Mine Tailings Spill into Watershed:
Is Campbell River's Drinking Water Safe?
Friday's Times-Colonist (T-C) of Victoria carried an account of two Breakwater Resources mine tailings spill events from a Myra Falls holding pond into Buttle Lake Monday and again Tuesday, but it answered few questions. Neither Breakwater nor the B.C. ministry of the environment could shed any light on the possible degree of contamination of the community of Campbell River's water supply.
Speaking for the polluter, Ann Wilkinson offered a garbled response.
"My understanding is it's a combination of not only the heavy rains but
warm weather. It was raining like
heck. This happened very early Monday. My understanding is that this
was a discharge of treated water in combination with overflow from
Mother Nature, in advance of the normal discharge point. We normally
discharge water from the site at a discharge point. It was just further
up the system. [...] It's been sampled. [...] These events are very rare but as is
always the case we sampled it. The results are outstanding, but our
experience is that we don't anticipate any environmental impact."
Despite Wilkinson's upbeat assessment, the results of the tests she mentions were not released to the public, and she says she does not know when that might happen.
Writing for T-C parent, Canwest News Service, Dan MacLennan quotes Campbell River's operations manager, Ron Neufeld's Tuesday night report to city council concerning the spill;
"There was an overflow of one of their tailings ponds. As a
result, some of the tailings water discharged into the Campbell Lake
system. Staff are working with NVI Mines in terms of monitoring any
impacts on our drinking water and we've also contacted our local VIHA
representatives to ensure that there's no risk to the city's drinking
water system.
"We have had experiences like this in the past. One of the benefits of
our watershed is that it's very, very large and impacts that occur at
the top of the lake system - first of all there's a very large diluting
factor, and there's also time our side. We anticipate that it might
take upwards of three months for any affected water to actually reach
the residents.
"Our experiences in the past have been that these types of events have
not had any impact at all on our drinking water, however, we are
working with VIHA staff, with NVI mining staff as well as our own water
department to ensure that we're actively monitoring the quality of our
drinking water."
For now, that is all the information made available to the water consumers of Campbell River. There is yet no indication of: what was spilled into the lake; how the substance will be diluted within the lake without causing "environmental impacts," (as Wilkinson claims); what effects the spill will have on fish and wildlife; or why the spill took four days to make the newspapers.
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