Today's News

December 14, 2005: Mine tailings may dump into Ootsa

B.C.

 

Mine tailings may dump into Ootsa

 

By Allan Wishart

Burns Lake Lakes District News

Dec 14 2005

Mike Robertson says the position of the Cheslatta Carrier Nation is clear when it comes to Tahtsa Reach.

"We are not going to sacrifice our whole lake system for two years of a dying mine," says the senior policy advisor with the Nation, on the south side of Francois Lake.

Robertson was reacting to news of an application by Huckleberry Mines to discharge tailings ponds in Tahtsa Reach, part of Ootsa Lake.

"I challenge them to drink the water or take a bath in it," Robertson says. "The water from the lake goes directly to the Pacific Ocean through natural tunnels, and also ends up in the Nechako and Fraser rivers."

While Robertson and other people in the region are unhappy with the permit application in general, they are also upset there was apparently no notification given to people who might be affected by the application.

"Someone clipped an ad from the Houston Today newspaper," says Regional District of Bulkley-Nechako director for the area Eileen Benedict. "They apparently don't realize the service area for people there is Burns Lake."

While the ad gave a 30-day deadline for responding to the application, Jeanien Carmody-Fallows, an environmental protection officer with the Ministry of Environment, says Cheslatta Carrier Nation doesn't need to worry about that.

"They are outside that particular means of response. They will still be given an opportunity to respond."

Carmody-Fallows says her department sent a letter to the Cheslatta Carrier Nation asking for comments on the application, but the letter, Robertson says, was never received.

"We are going to act as a conduit between Huckleberry and the First Nations in the affected area," Carmody-Fallows says. "We want to give Cheslatta time to look at the technical assessment of the permit, then ask Huckleberry to look at their concerns."

Robertson feels the concerns Cheslatta has are too complex to be dealt with that way.

"We are sending a letter to the Ministry of Environment. We want a full environmental assessment of this application.

"This is a complete change of plans for the tailings. It was a self-contained operation."

Under the application, Huckleberry would discharge five million cubic metres of mine water from the tailings impoundment at the mine into Tahtsa Reach. On average, the mine will discharge 13,000 cubic metres a day, with a maximum of 20,000. While the permit application notes all the characteristics of the proposed discharge are better than the parameters listed on its current permit, Robertson isn't sure how the new discharge will be controlled.

"Nobody will be out there monitoring the site 24 hours a day."

Benedict says it's important for residents to know what's going on in the area.

"Just the idea of dumping tailings into fresh water is frightening."

She says she and other directors will be raising their concerns at the next regional district meeting, on Jan. 13.

Wes Bohmer lives at Takysie Lake and does a lot of fishing on Ootsa Lake.

"Where they're putting this discharge into the lake," he says, "is, I think, about 200 metres from a spawning ground.

"My concern is they want to put about 3.4 million gallons in there every day. Even though some of the levels of things like copper or mercury are small, that's still a lot of discharge."

One of the parameters the discharge has to meet is how well rainbow trout can survive in it. The acceptable limit is having half of them survive 96 hours in a 100 per cent concentration of the discharge.

"When it's that close to a spawning ground," Bohmer says, "it's not just having that many die. What does it mean to the fish on their way to spawn?"

"In our mind, we have not been formally consulted," Robertson says. "Huckleberry failed to go through the consultation process.

"The name we're giving the project is Huckleberry Soup, and we don't have an appetite for Huckleberry Soup."

 

http://web.bcnewsgroup.com/portals-code/list.cgi?cat=23&paper=5&id=554323

 

 

Topic(s): Fist Nations News, mining news, Poor Performers, Toxics and Health News, Water News

Posted By EcoBC

RSS
 
More Today's News Articles



Website By: Pencilneck Software Corp. Design by: Brad Hornick Communications