These three people will go down as heroes (or villains) in North American mining history: Carol Jones, a soil scientist specializing in mine reclamation; Malcolm Scoble, a mining engineering professor; and Mark Duiven, a natural resource and community development consultant. Their names and memory will, down the ages, be revered or reviled depending on your perspective.
They are the members of a panel that has issued a report recommending that the North Kemess mine not go ahead. The share price of Northgate the company seeking to develop the mine fell by 45 cents to $2.78, effectively reducing the paper value of the company by $740 million. That is nearly a billion dollars knocked out of existence by three brave (or foolish) people.
For those unfamiliar with the background to this story, here is my summary. You will probably find less biased takes via Google.
Somewhere far up in the interior of British Columbia is a marginal mine. Its original owners went bankrupt well before metal prices started to climb. Northgate took over and restarted mining. Now work is humming along and about 400 people are gainfully employed. But the ore body is limited and if they do not open the proposed North pit, the mine will close and the 400 will have to migrate to Alberta. Northgate proposed that the tailings from the new North pit would go into a nearby lake. The lake is not actually big enough so they proposed to increase lake capacity by building some of those magnificent engineering structures, namely earth dikes and embankments. The local folk who have lived and fought for thousands of years around the lake, consider the lake sacred. They do not want their fishing and trapping around the lake disturbed. So they and a number of environmental groups protested.
I do not pretend to understand the politics of BC mine environmental review or Canadian national politics swirling around the Ottawa department that has responsibility for fish in the lake. But whatever the politics, somehow a most unusual thing was done: a panel of experts was convened to consider the issues. The panel was the aforementioned Jones, Scoble, and Duiven. Apparently it was set up by the BC and federal government and presumably paid for by them. The panel went to hearings and heard pleas to develop the mine and pleas not to let the mine start. Now, presumably with the concurrence of their paying sponsors, they have issued a 299-page report.
At this link is the Executive Summary. And at this link the full report that is big and takes a while to download. It is compelling reading, and constitutes, in my opinion, an historic document. I predict this summary will be read and debated far and wide. This report will, I predict, impact mine development for a long time to come. After all, using the principles of sustainable development (which they do not really explain or articulate, and which I confess I still do not understand,) they reject the mine and recommend that it should not go ahead.
Leaving aside philosophical and semantic arguments about the meaning of sustainable development, my simple mind concludes that they reject the mine for this basic reason: At best the mine will last about a decade. Thereafter for thousands of years, the government will have to pay to treat water from the lake, now contaminated by the tailings. And the local folk will have lost a sacred site.
This seems like the other side of building a cathedral: society gains a sacred site which they have to maintain for generations to come. I love both cathedrals and earthen embankments; I am glad, however, that I do not have to pay for the upkeep of either. But given a choice, I would take on the burden of a new cathedral in preference to an earth dam.
I must applaud the courage of the report’s authors in making what is sure to be an unpopular decision. The BC Mining Association has already come out in criticism of the report. I repeat in full this report on the response of the BC Mining Association, because I believe the points they make are seminal to the start of an historic debate:
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“It is unfortunate that a project of such considerable importance to the entire province has been essentially halted by untested subjective concerns. The fact is that the conclusions of the report state clearly that the test of environmental stewardship, the key aspect of the environmental assessment process, has been met and the project would not cause significant adverse environmental effects. It seems as if the unresolved social and cultural considerations of the region far outweighed the tangible economic and environmental factors being considered. This decision could potentially mean the loss of hundreds of high paying jobs and the flight of investment from an area desperately in need of economic activity.”
The report from which I lift the quote above goes on to say that the “Mining Association of British Columbia believes this ruling seriously calls into question the Canadian environmental assessment process, and not just as it applies to mining. This ruling sends a poor message to the international investment community and implies that matters that are political in nature and not specifically relevant to environmental assessment can undermine the process. In the future, it can be expected that, without significant changes, industry will look upon panel hearings as potential political roadblocks rather than opportunities for a balanced view of good science.”
As I noted earlier I do not understand the politics of that seemingly common Canadian process: a hearing and report by independent people. I am more familiar with the USA approach of throwing lawyers at the issues. For example, just over the border Kensington Mines is on its way to the U.S Supreme Court over much the same issue: putting mine tailings into a body of water. There the issue has been fought through the courts rather than behind oak doors at the University of British Columbia (UBC) where Scoble is professor of mining.
My Canadian friends have long extolled the “superior Canadian wisdom” of avoiding legal battles and deferring debate to polite specialist panels. If we take the Mining Association of British Columbia at its word, Canadian miners will henceforth elect to go to court rather than go to UBC for a balanced view of good science. And maybe it is a good thing that BC get away from this cozy coterie business of special panels of dubious independence ruling on mining. Let us set the rules, get workable regulations, and let the free market of adversarial debate shine on the truth.
I cannot but agree with the Mining Association of British Columbia that this report sets a dangerous and scary precedent; it makes a mockery of the concept of the environmental review process; it confirms that politics, not public debate control; and it undermine confidence in the virtues of a reliable judiciary. If the parties could not agree, then at least they should have appointed arbitrators, not academics and consultants.
Finally see The Tyee for a fuller, more sober report.
