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Action sought to stop mining waste flowing into
Kootenai |
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December 20, 2017 |
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Re-published with permission from the
Columbia
Basin Bulletin
After long-developing documentation of high
levels of selenium, a bi-product of mining in
British Columbia’s Elk Valley, and the failure
of a water treatment plant to curb the problem,
the state of Montana and tribal governments are
weighing in on the matter.
Montana Governor Steve Bullock and Senator Jon
Tester, both Democrats, recently urged Secretary
of State Rex Tillerson to take action with the
Canadian government to address coal mining
pollution that flows into the United States
through Lake Koocanusa and the Kootenai River
drainage. That raises the potential for the
issue to become part of an upcoming
renegotiation of the Columbia River Treaty.
Montana is not alone in challenging British
Columbia’s approach to regulating mining
practices; Alaska’s governor and entire
Republican congressional delegation have sought
the State Department’s intervention because of
similar conditions that have led to pollution
flowing into Alaskan waters.
“It illustrates that BC is a problem for all of
its neighbors” when it comes to regulating
mining pollution, said Michael Jamison, Crown of
the Continent program director for the National
Parks Conservation Association. “We don’t trust
the BC regulatory mechanism.”
That sentiment is apparent in the letter from
Bullock and Tester, who are challenging the
discharge of a pollutant called selenium from
seven coal mining operations in the Elk River
drainage, an upper Columbia Basin tributary that
flows directly into the Kootenai River and Lake
Koocanusa.
“The state of Montana determined that selenium
is a critical pollutant of concern for which
British Columbia and Montana do not have a
formally adopted water quality
standard/objective,” the letter states. “It is
our belief that from a human health and aquatic
life perspective, Lake Koocanusa is the most
sensitive point in the Kootenai watershed
affected by selenium. A strong bilateral water
quality standard, developed with British
Columbia, is the first step in communicating and
protecting Montana’s water quality needs.”
Selenium has been shown to cause defects such as
missing gill plates, curvature of the spine, and
ultimately diminished reproductive ability in
fish.
Baucus and Tester pointed out that it is
commonly accepted that coal mining will continue
to generate contaminants not limited to selenium
in the Kootenai River watershed for generations
to come.
“Given the international, multi-state, and
tribal interests in this watershed we feel it is
appropriate to identify federal resources to
support long-term fish tissue and water quality
monitoring in Montana and Idaho,” the letter
states.
The Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribes, the
Kootenai Tribe of Idaho, and the Ktunaxa Nation
of British Columbia say Montana’s position does
not go far enough in getting the provincial
government to seriously address mining
pollution.
“The BC-MT process is limited to the Koocanusa
Reservoir and exclusively focused on setting a
site-specific water quality standard for one
mine contaminant (selenium) in the reservoir,” a
joint letter from the tribes to the State
Department states. “While we support this
process, it is limited and grossly insufficient,
and we seek a separate, objective, federal-led,
international agreement with enforceable,
binding protections, financial assurances and a
committed financial framework for assessing
current conditions and future foreseeable
impacts.”
Jamison and others contend that BC mining
practices counter expensive fisheries
restoration and conservation efforts undertaken
in the U.S., in addition to loading waters
flowing into the U.S. with so much pollutants
that it can hinder American economic activity.
Jamison described Libby Dam, which created Lake
Koocanusa, as a “treaty dam” under the Columbia
River Treaty that has basically become a
“tailings pond” that impounds pollutants flowing
from Teck Resources mining operations in the Elk
River watershed. That is a nexus that should
make it a legitimate point of contention for the
U.S. in the upcoming treaty renegotiation.
“One answer is to address this through the
treaty modernization process,” said Jamison, who
described Montana’s state-to-province efforts at
addressing the issue as being ineffective.
“Right now we have the state and the province at
the table when it should be more of an
international problem. The Columbia River Treaty
could elevate the issue.”
The BC provincial government has made an effort
in improving Teck mining practices in the Elk
River. In 2013, the provincial government
ordered Teck to address selenium pollution, as
well as other types of pollution including
nitrate, calcite, cadmium and sulphate.
That resulted in Teck producing an Elk Valley
Water Quality Plan that set targets for lowering
selenium over 16 years, but Teck’s guideline for
selenium were considerably higher than BC’s
guideline, which is not a regulatory standard.
The plan, along with promises to pursue a
concerted effort at reducing pollution, resulted
in the province permitting expansion of Teck
mining operations in the Elk Valley.
Teck’s plan was a catalyst for the company
building a $120 million water treatment plant to
remove selenium near an Elk River tributary in
2014. But the plant ended up producing a more
toxic form of selenium called selenite,
resulting in the mortality of 74 westslope
cutthroat trout in water near the plant. After
three years, the province fined Teck $1,425,000
this October for the fish kill.
The company issued a statement saying it took
full responsibility for the fish kill, which it
believes was caused not by the more toxic form
of selenium, but by high levels of nitrite,
ammonia, hydrogen sulfide and phosphorus that
were unintentionally discharged.
The Flathead Beacon reported on a recent audit
conducted by BC Auditor General that chastised
provincial mine regulators for “a decade of
neglect in compliance and enforcement,” pointing
to the mines upstream from Lake Koocanusa as
being the most egregious examples.
“We found almost every one of our expectations
for a robust compliance and enforcement program
within the (Ministry of Energy and Mines) and
the (Ministry of Environment) were not met,”
wrote BC Auditor General Carol Bellringer in a
report on the matter.
BC’s Ministry of Environment issued a statement
last summer saying the water treatment plant “is
removing the desired amount of selenium;
however, Teck is still working to address the
form of selenium at the end of the process.”
Jamison, along with researchers and
conservationists, say U.S. waters will be
burdened for centuries by mining pollutants from
the Elk River drainage, and the time has come to
end future mine permitting unless proven
technologies and practices are assured, along
with funding for water quality monitoring
independent of mining interests is secured. |
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