By Scott Schuyler and  Rob Edward
Special to The Times

Six years ago this month, British Columbia suffered an environmental catastrophe when a dam at the Mount Polley Mine collapsed, spilling more than a billion gallons of toxic waste into Quesnel Lake and the Fraser Watershed. The devastation impacted community drinking water, salmon spawning grounds and faith in B.C.’s mining oversight. With numerous other mines in watersheds upstream of Washington rivers, we are at risk of similar tragedies unless the provincial government in Victoria ends the regulatory blank check it grants the mining industry.

The company responsible for the Mount Polley disaster, Imperial Metals, owns mineral rights in a part of the Skagit River Headwaters called the “donut hole,” unprotected land surrounded by Manning Provincial Park and other protected areas just north of the U.S.-Canada border and North Cascades National Park. Calls for termination of Imperial’s mining ambitions here have come from native leaders, elected officials, conservationists and prominent Canadian voices. Yet as the price of gold soars, the risk of another mining disaster increases.

The Skagit River, which is named after the Upper Skagit people, has been at the very center of the lives and culture of the Upper Skagit Tribe since time immemorial. It’s also the most productive salmon river flowing into Puget Sound. A mining accident in the Skagit Headwaters would harm tribal and nontribal communities, salmon and the struggling southern resident killer whales. We hope others will see the value in moving quickly to protect this sacred river and our way of life.

But the Skagit is not the only international river at risk. Copper Mountain Mine, near Princeton, B.C., has a massive tailings dam that tenuously holds toxic sludge from flowing down the Similkameen River into Washington and the Okanogan and Columbia rivers, important producers of sockeye and Chinook. The Similkameen’s water is sacred to the Lower Similkameen Indian Band, who have been unable to eat fish from the river for generations due to the legacy of mining. The mismanagement of our watersheds has led to the desecration of social, cultural, environmental and economic values that were given by the Creator from our beginning. Our Syilx Water Declaration must shape the starting point for watershed planning in the future, including mitigating threats from mining.

These are just two examples. There are dozens of existing and proposed mines just north of the border, many threatening Idaho, Montana and especially southeast Alaska, where Imperial’s Red Chris Mine puts the cherished salmon runs of the Stikine River at risk. Toxic waste from B.C. mining lines the bottom of Lake Roosevelt in northeast Washington. Montana’s Elk River is heavily polluted by upstream coal mining. Yet provincial mining regulations are much more lax than those of Washington. And as B.C.’s auditor general reported, even those lax standards are not being met.

Americans usually think of Canada as a good neighbor, but there is nothing neighborly about this. British Columbia is putting communities at risk, both its own and those downstream in the U.S. The health of our rivers, salmon and communities is jeopardized by subsidies to transnational mining corporations. This must end, and Washington’s leaders must speak up.

It is time for Victoria to modernize provincial mining regulations, bringing them to at least level with Washington’s. Most important is a requirement for full financial assurances, so that mining interests have posted enough funds to remediate any damage they cause.

It has been six years since the Mount Polley disaster, and nothing has changed. Our communities cannot wait any longer to be relieved of danger from toxic mining spills. We call on Washington’s leaders, especially Gov. Jay Inslee, to demand these actions of Premier John Horgan and his government.
​
Scott Schuyler: of Sedro-Woolley is a lifelong fisherman, tribal member and the natural resources director of the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe.

Rob Edward: of Keremeos, B.C. is a traditional knowledge keeper specialist and former chief of the Lower Similkameen Indian Band.

By
 Jacob Resneck, CoastAlaska - Juneau
 -
August 27, 2020

The KSM project’s operational phase mine site layout includes pits to access ore, rock storage, a dam and a water treatment plant provided in 2014. (KSM environmental assessment certificate application)The developer of what it promises to be one of the largest open pit projects on the continent wants more time from Canadian regulators while it seeks partners to develop its B.C. metals mine about 30 miles from the border.
The Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell mine received regulatory approval in 2014 on the condition that it break ground within five years. It’s already received a five-year extension but now the company says it may need until 2026 to find a development partner.
The gold, silver, copper and molybdenum mine has been compared to Bristol Bay’s Pebble Mine in its scale, wealth and potential environmental risk to Alaska’s communities and fisheries downstream.
Its mine waste would be held in a massive tailings pond — created by a dam more than 780 feet high — taller than the Hoover Dam about 80 miles from Wrangell.
But Frederick Olsen Jr. of the Southeast Alaska Indigenous Transboundary Commission says another extension would mean the mine’s environmental assessment would be 12 years old by the time the developer actually got started. 
“Their (environmental assessment) was already outdated because, as everybody on earth knows, they were approved before Mount Polley happened,” Olsen said. “You know, when people got a wake up call on that design flaw, a catastrophic, devastating flaw in that type of design.”
He’s referring to the Mount Polley Mine disaster in 2014. That mine’s tailings dam failed, allowing millions of tons of mine waste to spill into B.C. rivers and streams.
Officials in Alaska have been keeping tabs on B.C.’s booming mining sector in transboundary watersheds. 
“I meet at least monthly with B.C. officials, but sometimes more frequently depending on specific effort we are collaborating on at the moment,” Kyle Moselle, of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, said in a brief statement.
Moselle says his office was notified by B.C. officials and the Toronto-based developer of the proposed extension.
Representatives of Seabridge Gold did not return messages seeking comment.
​
https://www.alaskapublic.org/2020/08/27/large-open-pit-mine-developer-near-ak-border-asks-canadian-regulators-for-more-time/

Mud released by a burst tailings dam at an iron mine near Brumadinho, Brazil, killed 270 people in 2019.
 
WASHINGTON ALVES/REUTERS

Catastrophic failures raise alarm about dams containing muddy mine wastes
By Warren Cornwall Aug. 20, 2020 , 11:00 AM
Read the original publication here. 
​
The dam, a 40-meter wall of rocks and dirt, gave way without warning, unleashing a torrent of mud. Within a day, some 21 million cubic meters of gray goo and water—the tailings waste left behind by 16 years of copper and gold mining at the Mount Polley mine in western Canada—escaped from a holding pond behind the dam, buried a creek, and poured into Quesnel Lake, home to one-third of British Columbia’s legendary Fraser River sockeye salmon.

The 2014 Mount Polley disaster shocked mining engineers around the world. Many considered Canada a leader in developing rules aimed at preventing the failure of such tailings dams, and respected the mine’s owner, Imperial Metals. “That wasn’t supposed to be able to happen,” Jim Kuipers, an engineer and former tailings dam manager who now consults for environmental groups, recalls a colleague telling him.

Since then, the sense of crisis has deepened. In 2015, a tailings dam in Brazil collapsed, unleashing a mammoth mud spill that killed 19 people, contaminated 668 kilometers of river, and reached the Atlantic Ocean. In 2018, a dam failed at a major mine in Australia; luckily, a second barrier prevented disaster. Last year, a dam disintegrated at a decommissioned Brazilian iron mine, releasing a torrent that killed 270 people.

Engineers fear more catastrophes await, as the world confronts a swelling volume of muddy mine tailings, contained by more and larger dams. Some rise to nearly the height of the Eiffel Tower and hold back enough waste to fill Australia’s Sydney Harbor. “The consequences of a failure are getting much bigger,” says Priscilla Nelson, a geotechnical engineer at the Colorado School of Mines.
In response, scientists, governments, environmentalists, and miners are searching for safer ways to handle the tainted mud. Some are trying to simply inventory the world’s tailings dams—estimates of the number range from 3500 to 21,000—and identify those most at risk of failure. A few have called for a ban on one common but failure-prone design. Others are working on regulatory and management fixes. “The mining industry,” says Joseph Scalia, a geotechnical engineer at Colorado State University, “is realizing they can’t just spend as little as possible and the problem is going to go away.”

TAILINGS ARE THE TRASH of the mining world. To extract most metals, from iron to gold, miners often mix pulverized rock with water, creating a milkshake of silt and gravel. As higher quality mineral deposits run out, miners are turning to lower grade sources that generate more waste. Worldwide, the metal content of copper ore has fallen by nearly half since the mid–20th century. Extracting a single kilogram of copper can now produce 200 kilograms of sludge. The muck is often contaminated with toxic metals or minerals that produce sulfuric acid when exposed to air.

Tailings dams, unlike those built to store water or generate power, don’t earn revenue, creating an incentive for mine owners to minimize costs. Many are built piecemeal throughout the life of a mine. And the barriers are often made from a mixture of rock and the tailings themselves, rather than a more uniform and predictable material such as concrete. Those factors contribute to a failure rate that, over the past century, was more than 100 times higher than that of reservoir and power dams, according to one estimate.

Each disaster has its own constellation of causes, but some arise from seemingly trivial errors. At Mount Polley, investigators led by Norbert Morgenstern, a geotechnical engineer at the University of Alberta concluded that part of the dam was built on a weak patch of silt and clay. Exploratory boreholes drilled prior to construction were too shallow to find the problem. Builders further weakened the dam by making its walls steeper than planned, after the company ran short of rock. One night, the weight of the sludge became more than the dam could bear.

It could have been much worse. No one died. Workers ultimately repaired the dam and shoveled up much of the mud that had buried the creek. (The company says the spill didn’t cause long-term harm to the Quesnel Lake ecosystem, but some ecologists say it’s still too early to tell.)

Morgenstern, who also led the investigations into the 2015 Brazilian incident and the 2018 Australia failure, has found that faulty engineering, including inadequate scrutiny of the underlying geology, was at the heart of all but two of 15 major incidents between 1980 and 2015.

One major problem, he says, is the “normalization of deviance.” The phrase, coined after the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, describes how engineers can be lulled into accepting a series of seemingly small risks that snowball into a catastrophe.

There is an unwritten covenant that regulators and mine owners can count on engineers to design a safe tailings system, Morgenstern told a gathering of Brazilian geotechnical engineers in 2018. “That covenant,” he said, “has been broken.”

THE SEARCH IS ON for fixes. Some mining watchdogs are calling for replacing one common type of dam, called an upstream dam, and banning future use of the design. Upstream dams are built in stairlike stages, heading upstream over the accumulating tailings (see graphic, above). Part of the weight of each added step is borne by the tailings below. This approach is often the cheapest, because the tailings serve as construction material.

More than 40% of major tailings dams are the upstream design, according to a global inventory of more than 1700 dams recently launched by pension funds of Sweden and the Church of England, which have pressed the mining industry to strengthen environmental and safety measures. A study of 8000 tailings dams in China found that 95% were upstream dams. And such dams are involved in three-quarters of tailings dam failures, according to one estimate.

The problem is that tailings aren’t a predictable building material, and they are often waterlogged. The water can act like a lubricant, reducing the friction that binds an earthen dam together. Engineering flaws such as poor drainage can exacerbate the problem. In extreme cases—such as the 2019 disaster at the Brazilian iron mine—dam sections simply liquefy.

In Chile, where earthquakes make upstream dams even riskier, the government has forbidden the design since 1970. Brazil banned them in the wake of the 2019 accident, and has ordered the mothballing of all upstream dams by 2027. Worldwide, such a policy could mean the demise of thousands of mines and tailings dams (which could be replaced by dams with different designs). Although such a change might be expensive for companies, right now communities near dams are bearing the costs of cheaper construction, says Payal Sampat of Earthworks, a nonprofit group that promotes mining reforms. “That is unacceptable.”

Some experts caution against a one-size-fits-all approach. Upstream dams can perform safely, particularly in places with dry climates and few earthquakes, says David Williams, a geotechnical engineer at the University of Queensland, St. Lucia. “You can construct [an upstream dam] to be perfectly safe. You can also build it in a not so good way.”

One knowledge gap is an understanding of the forces that can suddenly turn an earthen dam into a liquid river of mud. At the Georgia Institute of Technology, geotechnical engineer Jorge Macedo is stress testing tailings in his lab to document the conditions that trigger liquefaction, particularly in silt, a little-studied material that is common in tailings used to build upstream dams.


Other researchers are looking at better ways to spot dams on the verge of failure. Moe Momayez, an engineer and geophysicist at the University of Arizona, is testing sensors on an Arizona dam that track temperature and moisture levels. Some dams are already equipped with radar or lasers that watch for worrying bulges. Momayez’s goal is to integrate streams of data in a computer system that can spot problems that might escape periodic inspections. “We have a pretty good idea how these tailing dams fail,” Momayez says. “The question is, can we predict that, can we get ahead of the curve?”

Some engineers would like to simply eliminate the need for massive dams. “The best tailings dam is no dam at all,” Nelson says. She is studying whether mine waste can be melted into glasslike fibers that could be used for textiles or reinforcing concrete. In June, mining giant BHP said it would spend $10 million to study such reuse of copper tailings.

A more mature approach is to wring the water from tailings, creating waste the consistency of damp earth, which can be sculpted into mountains. The leftovers can still be toxic, but there’s less danger of a devastating flood, says Jan Morrill of Earthworks. “Filtered tailings should be considered the industry standard,” Morrill says.

Although the approach has been around for decades, it’s rarely used, representing just 4% of tailings systems in the pension funds’ inventory. Filtered tailings systems can cost five to 10 times more than a conventional dam, says Harvey McLeod, a geological engineer who designs tailings dams for Klohn Crippen Berger, a private firm. It’s also an enormous challenge to process tailings at big mines churning out 100,000 tons of waste per day, particularly in wet climates. “It’s easier said than done,” McLeod says.

MANY GROUPS are also pushing for regulatory and management reforms. After the 2019 Brazilian disaster, investment funds worth more than $10 trillion helped bring together officials from industry, government, and the investor group Principles for Responsible Investment to create a set of global guidelines for tailings dam construction. Earlier this month, the coalition issued its plan, calling for stiffer engineering standards for new dams. It also urges top mining executives, rather than lower level staff, to be responsible for tailings safety, and for independent experts to review companies’ waste plans. But it doesn’t push for a ban on upstream dams.

Morgenstern notes that similar reforms he and others suggested in the late 1990s, after an earlier string of dam disasters, were never fully embraced. He expects it won’t become clear until the end of the year whether the new proposals will fare better. Still, he’s heartened that, after the recent tragedies, muddy mine waste is again in the spotlight. “The tree,” he says, “has been shaken.”

Posted in: 

• Earth

doi:10.1126/science.abe3917

Warren Cornwall Warren Cornwall is freelance journalist in Washington State.

By Bob Weber | News, Politics | August 20th 2020

Minister of Environment and Climate Change Jonathan Wilkinson speaks via video link during a press conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on May 14, 2020. File photo by The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

The federal government will join an environmental assessment of a major expansion to a proposed southern British Columbia coal mine.

"The potential for adverse effects ... may not be mitigated through project design, the application of standard mitigation measures, or through existing legislative mechanisms," says an analysis from the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada.

Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson used the analysis to make his decision, released Wednesday, on the Teck Resources project.
​
He had already reversed an earlier ruling and announced that Ottawa would take part in a review of the proposed Vista coal project in Alberta. Several other companies have made known their plans to mine coal in that province.
Teck is planning an expansion to its network of coal mines in the Elk Valley area of southeastern B.C. The Castle project would increase the area being mined by about one-third and allow the company to maintain production of steel-making coal at 27,400 tonnes a day.
​The review involves fisheries, First Nations and international relations — all areas of federal jurisdiction. The mine expansion would also produce significantly more coal than the threshold required for a federal review.
Teck spokesman Chad Pederson called Wednesday's announcement an "unfortunate decision."
"The Castle project has already been proceeding through a rigorous provincial environmental review process," he said in a statement.
"We will work with the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office and the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada to ensure a co-ordinated review and seek to avoid duplication."
Wilkinson was not available for an interview.
B.C. Environment Minister George Heyman said the province will co-ordinate federal involvement.
The federal government will join an environmental assessment of a major expansion to a proposed southern British Columbia coal mine."I appreciate that they understand and have committed to working within provincial timelines while they review matters of federal jurisdiction, such as trans-border issues," he said in an email.
Lars Sander-Green of Wildsight, one of the groups that asked for a federal assessment, thanked Wilkinson for the decision.
"If Teck can’t show how they can reduce selenium pollution downstream of their mines in the long term ... then no reasonable environmental assessment should approve this mine,” he wrote.
The decision also has implications for Alberta, where the government has said it hopes to increase the province's production of steel-making coal.
Ian Urquhart, conservation director for the Alberta Wilderness Association, welcomed the Teck decision.
"The federal process is a more open, accessible process" — especially compared with Alberta's, he said.
Urquhart said Ottawa had little choice but to step in.
Teck's Pederson said the Castle project is "part of the existing Fording River operations and is necessary to maintain the associated jobs and economic activity."
The company's existing mines in the area are responsible for significant problems with selenium, an element toxic in large amounts. Reports on concentrations in area waterways show levels up to four times B.C.'s maximum for drinking water. Monitoring stations near the mines have reported levels 50 times what's recommended for aquatic health.
Teck's own research has reported the near-disappearance of rare cutthroat trout from a 60-kilometre stretch of the Fording River downstream from the company's four mines.
That water flows into the cross-border Koocanusa Reservoir. The reservoir drains into the Kootenai River, which flows about 200 kilometres across Montana and Idaho.
That contamination was a main concern of eight interveners who asked Ottawa to assist British Columbia in reviewing the expansion.
Those interveners included five First Nations on both sides of the border, 34 environmental organizations and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
"Direct and cumulative impacts from coal mining in the Elk Valley have resulted documented impacts to Lake Koocanusa and the Kootenai River water quality, fish and fish habitat in the U.S," says the protection agency's submission.
Urquhart suggests Wilkinson's Teck and Vista decisions are a warning to the Alberta government, which recently revoked a decades-old policy restricting coal development in the province's foothills and mountains.
"The issue this creates for Alberta is just how difficult it is, even with changes to the coal policy, to have as much control over coal development as (cabinet ministers) would like the province to have."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 19, 2020

On a climate scale of 10, thermal coal is right at the top with metallurgical coal only slightly less egregious at ~7.5. There is no longer any justification for burning thermal coal to generate electricity anywhere on the planet given the cost effective, clean renewable alternatives. To continue to do so is merely a bottom line, ideological decision.
However, steel is a vital material. Having acknowledged the great utility of steel, anthracite should now be classified as nothing less than a temporary transition fuel and source of carbon for steel making until emerging low emission metallurgical technologies are developed to maturity, hopefully catalyzed as a climate change mitigation priority.
One such process uses electrolysis with zero emission electricity in place of combustion in a furnace. MIT, under the direction of Canadian scientist Dr. Donald Sadoway, has developed this technology in a high-temperature furnace located in their lab. They went on to form a company named Boston Steel to market this tech. The team also developed a high-capacity, scalable and long-lasting liquid metal battery using common, cheap materials, a marriage made in heaven for intermittent wind, solar and tidal power. This group is clearly on the leading edge and should be given priority funding and field test opportunities by governments and the private sector.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/09/24/2024/this-mit-spinout-could-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRpQL1vFWLg
So, how about it Mr. Wilkinson? Will the federal government not only give the coal expansion projects a serious environmental review that places climate change at the top of the list, but also use the rumoured upcoming green pandemic recovery response to put very promising technological projects and job creation strategies like these near the front of the line, right after transit, conservation and renewable energy?