A massive tailings dam rupture at a mine off the upper Fraser River, which occurred Monday on British Columbia Day, is being likened to Alaska’s Exxon Valdez tanker grounding, as a wide-ranging disaster preventable had there been competent oversight.
The rupture at the Mount Polley Mine released 10 million cubic meters of water, and 4.5 million cubic meters of toxic silt, into nearby Polley Lake. The lake in turn drains into the larger Quesnel Lake, close to one of the Fraser River’s major sockeye salmon spawning grounds.
“This is devastation,” Joe Alphonse of the Tsihqot’in Tribal Council said in a statement.
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“The frightening fact is both environmental disasters could have been prevented by vigorous government oversight by an effectively resourced agency bound by robust legislative and environmental safeguards.”
The Aboriginal First Nations of Canada were given major new rights over ancestral lands in a recent Supreme Court of Canada ruling.
They have wrestled repeatedly with the B.C. provincial government. The province supported a multi-billion-dollar project, called the Taseko Prosperity Mine, that would have turned a mountain lake in the scenic Chilcotin region into a toxic tailings dump.
The Taseko project was vetoed by the Canadian federal government.
But the federal and provincial governments just gave the go-ahead to a $5.3 billion open-pit gold mine at the head of the Unuk River, an important salmon stream that runs into Alaska. The project will get “reduced federal oversight,” The Tyee news site reported, despite fierce opposition downriver in Alaska.
Big mine dam rupture: ‘British Columbia’s Exxon Valdez’ - Strange Bedfellows — Politics News
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