The Similkameen River flows through Keremeos in syilx Territory.

Image Credit: Phil McLachlan

Pressure is building on the BC government to undertake an environmental review of a proposed open-pit mine expansion that syilx communities and advocates say threatens the Similkameen River.

The Lower Similkameen Indian Band (LSIB) and Upper Similkameen Indian Band (USIB) have both called for a full environmental assessment of the Copper Mountain Mine’s extension project in letters to the province in June and July, respectively. A formal request for this assessment from LSIB is currently under review.

Twenty-two environmental groups on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border — including the Wilderness Committee, David Suzuki Foundation, Okanogan Highlands Alliance and SkeenaWild Conservation Trust — are now putting their weight behind this call.

The groups recently published a letter to Environment and Climate Change Strategy Minister George Heyman and his deputy minister, reminding the province of its obligation to protect Indigenous rights under UNDRIP and other legislation.

“The current operations at the Copper Mountain Mine have never received an environmental assessment, making this one all the more important,” said the letter, in part.

“The Copper Mountain Mine has been on the public’s radar since its inception due to its size, towering tailings dam, its proximity to the Similkameen River and many communities, and the catastrophic impacts that would occur from a tailings dam breach.”

‘Serious and permanent impacts’

The Copper Mountain Mine has been in operation along the Similkameen River south of “Princeton” since 1972. The proposed New Ingerbelle Extension, which the Copper Mountain Mine (BC) Ltd. applied for in 2019, would expand the existing New Ingerbelle Pit and associated infrastructure by 298 hectares.

Under the Environmental Assessment Act, an environmental assessment is not required for the expansion, however the environment minister can call for one if several conditions have been met.

“Under the B.C. Environmental Assessment Act, the minister can require an environmental assessment for a project if: a review is in the public interest, an Indigenous Nation has requested one, the project has equivalent or greater impacts to other projects that received an environmental assessment or it promotes sustainability by protecting the environment,” Wilderness Committee noted in a press release.

“The letter makes the case all these conditions have been met.”

The proposed expansion of the mine would create the second-largest tailings dam in the world, according to the Wilderness Committee, “seven times taller than the tailings that caused the Mount Polley mining disaster in 2014, one of the worst environmental disasters in Canadian history.”

In its correspondence with the province’s Environmental Assessment Office (EAO), LSIB has outlined potential downstream effects of the expansion including “those caused by increased daily discharges into the Similkameen River, an important food source for LSIB, or far worse, by the potential for a breach of the tailings dam into the watershed.”

“As climate change, extreme weather events and flooding risks continue to increase exponentially, it is critical that the proposal to significantly increase the height of the tailings dam for the Expansion be assessed with a cumulative effects lens,” a Sept. 15 letter from LSIB’s lawyer notes.

The USIB has also noted to the EAO that  “the proposed mine expansion is in the heart of USIB’s traditional territory and is anticipated to cause serious and permanent impacts to USIB’s rights, culture and way of life.”

“USIB is very concerned about the risks the project poses to the Similkameen River and requires any assessment of the project to respect and uphold USIB rights, laws, customs, and traditions,” the band’s operations director Sandra Allan-Wagnitz told IndigiNews in an emailed statement. 

“USIB is intent on ensuring that, regardless of the outcome of the designation request, any assessment of this project is lead by USIB along with LSIB and respects and upholds USIB’s title and rights, and requires USIB’s free, prior, and informed consent before this project proceeds.”

Both LSIB and USIB have Aboriginal rights and title guaranteed by S.35 of the Constitution Act. The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, enacted by “British Columbia” in 2019, also requires the province to develop and implement an action plan to meet the objectives of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. 

This includes the rights of Indigenous Peoples to exercise and have full enjoyment of their inherent rights, including the rights of First Nations to own, use, develop and control lands and resources within their territories.

Updated expansion plans

Charlotte Dawe, a conservation and policy campaigner with the Wilderness Committee, told IndigiNews in an interview that an assessment of the project is in the public interest. 

Noting the damage and death of around 300 people caused by the collapse of the tailings pond at Vale’s Córrego do Feijão iron ore mine in Brazil in 2019, she said the provincial government especially “needs to assess this tailings pond and the potential for it to collapse.” 

“That’s my big argument to B.C. — if you say you care about climate change, and you say you care about protecting the environment, and you say you care about protecting communities, the very least they could do is a provincial assessment into this tailings pond and what would happen if it collapsed,” Dawe said.

“If [Minister Heyman] were following mining laws in good faith — no questions asked, there would be an environmental assessment about the expansion.” 

Conservation Northwest and the Colville Confederated Tribes — which represents twelve tribes in the “United States” — have also conducted their own tailings dam breach and runout analysis for the tailings storage facility at the Copper Mountain Mine. 

Their assessment, released in May last year, found “if a breach were to occur, could release a debris flow that would likely … be several times greater than the largest flood ever recorded in the town of Princeton, B.C.”

Along with concerns about the future of Copper Mountain Mine, data provided by Danielle Droitsch, a member of the Wildlands Network, found multiple incidents of the mine causing environmental damage over the past few years. In particular, this has involved releasing polluted water at least 21 different times between April and July 2022, 18 of which were unreported for at least four hours after the incident. 

According to data on compliance issues and violations between 2015 and 2020 also provided by Droitsch, there have been 30 publicly available compliance reports published by the province on Copper Mountain Mine since 2015. Most of these published reports are inspection reports, including both inspections triggered by incidents and planned follow-up compliance inspections. 

“As the mine operates throughout the years, it continuously has non-compliance violations, and permit violations,” Dawe said.

“Whether it be effluent from the contamination leaking into Wolf Creek or leaking into the Similkameen — it’s been well documented.” 

For Dawe, a frustrating aspect of these incidents is just how little the fines administered by the provincial government impact the financial operations of the Copper Mountain Mine. 

“When you compare the fines to Copper Mountain Mine’s profit that they bring in at the end of the day after paying employees and everything like that — the fines account for .02 per cent compared to their profit,” Dawe said. 

“The government isn’t administering fines and penalties in a way that even impacts CMM’s end of the year reporting. And honestly, we know how corporations work — unless you’re impacting that final number that they’re able to share with their stakeholders and their shareholders, they’re not going to change their behaviour.”

For the violations between 2015 and 2020, Copper Mountain Mine was required to pay $56,000 in fines, Dawe said. The corporation recorded $254 million in profit over those same years.

The expansion of the mine mill and integrated production from New Ingerbelle would result in an increase of 102 per cent in mineral reserves, a 27 per cent increase in average annual copper equivalent production to 116 million pounds over the first 10 years, and a 12-year extension in mine life to 26 years, according to an announcement from the corporation in February 2019.

This exponential increase in production alone, according to Dawe, should lead to an environmental assessment.

‘Our lands have never been ceded’

The company, in a Sept. 13 letter to the EAO, said it has “jointly engaged in consultations and engagement” with USIB, LSIB and other affected communities on the expansion for at least six years.

It further states that it has participation agreements with the nations, and that the mine “has a robust aquatic biological effects monitoring program and that “no detrimental or toxic effects have been observed in Wolfe Creek or Similkameen River, downstream of the mine site, in the 12 years of … studies conducted since the restart of mining activities in 2010.”

However, the mine was acquired in June by the mining company Hudbay Minerals, which has a “disturbing pattern of behavior towards Indigenous peoples in Guatemala, Peru, Arizona, and Manitoba” according to LSIB and USIB.

“Hudbay now owns a mine on our lands, and they need to know how much unfinished business they have inherited,” said USIB Chief Bonnie Jacobsen in an earlier statement.

“First Nations governments are joint decision makers, and we expect companies on our land to treat us with fairness and respect as the caretakers of our lands and waters since time immemorial. Our lands have never been ceded, surrendered, or sold.”

Dawe said all the organizations and communities involved are having to “keep pushing for this environmental assessment.” 

“It shouldn’t be up to Lower Similkameen and Upper Similkameen communities and beyond to pay for the cost of monitoring the mine,” she said of this work. 

“They need to know if the river is safe, they need to know if their water is safe. They need to know how much water is being extracted from the mine and if this expansion is actually sustainable in the long run.” 

Ultimately, Dawe said if Heyman and the EAO decide not to assess the mine expansion, advocacy organizations such as her own will  “run these analyses [for an environmental assessment] on our own and give the government the information that they refuse to collect themselves.”

“We might just have to take matters into our own hands.” 

The provincial EAO confirmed it is reviewing the request that an environmental assessment be required for the expansion but highlighted that the proposed project does not meet the thresholds to automatically require one.

“As part of its review, the EAO is seeking input from the Lower and Upper Similkameen Indian Bands, Copper Mountain Mine (BC) Ltd., other potentially affected First Nations, and local, provincial and federal government experts,” the office said in an emailed statement. 

“This input will help inform the EAO’s recommendation on whether or not to require an environmental assessment for the project. The applications is still under review and no decision has been made at this time.”

— This story was originally published by IndigiNews.

News from © iNFOnews, 2023