Tailings pond breach at Imperial Metals' Mount Polley Mine causes water ban in Canada.

Six horrifying stills from the #MountPolley video. #bcpoli #QuesnelLake #Quesnel pic.twitter.com/jt6v18tRfQ
— Chris Walker (@ChrisWalkerCBC) August 5, 2014

Tailings pond breach at Imperial Metals' Mount Polley Mine causes water ban in Canada.(RT).

Some 10 million cubic meters of water and 4.5 million cubic meters of fine sand from the tailings pond of the Mount Polley copper and gold mine spilled over into lakes and creeks in the area on Monday, according to a statement by the British Columbia’s Environment Minister Bill Bennett, released the following day.

The waste waters that are now out in the wild are likely to contain lead, arsenic, zinc, mercury and phosphorus, as that’s what 2013 research found in the pond, according to a report from Environment Canada.

The water is currently being tested for possible contamination. Meanwhile, 300 people living in the affected area have been warned not to drink local water and also to keep pets and livestock away from it.

The aerial footage of Mount Polley posted by Cariboo Regional District shows a washed out road and massive amounts of grey muddy water all over the region with loads of uprooted trees flowing in it.


"The devastation up the lake is unbelievable," a local resident Peggy Zorn told CBC.

"The tailings pond is so full of chemicals. The water is green, fish floating.... It's sad," another local, Lawna Bourassa, told the news outlet.

What is a tailings pond?

A tailings pond is a wet storage area for tailings that allows them to be continuously submerged. (Some tailings can also be stored under "dry covers" such as soil.)

The technical name for a tailings pond or other storage site is a "tailings impoundment area."

How is a tailings pond built?

Natural Resources Canada describes tailings ponds as "engineered structures" created through the use of dams, berms, and "natural features such as valleys, hillsides or depressions."

However, under a change made to the federal Metal Mining Effluent Regulation of the Fisheries Act in 2002, natural water bodies such as lakes can also be re-classified as a tailings impoundment area and used to store tailings.

What kinds of substances are found in tailings ponds?

The substances found in tailings ponds depend on the type of mining operation.

Last year, Imperial Metals Corp. reported that tailings from its Mount Polley copper-gold mine contained thousands of tonnes of copper, zinc, phosphorus and managanese along with:

• 138 tonnes of cobalt. 
• 71 tonnes of nickel. 
• 3.6 tonnes of antimony. 
• 84,831 kilograms of arsenic. 
• 38,218 kilograms of lead. 
• 8,695 kilograms of selenium. 562 kilograms of mercury. 
• 995 kilograms of cadmium. 
• Tailings from oilsands can contain napthenic acids, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, phenolic compounds, ammonia, lead, mercury, and other metals.

How much volume is stored in tailing ponds?

Tailings lakes from Alberta's oilsands alone covered 176 square kilometres in 2010, according to the non-profit environmental think-tank The Pembina Institute.

At the Mount Polley copper gold mine, five million cubic metres of effluent – enough to fill 2,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools – were released into Hazeltine Creek this week.

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