A Decade Later, Imperial Metals Faces Consequences for the Mount Polley Disaster

A decade after one of Canada’s worst mining disasters resulted in the dumping of billions of litres of toxic waste into the Fraser watershed, Vancouver-based mining company Imperial Metals has been charged under the federal Fisheries Act.

Imperial Metals, its subsidiary Mount Polley Mining Corp. and engineering firm Wood Canada Ltd. face 15 charges under sections of the federal Fisheries Act that prohibit damage to fish habitat, according to an announcement posted today to social media by the B.C. Conservation Officer Service, Environment and Climate Change Canada and Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

According to the statement, a joint investigation by those three agencies resulted in B.C. prosecutors proceeding with the charges. Charges under the federal Fisheries Act are processed through the B.C. Supreme Court.

The first court appearance is scheduled for Dec. 18 in Vancouver.

The tailings storage facility at Mount Polley mine, an open-pit copper and gold mine located about 50 kilometres northeast of Williams Lake, failed on Aug. 4, 2014, sending nearly 25 million cubic metres of mine waste into Hazeltine Creek, which flows into the west arm of Quesnel Lake.

Other than a $9,000 fine related to failures in addressing subsequent water treatment issues, Imperial Metals has, until now, faced few consequences following the disaster.

The company posted their own statement Monday, saying it had received an indictment outlining the charges earlier that day.

“As this matter is before the courts, the company does not intend to make further public statements,” the statement reads, in part.

‘I had almost given up hope’

For local resident Doug Watt, the news has been a long time coming. He was at home the morning the Mount Polley tailings dam burst, and could hear the roar of water seven kilometres away.

“It’s a little bit of a relief to know that they're finally going to be held responsible,” he said after hearing about the charges. “I had almost given up hope.”

The biggest concern for local residents, Watt said, is the deterioration of Quesnel Lake. He describes cloudy water, slimy shorelines and clogged filtration systems 10 years after the breach, particularly during spring and fall when heavy metals in the lake bottom sediment are overturned.

His household no longer drinks the lake water, Watt added.

While Imperial Metals temporarily halted Mount Polley’s production following the breach, the mine returned to partial operations a year later and became fully operational in 2016, after the province issued the company a temporary discharge permit.

Though the tailings dam has since been repaired, the company has continued to discharge wastewater into Quesnel Lake.

The mine underwent a temporary curtailment in 2019 as a result of low copper prices but has been fully operational since 2022.

While its wastewater permit requires the company to use a treatment system that removes suspended solids from the tailings discharge, “they don’t do anything for the chemicals, because they can rely on the dilution once it hits the lake,” Watt said.

“University of Northern B.C. research has shown that [the lake] continues to be negatively impacted,” Watt said. “The chemicals that are in the water, nutrients like phosphorus and nitrates and the levels of copper and selenium, all just wash down into the lake.”

B.C. has continued to extend the mine’s operations.

In 2022, Imperial Metals applied for a provincial permit that would allow it to continue discharging wastewater into Quesnel Lake until 2025. That permit was approved in December 2022.

‘I'm not sure why it took so long’

Nikki Skuce, the director of Northern Confluence and co-chair of the BC Mining Law Reform Network, said the charges are long overdue.

“All the company's done is gotten permits to pollute Quesnel Lake,” she said. She added that the decade-long timeframe is similar to a recent $60 million fine issued to another Vancouver mining company, Teck Resources, for depositing unsafe levels of selenium into fish-bearing streams in southeast B.C.

“It seemed to me such an obvious one,” Skuce said about the Mount Polley disaster. “How hard is it to prove that the deleterious substance was discharged into a fish bearing water body? I'm not sure why it took so long.”

Skuce called it “egregious” that Mount Polley was permitted to resume operations, including its permit to continue depositing wastewater into Quesnel Lake, “without facing any accountability.”

“It was considered the largest environmental mining disaster in Canada,” Skuce said. “I hope that it provides some justice and some relief to the people who are so impacted by this disaster, who have lost access to clean drinking water, who no longer fish in certain areas.”

B.C. has missed its own window to file charges against the mining company.

In 2017, when the statute of limitations expired provincially, then-environment minister George Heyman said an investigation into the tailings disaster would continue and that federal charges under the Fisheries Act remained a possibility.

Days later, Bev Sellars, who was acting chief of Xatśūll First Nation at the time of the tailings dam collapse, filed a private prosecution against the company on behalf of a group called First Nations Women Advocating for Responsible Mining. The 15 charges were filed in Vancouver provincial court under B.C.’s Environmental Management Act and the Mines Act.

Without warning, provincial prosecutors stayed the charges the night before court proceedings were scheduled to get underway, Sellars said.

It left her with little hope there would ever be consequences.

“I was sure they were going to get off with a slap on the wrist, if they even got that,” Sellars told The Tyee this week, adding that she was surprised by the news of Fisheries Act charges.

“I'm glad that they are being charged,” she said. “I’m surprised it took 10 years. In the meantime, they’re dumping right into Quesnel Lake and that’s a crime, to me.”

Sellars called on the provincial government to give greater consideration to the combined impacts of various industrial developments on the landscape.

A report by B.C.’s auditor general earlier this year found the province is not adequately prepared to deal with serious hazardous spills. In accepting the report’s nine recommendations, Heyman cited Mount Polley as an opportunity to learn and make changes.