Post-Mount Polley tailings dam safety in transboundary British Columbia /

The dam collapse sent 24 million cubic meters of mining waste into a stream below the operation, virtually bulldozing the stream from 5 meters to 100 meters in width, and depositing most of the waste into Quesnel Lake, a large salmon spawning glacial lake in the watershed below the tailings dam. [...] BC Mines Minister, Bill Bennett, has pledged that he will implement all recommendations from the Expert Panel: “It is my goal that BC’s regulatory regime for health and safety on mine sites is the best in the world and we will get there by implementing all of the recommendations of the independent expert panel and the chief inspector of mines.”4 To date, a core recommendation of the Mount Polley e [...] Following the breach of the tailings storage facility at Mount Polley, the British Columbia Ministry of Energy and Mines, the Williams Lake Indian Band, and the Soda Creek Indian Band, established an independent expert investigation and review panel (the Expert Panel) to investigate and report on that breach. [...] The ore body is a copper porphyry, and the operating company is the same company that owns the Mount Polley mine. [...] If the mine and operating company were of significant importance to the province, which the decision to issue the operating permit strongly suggests, then the province could have provided enough funding, perhaps through loans, to keep the company solvent while the necessary changes to provide long-term safety were implemented.