When the British Columbia government gave environmental approval to the controversial Prosperity gold-copper mine in December it used questionable logic, saying the operation was acceptable because the damage would be limited.
“There is only one significant adverse effect and it is limited to a discrete location,” wrote Robin Junger, associate deputy minister and executive director of the Environmental Assessment Office.
Where would that “discrete location” be? Behind a tree somewhere? Under a small rock?
Hardly. The one significant adverse effect turns out to be the utter destruction of Teztan Biny, a fishing lake revered by local native bands. The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, looking at the same mining proposal, would later note that Teztan Biny, or Fish Lake, is “integral to the Tsilhqot’in culture.”
Mr. Junger’s recommendation to approve the mine, which the provincial government quickly adopted, dismissed the concerns of native groups with remarkable ease.
He described the mining company’s plan to drain the lake and fill it with slag as “fish compensation works (involving the dewatering of a lake and the creation of a new one).”
Mr. Junger’s report goes on at some length about what the mining company plans to do to compensate for destroying a lake – and he makes it sound like the Chilcotin environment will be better off for it.
“Creation of a man-made lake, Prosperity Lake, of similar size and depth … development of self-sustaining population of rainbow trout [through a hatchery] … additional stream habitat and a spawning channel,” he writes.
Mr. Junger’s report looked at some other troubling aspects of the proposed mine, but concluded that seepage of tailings into groundwater and broader impacts to wildlife will have “no significant adverse effects.”
On those issues he expressed confidence in the company’s plans, although the Ministry of Environment “has not indicated the same confidence advising that more studies are required.”
Taken as a whole, Mr. Junger’s report rather lightly dismisses the concerns raised by first nations, environmentalists and Ministry of Environment officials.
In July, a panel of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency came to very different conclusions, saying the project “would result in significant adverse environmental effects on: fish and fish habitat; navigation; current use of lands and resources for traditional purposes by first nations and on cultural heritage; and certain potential or established aboriginal rights or title.”
One of those aboriginal rights, of course, would be the right to continue fishing in a lake the Chilcotin bands have been using for thousands of years.
Mr. Junger was not blind to that issue, but concluded that because there are more than 20 other trout lakes in the area, and because a fake lake would be built, “significant such opportunities would remain” for native people to go fishing.
The federal review notes that the provincial decision was made before first nations had a chance to speak at public hearings.
And the federal panel concluded that “recreating a lake with adjacent spawning and rearing channels is questionable as no information was presented regarding the successful replacement of an entire lake and stream system as a self-sustaining ecosystem.”
Over the past several months, native leaders and environmental groups have been calling on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to adopt the findings of the federal panel, while Premier Gordon Campbell has been urging Ottawa to follow his government’s lead.
Mr. Harper’s decision was expected in September, but has been delayed, apparently because the issue is far more complicated than the B.C. government suggests.
A look at the small print in Mr. Junger’s recommendations makes it clear B.C. raced to its conclusion that the mine would have “no significant adverse effects” and that it placed little weight on the concerns of first nations.
That made the decision easy. But it didn’t make it right.
