An Environmental Disaster That Couldn't Happen

guyser · August 7, 2014

"It'll never happen"

Rinse and repeat. Only suckers beleive that shite.

What bothers me is that initial reports indicate that the cost of cleanup will be more than the worth of the company responsible. It would help if any company developing these resources had to put into escrow the amount of money that would cover cleanup costs under the worst possible scenario but I guess there is no limit to the worst possible scenario.

I broached on this very subject in another thread, these f'in companies need to be made to put up a Bond for the many millions of dollars that they can destroy vis a vis the environment.

As it is, the public has to pick up the bill once the numbers reach the sky. All the while the co walks free .

Its easy to do, generates revenue and gives some comfort to the public that monies are available to remedy the " It'll never happen" scenarios that we all know 'Happen all the time "

The_Squid · August 7, 2014

It is criminal that the federal and provincial governments don't make companies properly dispose of their pollutants from their industry and leave it to taxpayers, usually years later, to pay the true costs of the industry.

There is no reason that everything in a "tailings pond" shouldn't be properly disposed of at the time, not left there to eventually leach into our water systems, or cause a catastrophe in this case.

A good example is gas stations. They pollute valuable land when they get closed down and the company is not responsible for the proper cleanup of that site. It is left empty and polluted. Unusable. This should not be allowed to happen.

WestCoastRunner · August 7, 2014

Another issue with this is that this company employs (well, not any longer) hundreds of people in the Likely area. These employees were hesitant to blow the whistle on their employer for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, when everyone turns a blind eye, and this happens, it affects thousands of people both in the fishing and tourism industry. And not to mention property values in that area.

guyser · August 7, 2014

It is criminal that the federal and provincial governments don't make companies properly dispose of their pollutants from their industry and leave it to taxpayers, usually years later, to pay the true costs of the industry.

The legacy of old practices haunts us.

A good example is gas stations. They pollute valuable land when they get closed down and the company is not responsible for the proper cleanup of that site. It is left empty and polluted. Unusable. This should not be allowed to happen.

Becuase there inst a law compelling anyone to do so, unless imminent harm to the public is likely.

Generally its up to the new user to get the permits, and then the action starts.

Mighty AC · August 8, 2014

There is no reason that everything in a "tailings pond" shouldn't be properly disposed of at the time, not left there to eventually leach into our water systems, or cause a catastrophe in this case.

A good example is gas stations. They pollute valuable land when they get closed down and the company is not responsible for the proper cleanup of that site. It is left empty and polluted. Unusable. This should not be allowed to happen.

What are you an effn' hippie like Trudeau? Companies need to make money and if that means destroying the land, air and water then that's what they need to do. Good thing we've got a man like Harper at the helm that realizes the value in environmental plunder for short term gain. What you hippies have to understand is long environmental stewardship may be profitable long term and sound good to book learnin' types but business men (glass ceiling) and politicians deal in quarters and 4 year mandates. Screw anything longer the 8 to 10 years out because it's pension collecting time then anyway.

P.S. Stephan Dion is not a leader.

eyeball · August 8, 2014

Shady actually has a very relevant point here.

This is on the company, of course, but it's also on the BC government.

Shady is a mile wide of the mark.

Fundamentally this is on Canadians, for putting up with piss poor governance and having no real desire to do anything about it. It should be no surprise to anyone who Canada's junior governments take their cue from.

One more reason why it's Canadians who need the biggest smack upside the head.

Mighty AC · August 8, 2014

One more reason why it's Canadians who need the biggest smack upside the head.

If it would help remove the Lego haired, petro puppet we call our PM, I would gladly line up to receive some head trauma....and I don't line up for anything.

TimG · August 8, 2014

If the government won't enforce the findings of its own regulatory arm, then the system is busted. The buck has to stop somewhere, and that should be somewhere in Victoria.

You hit the nail on the head. This is a depressing development since risk management procedures are effective when the government does its job. I want the minister to explain exactly why the warnings were ignored.

And yes, that should raise major questions about the Northern Gateway project. What good are their much-ballyhooed "209 conditions" if the government can't or won't enforce them?

Also true.

WestCoastRunner · August 8, 2014

I would like an independent inquiry done. No government or company officials involved.

TimG · August 8, 2014

There is no reason that everything in a "tailings pond" shouldn't be properly disposed of at the time, not left there to eventually leach into our water systems, or cause a catastrophe in this case.

Tailing ponds are a fact of mining and cannot really be avoided. If Canadians refuse to allow them then more tailing ponds will be built in third world countries with much less supervision because the ores are needed to keep our high tech society going.

That said, mining companies need to be forced to create trusts with enough money to manage the pond for their expected lifetime. These trusts should be keep legally separate from the company and cannot be touched even if the company goes under or is closed down. The BOD of the trusts should be local citizens, provincial government officials and potentially affected native groups.

WestCoastRunner · August 8, 2014

That said, mining companies need to be forced to create trusts with enough money to manage the pond for their expected lifetime. These trusts should be keep legally separate from the company and cannot be touched even if the company goes under or is closed down. The BOD of the trusts should be local citizens, provincial government officials and potentially affected native groups.

For once I agree with you Tim.

Mighty AC · August 8, 2014

That said, mining companies need to be forced to create trusts with enough money to manage the pond for their expected lifetime. These trusts should be keep legally separate from the company and cannot be touched even if the company goes under or is closed down. The BOD of the trusts should be local citizens, provincial government officials and potentially affected native groups.

That's a very good idea.

alexmac · August 8, 2014

"You can't trust government" what a shocker that is. This is a sad day for all Canadains and a wakeup call for those who believe corps. have our interest at heart . So who is to blame.....Harper...BC Liberals ? The answer is all of the above along with the people who voted for these lying forms of humans.

They all have stood in front of us all and lied again and again and again . The Harper government has gutted enviromental regs in the guise of streamlining for the "greater good of us all" The liberals here have followed suit and further gutted the regulatory system all under the words of saving us money and creating jobs. Then there are the idiots who can't read and believe everything they are told by these so called Canadians.

So there is plenty of blame to go around but the really sad part is that we the taxpayer will pay for this mess which will cost over a billion to cleanup and even then we have lost forever a part of our country. I flew here to Williams Lake yesterday and we toured the site shortly after we arrived. I know quite a few of the miners who work there and in early July they lost containment of the tailings , both feds and provincial were informed and here we are today looking at liars and a disaster which is horribly shameful for Canada especially with all the lies about how good we are to the rest of the world.

Now here is what will happen , the morons who represent us will show fire and passion about this for 2 months then it will slowly die down , the company will either sell there other property and go out of business or claim bankruptcy leaving us with the bill and the CEO and Board of Directors go home with all the cash....this has happened before just not on this scale. Remember there is an election coming so tough words with no action is coming .

So to recap we kill the lake and river , say lots of wonderful words , do nothing and at election time tell everyone how tough they were and how much they love OUR country and all without doing a thing or costing them personally any cash.

We should all be ashamed this is not what Canada is supposed to stand for but yet...here we are.

Edited August 8, 2014 by alexmac

alexmac · August 8, 2014

Tailing ponds are a fact of mining and cannot really be avoided. If Canadians refuse to allow them then more tailing ponds will be built in third world countries with much less supervision because the ores are needed to keep our high tech society going.

That said, mining companies need to be forced to create trusts with enough money to manage the pond for their expected lifetime. These trusts should be keep legally separate from the company and cannot be touched even if the company goes under or is closed down. The BOD of the trusts should be local citizens, provincial government officials and potentially affected native groups.

Nice fantasy and how would you propose to implement this , remember the oilsands in Alberta are considered mining and I am pretty sure Harper will not want to upset those rich folks that support the Conservatives with big cash.

Argus · August 9, 2014

stop making excuses and stop attempting to shift any blame/responsibility for this travesty away from the federal government... away from Harper Conservatives.

The Harper Conservatives bear no responsibility in this matter. Environmental issues which do not transcend provincial borders have always been under provincial control. That the federal government overstepped its authority for years is irrelevant. The Federal Tories did the right thing by stepping back, getting rid of the confusion, and giving the job back to the provinces. You don't need two levels of government tripping over each other to oversee environmental issues. This was the responsibility of the BC government and it failed to get the job done.

Argus · August 9, 2014

Tailing ponds are a fact of mining and cannot really be avoided. If Canadians refuse to allow them then more tailing ponds will be built in third world countries with much less supervision because the ores are needed to keep our high tech society going.

That said, mining companies need to be forced to create trusts with enough money to manage the pond for their expected lifetime. These trusts should be keep legally separate from the company and cannot be touched even if the company goes under or is closed down. The BOD of the trusts should be local citizens, provincial government officials and potentially affected native groups.

This is simply an issue of poor management at the company involved, from the board of directors on down. The first cost estimate I saw for a cleanup said it could exceed $200 million, which is a third the value of the company. The stock price of Imperial Metals dropped like a rock after the announcement, losing about 40% of its value. I would assume the owners of that stock will be after the scalps of all involved at the first opportunity. I think it will eventually emerge that the CEO was trying to maximize profits in order to maximize his bonus, and that meant ignoring the need to reinforce the tailings pond.

Argus · August 9, 2014

Nice fantasy and how would you propose to implement this , remember the oilsands in Alberta are considered mining and I am pretty sure Harper will not want to upset those rich folks that support the Conservatives with big cash.

In point of fact the VAST majority of support from "rich folks" over the years has been directed at the Liberal Party of Canada.

I might add that the ability of 'rich folks' to influence politicians with 'big cash' has been a thing of the past for quite some time now.

Edited August 9, 2014 by Argus

TimG · August 10, 2014

This is simply an issue of poor management at the company involved, from the board of directors on down.

Poor corporate management happens - we need multiple layers of defense. Corporate liability/responsibility is the first defense (i.e. it is in the economic interest of companies to manage these sites properly). The next line are regulators that oversee the work and make sure deficiencies are addressed. In this case it appears the BC government failed to maintain the second line of defense as a result we have a large spill that needs clean up.

eyeball · August 10, 2014

The Harper Conservatives bear no responsibility in this matter. Environmental issues which do not transcend provincial borders have always been under provincial control.

Environmental issues that affect salmon are most certainly Ottawa's responsibility.

WestCoastRunner · August 10, 2014

More information is coming available regarding this tailing pond. The original engineers withdrew from the project in 2011 after giving warnings to the company that the pond was getting too large for the original specifications. It is just a disaster how this evolved to the point where we are at today. The more we hear about it, the less we can trust resource companies and the government to put our province before the almighty dollar.

Ex-engineers warned the ponds were getting too large

WestCoastRunner · August 10, 2014

Environmental issues that affect salmon are most certainly Ottawa's responsibility.

Absolutely!

On Guard for Thee · August 10, 2014

The Harper Conservatives bear no responsibility in this matter. Environmental issues which do not transcend provincial borders have always been under provincial control. That the federal government overstepped its authority for years is irrelevant. The Federal Tories did the right thing by stepping back, getting rid of the confusion, and giving the job back to the provinces. You don't need two levels of government tripping over each other to oversee environmental issues. This was the responsibility of the BC government and it failed to get the job done.

Perhaps you fail to understand that fisheries is a federal responsibility? We have all seen how Harper want's to dump any responsibility he can onto the provinces, along with the costs so he can gut them while he makes himself like a good fiscal manager. If you buy that crap I have a good used car I'd like to show you.

TimG · August 10, 2014

Perhaps you fail to understand that fisheries is a federal responsibility?

What we need is an independent investigation that looks at the various governments and determines who is responsible for forcing companies to address warnings. Pointing fingers for partisan gain is why governments get into these messes in the first place.

As I said before: the primary failure at this point appears to be the regulators that found issues but were not able to or choose not to force companies to address concerns. There are many possible reasons for this failure - some understandable - some inexcusable. We need an impartial investigation to find the answers and make sure this does not happen again.

WestCoastRunner · August 10, 2014

. We need an impartial investigation to find the answers and make sure this does not happen again.

I absolutely agree but I am not sure this will happen. The more I hear about Christie taking these 'contributions' from the major shareholder of this company, the more sickening this whole fiasco sounds.

Argus · August 10, 2014

Perhaps you fail to understand that fisheries is a federal responsibility? We have all seen how Harper want's to dump any responsibility he can onto the provinces, along with the costs so he can gut them while he makes himself like a good fiscal manager. If you buy that crap I have a good used car I'd like to show you.

Fisheries ministries do not oversee mines. This only became a fisheries issue because the fines are too low and no individuals are held personally responsible when regulatory agencies issue orders. This allows some companies to simply ignore such orders for long periods of time. The fines need to be increased for defaulters, and company CEOs need to spend some time in jail when they don't see those orders are followed. For example, $1000 fine for an event and an order to fix it, which grows to a $1 million dollar fine if it's not fixed immediately, then a $10 million, then $100 million fine as time passes (and not a lot of time either). For too long, companies have been able to pretend regulatory fines are simply a cost of doing business and obey warnings in their own good time.