The province has ordered Imperial Metals to halt the pollution and assess the damage from its failed Mount Polley mine tailings dam, with deadlines and legal threats for non-compliance.

One immediate concern involves plugging the dam so that anticipated rains don’t create further releases of water and tailings into Polley Lake, which flows into Hazeltine Creek and then Quesnel Lake, Mines Minister Bill Bennett told a news conference Wednesday in Williams Lake.

“It’s a very important job for the company and government to get their heads together to block any additional drainage,” he said. “The gap in the wall is large. It was built by machines and men and it can be repaired by machines and men.”

Bennett noted there are about 20 other operating mines (and several closed mines) with similar tailing pond dams throughout B.C. that are certain to receive a closer look based on events at Mount Polley.

“I am losing sleep over this,” he confided. “This gives us about the best reason a person could have to really take a step back. Every Canadian has to be concerned about this.

“This will cause everyone in government across the country to re-examine policies.”

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The other concern at Mount Polley, Bennett said, is that some of the tailings from the dam failure early Monday have backed up into the mouth of Polley Lake and “essentially formed a little dam,” causing the lake to rise about 1.5 metres.

“That presents a risk ... and the company is going to have to deal with it very expeditiously,” he noted.

Water is being pumped by the company from the lake into a historic empty pit on the mine site to reduce water levels.

Jennifer McGuire, executive director of the regional operations branch for the Ministry of Environment, said Imperial Metals must file a preliminary environmental assessment report by the end of Wednesday providing details on monitoring, initial impacts and the types of substances released.

A more comprehensive report on the failure due Aug. 15 must look at the long-term impacts, including on fish habitat, water quality and sediments. Failure to comply with the pollution abatement order could result in fines of up to $300,000 and six months in jail.

The first water-quality tests from the area are expected to be released today at a meeting in the community of Likely. Sampling from Hazeltine Creek is considered too dangerous, given the prospect of more releases upstream.

Three mines inspectors are on site working with the company and its consultants to determine why the dam failed.

Bennett dismissed any suggestions that lack of inspections played a part, saying that the level of inspections of tailing ponds (once per year for structural integrity, unless there are complaints or specific issues) has not changed in the past five years.

Likely resident Larry Chambers, who was awoken at 3 a.m. Sunday by a sound like a 747 plane, had worked at the mine but was dismissed at the end of last year.

He said it was because he had raised safety and environmental concerns.

Chambers noted he and his partner Lawna Bourassa had also raised concerns in May about the level in the tailings pond with the B.C. environment ministry. “We tried to speak up,” he said.

“We’ll listen to everyone,” Bennett said. “We’ll interview people who have things to say who used to work at the mine site and take their statements, as well. Over a period of time ... weeks, if not months, we’ll determine how this happened.”

On May 24, the province warned the mine about excessive water levels in the tailings pond. The water returned to authorized levels on June 30. That was the only such incident on record, said Bennett, insisting there “was no warning ... that we should be concerned about this tailings dam.”

Other ministry concerns with Mount Polley over the past two years:

• April 18, 2014: for bypass of authorized treatment works. The site experienced high flows due to spring freshet which caused the pump system to become blocked and resulted in an overflow of effluent, which was diverted into a pit.

• Aug. 30, 2012: for failure to report exceedance of the height of effluent for the perimeter pond, which overflowed, releasing about 150 cubic metres of effluent over 13 hours to ground.

• January and April 2012, for not submitting monitoring data for one of the groundwater monitoring wells.

Mount Polley has had an effluent permit with the Ministry of Environment since 1997.

In 2009, Mount Polley applied for a permit amendment to discharge up to 1.4 million cubic metres per year of dam seepage effluent from the tailings storage facility to nearby Hazeltine Creek. The amended permit limited discharge to 35 per cent of the creek’s daily flow rate, with contaminant limits, and required an annual discharge plan.

Mount Polley had since submitted a further permit amendment request to discharge up to three million cubic metres of treated effluent to Polley Lake, which overflows to Hazeltine Creek. The ministry had been reviewing the application.

Imperial Metals has said the dam did not breach — where water spills over the top — and the collapse was related to another unknown cause.

One glimmer of good news is that up to 80 per cent of wood debris in Quesnel Lake has been successfully corralled into a log boom, greatly reducing the risk to the bridge at Likely, Bennett said. Two excavators remain on standby to “reach down and remove” logs that pose a risk, he added.

A shift in winds Tuesday night pushed the mangle of torn tree stumps, logs and branches up the lake.

“We got a reprieve,” said Likely resident Ken Smith, who took his boat up the lake Wednesday to survey the damage.

Some debris had landed on the shores of Mitchell Bay, about 12 kilometres up the lake from Likely, where residents were trying Wednesday to protect their docks and wondering what to do with the debris.

John Jones had donned chest-waders and was using a pike pole to push logs and other wood debris away from his dock and onto his gravel shore.

“We’ll just have to let it drift onto the beach and deal with it,” he said.

Jones said he was worried about whether the debris was a danger from being exposed to the effluent from the tailings pond. The tailings include heavy metals that are toxic, but company officials have said the effluent was near provincial drinking water standards.

Smith and Likely resident Al McMillan also surveyed the destruction of the dam collapse on the mouth of Hazeltine Creek, which empties into Quesnel Lake.

The release of millions of cubic metres of tailings water carved out two channels in Hazeltine Creek. The mouth of the creek used to be about three metres wide, but now stretches hundreds of metres. Large masses of wood debris were strewn along the widened mouth of the creek and along the shoreline in either direction for about one kilometre.

Smith noted that a small sandy beach he had liked was obliterated.

Around the corner from the creek, the water along the shoreline was a greyish-green murky colour.

Both Smith, who was piloting the boat, and McMillan said they noticed a strange odour in the air. “I can taste it in my mouth,” said McMillan.

However, both lauded Imperial’s efforts to contain the debris.

Two boats, one of which was a tugboat, had looped ropes around a large wood debris pile and were pulling it away from Mitchell Bay.

The crew had already used boom logs — which are logs chained together — to contain an approximately half-hectare area of logs and push it up on shore.

While the pair were reassured Wednesday that there was no immediate danger to Likely from the wood debris, they were concerned about what will happen to masses of debris along the mouth of Hazeltine Creek.

If it is not cleaned up, eventually it will end up downstream, they feared. One big storm could also create problems, releasing the debris, McMillan said.

The lake is also dotted with submerged logs and other smaller debris — which both said will continue to pose a danger to boaters for some time.

Mount Polley is an open-pit copper and gold mine with a four-kilometre-wide tailings pond built with an earthen dam located in central B.C., east of Williams Lake and near the community of Likely.

ghoekstra@vancouversun.com

lpynn@vancouversun.com

Gordon Hoekstra reported from Likely and Larry Pynn reported from Vancouver.

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See a video of the breach below, or click here: