When a corporation like Imperial Metals lies in court, that is called perjury. When they lie to the media they call it good business. B.C. gov warns against drinking water in path of tailings pond spill. “Boiling will not help,” the government said in an update Thursday. Boiling the water will not help because it's not a parasite or a germ, it's a metal. Boiling water will not get the lead out. Or the arsenic. Or the mercury. Eating fish filled with mercury will poison you. This is a tributary to the Fraser river in a salmon spawning ground. The water is not drinkable. This much mercury will poison a 20 acre lake. Sue them in court.
As soon as the dam broke, the first two lies were instantaneous. They were implemented with the malicious intent to minimize the extent of the damages and evade legal liability with regards to criminal negligence. The first bold faced lie was from Imperial Metals president Brian Kynoch. "If you asked me two weeks ago if this could have happened, I would have said it couldn't." We have two witnesses and a documented environmental report that proves that was a bold faced lie. "This is a gut-wrenching experience, I can assure you it is for me," he responded. "I don't know why it happened." That was the first lie.
The second lie was like unto it. Imperial Metals president Brian Kynoch said "It's very close to drinking water quality, the water in our tailings," he said. "There's almost everything in it but at low levels.... No mercury, very low arsenic and very low other metals." That is simply untrue. The water in the tailing pools was full of lead, arsenic and mercury. That is why they were held in a tailing pond and not released into the waterways.
A summary of material dumped into the tailings pond filed last year with Environment Canada listed 326 tonnes of nickel, over 400,000 kilograms of arsenic, 177,000 kilograms of lead and 18,400 tonnes of copper and its compounds. According to preliminary data from Environment Canada’s 2013 National Pollutant Release Inventory, the Mount Polley mine disposed of 406,122 kilograms of arsenic in 2013, 177,041 kg of lead and 3,114 kg of mercury. “Mercury, lead and arsenic are just three of the substances found within the pond,” adds Louis “The environmental impact on the river systems and surrounding land will not be truly felt for some time.”
Gerald MacBurney, a foreman at the dam for seven years before he recently quit, said the dam was breached last May and that weakened the whole system. Yet the criminal negligence began long before that. Imperial Metals president Brian Kynoch lied and said that never happened when clearly it did. Kynoch said the dam had never before failed, although there had been some overflow into the Hazeltine Creek in May. That's the point. Toxic water leaked out of the tailing pond before.
Bev Sellers, chief of the Xatsull First Nation, said warnings in a 2011 environmental report about the pond, commissioned by her band, the Williams Lake First Nation and Imperial Metals Corp., were not heeded by the company. Ex-engineers also warned tailings pond was getting large. A wastewater treatment process should have been put in.
An environmental consulting firm says it first raised concerns in 2011 about the Mount Polley mine. Brian Olding, president of Brian lding & Associates, said his company was hired three years ago to review and evaluate a report produced by Imperial Metals. The report was seeking permission from the B.C. Ministry of Environment to dispose of water from the mine's tailings pond into the nearby Hazeltine Creek. This time the company was trying to shift the blame to the BC Government for not giving them permits to release small amounts of toxic water into the waterways. The point is, the water has to be treated first before that can happen. It's not the BC Government's fault the company refused to treat the water first.
Instead of following the recommendations of the environmental report, the recklessness continued filling it with more water. Instead of treating the water they spent their available cash on hand on a new site at the Red Chris mine south of Dease Lake to continue the reckless practice of mining beyond their means. Instead of treating the water they just kept building bigger and bigger tailing ponds. Just like with the oil sands water. Those tailing ponds are leaking too. Putting a tar sands tailing pool right beside a river is irresponsible.
The solution is simple
The solution is simple. Imperial Metals must cease and desist mining until they start treating the toxic water they create. It's that simple. Most of the toxins can be removed by distilling the water. Yet even that won't get rid of the mercury but Reverse Osmosis will and that's too costly and time consuming so instead of that they spend a few dollars bribing politicians and First Nation Bands to give them permission to mine recklessly.
Sue them
The people of British Columbia need to join a class action law suit suing Imperial Metals for damages and for criminal negligence. A cease and desist order needs to be produced on their mines until they start treating the toxic water they create instead of just putting it in a tailing pond with the hope that the BC Government will let them release small amounts of toxic untreated water into the water ways. This class action must be separate from and in addition to any class action from the First Nations communities that agreed to the mine. We the people who live and reside in British Columbia have an equal claim in the courts for damages and an equal right to a cease and desist order. This class action needs to comprise the residents of BC as well as the commercial fishermen of BC and everyone else who has been adversely affected by this spill which pretty much includes everyone. As tax payers we are in essence shareholders in the province.
Trade agreements that destroy sustainability
This environmental disaster is a wake up call on another front. These insane trade agreements that have nothing to do with free trade and everything to do with removing our civil liberty. First it started off with NAFTA Chapter 11 compensation awards where corporations can sure governments for creating laws that inhibit their ability to make a profit. One of the many absurd examples in NAFTA chapter 11 was how a company successfully sued the government for banning them from dumping (PCP) toxic waste. That absurd award has absolutely nothing to do with free trade and building the economy. It has everything to do with crippling the economy and removing democracy.
Then Gordon Campbell's corupt BC Rail Liberals came up with TILMA. Another insane trade agreement that makes it illegal for any level of government to make a law that would inhibit a corporation's ability to make a profit. For example, under TILMA, Imperial Metals can sue the BC Government if they stop them from operating because of their recklessness. That closed door agreement has removed our democratic system. Now they have expanded it and called it the New West Partnership Trade Agreement. Again it has nothing to do with free trade. It lets corporations destroy the environment at will. That agreement is in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and needs to be challenged in the courts because they keep on doing it and expanding it.
Stephen Harper has the same thing with Communist China under FIPA. It's not about free trade it's about letting corporations remove our rights. This is reckless irresponsibility. Sustainable mining is not a eco terrorist term. It is good business. Preston Manning said being good stewards of the environment is the same as being fiscally irresponsible. We avoid debt so our children don't become in bondage to it. We protect the environment so our children have an economy to thrive in after we are dead and gone. Stephen Harper is falling. Finish him. Our civil liberty is at stake.
It's not that we're opposed to business. Everyone wants jobs. Everyone wants a thriving economy. Everyone supports business. We support sustainable business. Canadian mining companies have a horrible reputation in Columbia and around the world for being reckless and irresponsible. This needs to stop. As investors and consumers we can do better. Remember the Alberta Wheat Pool by second Narrows bridge? Selling China wheat instead of coal is good business. Wheat doesn't damage the environment. That is progressive.
In Washington State, Canadian mining giant Teck Resources Ltd. has admitted in a U.S. court that effluent from its smelter in southeast British Columbia has polluted the Columbia River in Washington for more than a century. A Washington state woman filed a class-action lawsuit against Teck Resources (TSX:TCK.B), claiming toxic pollutants from the company’s smelter in southeastern British Columbia are to blame for her breast cancer diagnosis and other health ailments. A Washington state judge ruled the Canadian company is liable for the cost of cleaning up the contamination of the river south of the border. It's not just the cost of clean up, it's legal damages. Canadian Smelter Spills 25,000 Liters of Chemical Solution into the Columbia River.
In Costa Ricca a Canadian mining company sued the the Costa Rican government over the canceled Las Crucitas gold mining concession. The concession was revoked in 2010 following environmental concerns and doubts about the concession’s legality. The corupt company claimed that Costa Rica violated the Costa Rica-Canada Bilateral Investment Treaty when an Administrative Appeals Court revoked its mining concession in San Carlos, Alajuela, in 2010 and sued for a billion dollars in damages. The Costa Rican government was forced to let them continue their hazardous practices. These trade agreements remove our democratic sovereignty.
Colombian town forcibly relocated due to air contamination from open-pit coal mining. So why are we shipping coal through our ports in Surrey? Just like asbestos. That is not progressive. Natural gas is much cleaner burning than coal.
Threat of Mercury Poisoning Rises With Gold Mining Boom. So now we have our military protecting reckless mining companies helping them destroy the environment in other countries around the world. These are dark days so they are. The corporation is corrupt. Corporate Communism is the biggest current threat to our civil liberty known to man.
This is how criminals perpetuate fraud. First they form a corporation. In fact they form many corporations or shell companies to hide their tracks and shield themselves from legal liability. If you file for personal bankruptcy that stays on your file for seven years. Not if you create a corporation that goes bankrupt after committing fraud. That's why the same criminals get away with doing the same thing over and over again.
Major Imperial Metals shareholder held private fundraiser for Clark
New Sponge-like Material Can Remove Mercury From Water
