The metaphorical dust is still settling on the Mount Polley mine tailings pond breach earlier this month.
Some 10 million cubic metres of waste water – plus another four million cubic metres of sediment – poured out from the broken dam wall into Hazeltine Creek, ripping a swath of broken trees along the way to Quesnel Lake and forcing a temporary drinking water ban in the region.
The how and why is all still up in the air as engineers, the mining company, staffers and hordes of experts and politicians weigh in (and, sometimes, point fingers) on how such a thing occurred in the first place.
The bigger question, perhaps, is: how likely is this to happen again, elsewhere? And what can we do about it? The priority must now be to figure out (quickly) the cause, and root out any similar problems at other such facilities before the same thing happens again – and potentially causes worse environmental damage or loss of life.
So we have to give kudos to the government after hearing today’s announcement from Minister of Energy and Mines Bill Bennett that two reviews will be carried out in response to the dam failure: first, that three independent experts will investigate the dam breach at Mount Polley mine and, second, that all mines with tailings dams will be required to have independent experts carry out reviews of their facilities and submit their findings to the government.
Media reports over the last week have noted that routine inspections at mines in B.C. are significantly lower than they were in 2001, the year the B.C. Liberals won a landslide election.
We hope that while all these independent investigations on Mount Polley and other mines are being carried out, Victoria takes a moment to “investigate” itself and reconsider the frequency of inspections it carries out. Another dam failure could be a massive environmental disaster, and deadly to boot. But not working hard enough right now to prevent such a thing will surely prove to be a political disaster, too.
