The Tahltan never did like the Red Chris mine because it is near the Sacred Headwaters. The Tahltan have not finished negotiating their impact benefit agreement with Imperial Metals for Red Chris yet.

Today the Tahltan have blockaded Red Chris in response to the Mount Polley disaster.

I think Imperial is about to pay a huge price for this. Apparently in the last three months or so they drastically increased production at the Mount Polley mine and were already building the dam walls up from years of increasing size. It looks to me like they simply did not have a large enough tailings facility because it was planned in 1997 and then they subsequently increased the size of the mine but not the tailings area.

I heard the Minister of the Environment on the radio today saying that there has never been a tailings pond breach before and they had to wait and see what happened before they could decide what to do. Well, that makes sense except I think he must have meant never a tailings pond breach in Canada/BC because I'm sure there have been some elsewhere in the world.

It is fortunate that the sludge was not acidic. The second round of water testing has also shown that it meets drinking water standards. They still have to clean up the mess though and get the actual tailings back and contained because the damage can happen over many years.

I think with Schaft Creek there is estimated to be 13% of the tailings will be acidic-bearing and it will take 65 years for it to leak out and damage the environment.