Taseko may not be able to afford to construct a full soil liner at its proposed New Prosperity mine, according to a First Nations leader opposed to the project.
Xeni Gwet'in chief Roger William said the company behind the proposed open-pit copper and gold mine 125 kilometres south of Williams Lake has changed its tune after an environmental assessment last month raised concerns about the impact seepage from a tailings pond could have on fish and fish habitat.
Taskeo has said the findings of the environmental assessment should be set aside because the company believes the wrong design was used when Natural Resources Canada modelled seepage scenarios. The company said publicly and in a letter to Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq that it plans to construct an engineered soil liner to help contain material in the tailings facility.
But William said such a design could prove to be cost-prohibitive.
"I don't think they can afford to do what they say they are to the minister," William said. "I think part way into it, they'd be arguing to the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Mines saying that, "We're going to go in the hole, we're going to lose jobs, we have to keep moving forward without doing this other stuff.'"
Taseko did not respond to a request for an interview on Thursday or Friday.
The issue of the soil liner and seepage rates is at the centre of a dispute between proponents and opponents of the mine. Taseko was adamant in its letter to Aglukkaq that a soil liner was the plan all along, while the Tsilhqot'in National Government countered in its reply that it amounts to a change in plans at the last minute.
"At the end of the day, if this company was serious, if they knew this project was safe and was going to make a lot of money, this would have been upfront and we would have been dealing with it right off the bat," William said.
William said he and other First Nations leaders from the Cariboo aren't opposing the mine on a simple anti-development principle but because of serious concerns about the impact it could have on the environment and their cultural interests in the region.
"We're not against development," he said. "Development has to involve Xeni Gwet'in and Tsilhqot'in and together create a picture together and this picture needs to involve our people, our elders and our youth. At the end of the day if we agree, then the project gets the green light to go ahead."
