In this four-part Full Disclosure series, Business in Vancouver takes a closer look at Vancouver-based Taseko Mines’ proposed Prosperity project, the fate of which will have a huge impact on B.C.’s mining industry. The company says the $800 million mine would stimulate billions of dollars in economic activity in a part of the province badly in need of it, but Ottawa rejected the project citing environmental concerns. In the first instalment of the Chasing Prosperity series, BIV takes a trip to the Fish Lake site of the mine to get a first-hand look at that environment.
Fish Lake: map in hand, Tom Broddy trudges through the snow with a look of renewed determination.
He jabs a finger at the map and explains that it would take a failure of “catastrophic” proportions for the Prosperity mine to cause any significant damage to the environment.
But that mine might never be built; Ottawa has rejected its proposal.
As a result, the work crews and environmental consultants have all left Prosperity and its neighbouring Fish Lake.
Even the First Nations are nowhere to be found.
Amid the snow and howling wind, the only signs of prosperity in that shallow Cariboo-Chilcotin valley are the few stands of trees that have managed to survive the widespread destruction of the pine beetle infestation.
And yet Broddy is proud of the mine his company proposed.
“It’s one of the tightest [projects] and it’s got the smallest impact that we could possibly have designed,” he explained.
He should know.
As manager of engineering projects at Taseko Mines Ltd. (TSX:TKO), Broddy has an intimate knowledge of Prosperity’s design.
Beneath his feet is the ore body that contains an estimated 3.6 billion pounds of copper and 7.7 million ounces of gold.
Prosperity is a world-class project among proposed mines worldwide.
The project would create some 400 permanent jobs and generate approximately $4.5 billion for the provincial economy during its life, or about $1,000 per B.C. resident.
But a few hundred metres from that would-be mine is the reason why the federal government rejected the project – Fish Lake.
In order to build the project, Taseko needs to drain the lake to make way for the pit and store leftover non-acid-generating rock.
Both the provincial and federal environmental assessment reports said the destruction of Fish Lake, as well as its neighbouring Little Fish Lake and Fish Creek, would have significant adverse affects on the immediate environment.
Victoria nevertheless approved the project in light of the economic benefits it would create for a region of the province that has been hit hard by the mountain pine beetle epidemic and the forest industry downturn.
But after a lengthy campaign by First Nations and environmentalists opposing the mine, Ottawa rejected Prosperity.
“What it created in the public’s mind … perhaps in Vancouver or Eastern Canada, was that somehow a pristine mountain lake or fishery was about to be destroyed,” said Brian Battison, Taseko’s vice-president, corporate affairs. “That was a mischaracterization of the facts.”
So what are the facts?
Fish Lake has an average depth of 12 feet and a footprint of 111 hectares, which is approximately one-quarter the size of Stanley Park.
It’s too small to be included among a 1973 Environment Canada report that lists Canada’s lakes and, according to Taseko, accounts for 0.04% of the lakes in the Cariboo region.
But it does contain some 85,000 rainbow trout, which local First Nations say they rely on for food and recreational activities.
When Little Fish Lake and Fish Creek are added in, Prosperity would result in the destruction of some 165,000 rainbow trout.
But according to a 1994 report on Fish Lake by engineering and environmental consultant Knight Piesold, the trout there are small, grow slowly and have high rates of parasitism.
“It’s not a desirable sports fishery,” Battison said.
In exchange for the destruction of the Fish Creek watershed, the company said it would build a new lake, which would be stocked with 20,000 trout.
Taseko also plans to turn Prosperity’s pit into a lake once the mine is closed.
Still, Fisheries and Oceans Canada indicated in the federal review that Taseko’s fish compensation plan didn’t say when the new lakes would be open to First Nations and the public.
MiningWatch Canada, an opponent of the project, said Taseko dismissed the historical significance of the area for both sport fishermen and aboriginals.
“It boggles my mind that we would even consider the destruction of a world-class fishing lake,” Sierra Club BC executive director George Heyman said in September.
But Fish Lake wouldn’t be the first body of water in B.C. to be replaced by a mine.
Little Divide Lake near the community of Logan Lake was drained in the 1960s to make way for the Highland Valley copper mine.
Today, Highland Valley has replaced that lake with a former tailings pond that hosts an annual fly-fishing tournament and, according to a 2004 report, has an aquaculture permit to raise salmon.
Yet the loss of Fish Lake and its surrounding habitat stuck out in the minds of Prosperity’s federal review panel.
The panel also said the project would have an adverse effect on the local grizzly bear population and negatively affect the Tsilhqot’in Nation’s use of the lands and its aboriginal rights and title.
Aside from that, the review found the project would not have a significant negative impact on water quality, groundwater, vegetation, deer or moose populations, air quality or human health.
In a report to the panel, bear biologist Wayne McCrory said increased traffic on roads to and from Prosperity would increase collisions with bears.
He added that the mine would limit grizzly bear habitat and movement corridors in the area and drive the local population toward extinction.
The province lists the bears as a “threatened” species, and McCrory said there are only about 100 of them left in the area.
He estimated that humans have killed as many as 17 in the Chilcotin area in the last nine years.
But according to a provincial grizzly bear mortality report, vehicles and trains accounted for only 79 of the 8,840 bears killed in B.C. between 1978 and 2003.
B.C.’s environment ministry questioned Taseko’s mitigation plans to protect the bears, but Battison said McCrory’s argument, made on behalf of the Tsilhqot’in, went unchallenged.
“There was nobody to refute McCrory’s claims, so they went unrefuted and the panel accepted them.”
Yet the most glaring issue during the federal review hearings was the relationship between First Nations and Taseko.
In the final day of hearings last May, Bruce Stadfeld, legal counsel for the Canoe Creek Indian Band, said the project was a “one-way prosperity” for Taseko.
In an interview in June, Taseko president and CEO Russ Hallbauer said the fight between the company and the First Nations had little to do with the environment and was really about who controlled the land.
“Our position is it’s Crown land and there’s one owner, one landlord and it’s the province of British Columbia,” Hallbauer said at the time.
In the first day of hearings last spring, Ivor Meyers, chief of the Yunesit’in First Nation, took issue with that argument.
“When you say this is Crown land, sure, you may say it’s Crown land, but in our perspective it’s traditional land, it belongs to the Tsilhqot’in people, it belongs to the Tsilhqot’in Nation,” Meyers said. “That … Crown land sits right over top of the traditional territory.”
But whether the project is on Crown land, traditional territory or both is not for Broddy to decide. When it comes to Prosperity, his job is to come up with a design and engineering plan that works. And despite the opposition to the project, he believes he has one.
“I take it with a grain of salt,” Broddy said. “I stick to the technical side of the issues and just hope that sound minds prevail.”
(See “Regulators to probe Taseko stock volatility” page 5.)
Next week: Business in Vancouver chronicles the prickly relationship between Taseko and First Nations, a fight that was eventually broadcast nationwide.
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$4.5b the amount of money Prosperity would inject into the provincial economy throughout its life
$800m the cost to build Prosperity
400 the number of long-term full-time jobs the project would create
1/4 the size of Fish Lake in comparison with Stanley Park