British Columbia

In an apparent turn of events since the "Fort Nelson Incident", in which 33-year-old Fort Nelson First Nation Chief Sharleen Gale held up a feather and kicked out government officials from an LNG summit, the nation has now signed up a deal for a long-term camp lease for LNG workforce. 

The scale of the devastation only became apparent from the air. A dam at a waste pond on the site of a British Columbia open-pit mine had burst, releasing 10m cubic meters of water and 4.5m cubic meters of potentially toxic slurry into virtually untouched forest, lakes and rivers into an area of Canada populated mostly by the indigenous First Nations peoples. Soda Creek First Nations chief Bev Sellars took a helicopter tour to assess the scale of the disaster. “It looked like an avalanche, but avalanches don’t have toxic waste in them,” she said.

N. Murray Edwards, the controlling shareholder of Imperial Metals Corp. which owns the Mount Polley mine, helped organize a $1-million private fundraiser in Calgary last year to bolster B.C. Premier Christy Clark’s re-election bid.

Edwards, an oilpatch billionaire and chairman of Canadian Natural Resources, was among several Alberta power-brokers involved in the fundraiser, reportedly held to back the continuation of Clark’s “free-enterprise government.” According to polls at the time, the B.C. New Democrats were poised to win the May 13 election.

Mark Jaccard yesterday said he is "horribly let down" by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's failure to "competently" enact emissions regulations in 2007 which would have kept his Kyoto Protocol promises on track to 2020. Harper himself, Jaccard says, formally withdrew from the Kyoto processes while charging the previous Liberal government with "incompetence" in neglecting to set in motion adequate policies to reach Kyoto goals.

Twelve hours into a motorcycle ride from Vancouver to the Unist'ot'en camp, and after short dips in a couple of the hundreds of small lakes in 40 degree weather, the glow of the northern British Columbia evening sky turns thick and otherworldly with smoke from nearby forest fires. Seeking a place to sleep, I skip the first small town whose cheap motels were filled with some of the hundreds of firefighters and evacuees from local oil and gas camps. The fires rage as a result of pine-beetle ravaged forests and a hot, dry B.C.

Williams Lake, BC (August 6, 2014):  The Tsilhqot’in Nation is overwhelmed and disappointed by the Mount Polley Mine (owned by Imperial Metals) environmental disaster. The tailings pond that has been breached is the same model that Taseko Mines Limited (TML) has indicated repeatedly that they would use for the New Prosperity project. Of which, TML vice-president, Brian Battison and B.C. Energy and Mines Minister, Bill Bennett, held up as exemplary. This is proof of the faults and extreme risks within this model of tailings storage facility.

Read this July 25 story from the Vancouver Sun, which undermines the BC Liberal government’s promises of jobs for British Columbians from their proposed LNG industry.

A complete water ban has been issued for the Interior community of Likely after a mining accident spilled waste materials into a nearby lake Monday morning.

The Cariboo Regional District enacted the ban following a breach in the earth-filled dam surrounding Mount Polley Mine’s tailings pond.

Debris and effluent flowed into Quesnel Lake from the tailings pond, where waste from the mine’s chemical and mechanical operations was being stored.