sure there’s enough independent oversight with it, and then also to do an inspection of all of the tailings dams in this province so that the public has some confidence in what we are doing.”
Many people in and around the town of Likely and the Cariboo region are worried about the long-term environmental effects of the collapse and spill. About the 200 or so homes along the Quesnel River are still under a drinking water ban as the Interior Health Authority continues to review test results.
Bennett has said the tailngs pond breach may be a geotechnical and political disaster, but that has to be separated from the environmental effects.
