British Columbians have 30-days to comment on Mount Polley Mining Corporation's Post Event Environmental Impact Assessment Report (PEEIAR).
As a requirement of the pollution abatement order, Mount Polley Mining Corporation must submit a report to the ministry outlining the environmental impact caused by the breach of the tailings storage facility and assesses physical, chemical and biological information collected from the spill.
Public feedback will help inform the company's long-term environmental remediation and restoration plan.
Findings in Mount Polley's report include:
• Remediation and restoration work is resulting in re-vegetation and re-colonization of impacted areas, including Polley Lake, Hazeltine Creek, the mouth of Edney Creek and the West Basin of Quesnel Lake.
• Geochemistry investigations continue to indicate the tailings are not acid-generating and have low leaching potential.
• Surface water and toxicity tests show total metals and turbidity are not toxic to various aquatic species and are decreasing in concentrations.
Additional information regarding sediments that went in to Polley Lake, Hazeltine Creek and Quesnel Lake still needs to be collected by the company. More detailed information regarding sediment quality in Polley and Quesnel lakes also needs to be collected to determine the impact of the deposited materials.
This work will be carried out in 2016.
Phase 2 of the environmental remediation and restoration plan is ongoing and current activities include assessing the impacts and extent of the breach (including impacts on fish and fish habitat), determining risks to human health and the environment, and developing and implementing long-term monitoring, mitigation and remediation plans, according to the Ministry of Environment.
First Nations, local community members, the regional district, provincial and federal government representatives and their associated consultants have received advanced copies of the report.
This is the second version of the PEEIAR being released for public comment. The first report was posted last June and has since been updated with new information gathered over the past year.
Final comments to the ministry on this report are due on July 21, 2016. Submit comments to MtPolleyEnvironmental.Enquiries@gov.bc.ca with the subject line "Comments on second version of the PEEIAR."
Mount Polley's Post Event Environmental Impact Assessment Report can be found at: http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/epd/mount-polley/
All information on the incident can be viewed on the environment ministry's dedicated webpage: http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/epd/mount-polley/