More visits by government inspectors would not likely have prevented the Mount Polley tailings dam collapse last summer 鈥� the fatal flaw was too deeply hidden 鈥� but more inspections and government vigilance over the mining industry, guided by lessons from Mount Polley, are certainly in order.
On Aug. 4, 2014, the tailings dam at Imperial Metals鈥� Mount Polley gold and copper mine near Williams Lake burst, releasing millions of tonnes of water and mining sludge into nearby lakes and streams.
A panel of experts appointed to review the incident released its report last week, calling the breach an environmental catastrophe that could have been prevented. The wall of the dam collapsed, said the experts, because it had been built on unstable ground, rather than on solid rock.
This was a feature no amount of after-the-fact inspection could have revealed. The dam was built on an underlying deposit of glacial till that had never been properly mapped, and which could not support the weight of the growing dam.
But there were certainly signs all was not right with the dam.
The growth of the dam was not guided by a long-term plan, wrote the experts 鈥� Norbert Morgenstern, Dirk van Zyl and Stephen Vick 鈥� and was 鈥渕ore reactive than anticipatory.鈥�
鈥淭he same problem was apparent in production and scheduling for mine waste used in dam construction,鈥� said the report. 鈥淭he design was caught between the rising water and the mine plan, between the imperative of raising the dam and the scarcity of materials for building it.
鈥淪omething had to give, and the result was oversteepened dam slopes, deferred buttressing and the seemingly ad hoc nature of dam expansion that so often ended up constructing something different from what had originally been designed.鈥�
A few months before the collapse, an environmental consultant, hired by Imperial Metals and nearby First Nations to review the company鈥檚 plans to treat and release water as part of the province鈥檚 effluent-release permitting process, had warned the pond was growing too fast to be sustainable.
鈥淢ore water was coming in over the year than they could deal with,鈥� said Brian Olding. 鈥淭hey just kept building the walls up higher and higher every year and it got to the point where that was untenable.鈥�
鈥淚 requested a structural engineering company be involved, and that was nixed. They did not want to deal with that problem at that time.鈥�
The panel called for changes in the way tailings and water are stored and handled, methods that would provide 鈥渢he kind of fail-safe redundancy that prevents releases, no matter what.鈥�
These and other findings point to need for government oversight ahead of the fact, not after disasters happen.
A few days after the breach, Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett said the incident was a serious problem, but not the environmental disaster others were calling it.
Environment Minister Mary Polak had a different take on it in November as she discussed cleanup efforts, expected to cost more than $200 million. 鈥淭he scale of the initial disaster is tremendous,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e are at the very beginnings of this. It is going to take a long time.鈥�
Last week at Roundup 2015, the annual mineral exploration conference in Vancouver, Premier Christy Clark promised to increase funding for the Ministry of Mines and Energy by $10 million 鈥渟o that we have more boots on the ground, performing more inspections.鈥�
But at the same time, she said the additional funding would help speed up the mine-permitting process.
The mining industry is important to sa国际传媒鈥檚 economy, but let鈥檚 hope efforts to ensure environmental safety come ahead of the zeal to fast-track mine development.
