The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA) is scheduled to decide by November 7 whether to accept Taseko’s revised “New Prosperity Mine” project in B.C.’s interior for review – a project the company itself has said would wreak more damage than its first proposal. Take action.

Taseko’s first proposal was rejected by the federal government last November, after a huge public outcry over the fate of trout-rich Fish Lake, sacred to the Tsilhqot’in Nation. Sierra Club BC supporters alone sent almost 2,000 letters to the Prime Minister.

The federal government’s environmental review panel found that a Fish Lake mine would cause irreparable damage to both First Nations rights and the environment, including to fish stocks and grizzly populations. The findings were so serious that then Environmental Affairs Minister Jim Prentice described the panel report as “scathing” and “probably the most condemning I have ever read.”  

Now the company is back with a revised proposal, which is even more disastrous.

Fish Lake would be surrounded by the proposed open-pit mine and unusable for the life of the mine (up to 33 years). Over time, the water quality in Fish Lake would become “equivalent” to the water quality in the tailings facility, according to the company’s own engineering expert. Little Fish Lake, which is crucial to the ecosystem that supports the unique trout population, would still be destroyed and used as a toxic tailings pond. As before, there was no consultation with the Tsilhqot’in Nation, which strongly opposes this mine on their sacred lake.

It would be a complete waste of taxpayers’ money to spend another year studying this highly destructive project. Please write to the president of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, Elaine Feldman, the relevant ministers and the Prime Minister, by November 7. Ask them to reject the proposal without further review.

Sincerely,

George Heyman
Executive Director
Sierra Club BC