[BC省新聞] Firm that designed original Mount designed, original, growing, storage

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Firm that designed original Mount Polley tailings dam says it warned of growing size

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LIKELY — The engineering firm that designed the tailings dam and storage facility at Imperial Metals Corp.’s Mount Polley mine said Friday that it warned the company and provincial officials that the structure was “getting large” and care needed to be taken to avoid problems.
In a statement released Friday, a representative from consulting engineers Knight Piesold’s Vancouver office said the firm ceased its involvement with the Mount Polley tailings facility in February 2011, and that changes made to its design and engineering since then mean “it can no longer be considered a Knight Piesold Ltd. design.”
Piesold completed its duties as engineer of record at the end of 2010.
In preparing to hand over those responsibilities, the company sent the cautionary advice to Imperial Metals CEO Brian Kynoch and the B.C. Chief Inspector of Mines, Piesold’s senior project manager Greg Smyth said in the statement.
“The embankments and the overall tailings impoundment are getting large and it is extremely important that they be monitored, constructed and operated properly to prevent problems in the future,” Knight Piesold managing director Ken Brouwer wrote in the letter.
Knight Piesold then opted out of bidding to remain in place as the engineer responsible for the structure’s design, Brouwer noted in the letter. Those duties were handed to AMEC Earth and Environmental in March of 2011.
The tailings dam burst on Monday, spewing millions of tonnes of water and tailings into local waterways and Quesnel Lake, but senior Imperial Metals officials said Friday that it was built as it was designed by engineers.
The company is also facing accusations from a former tailings dam foreman at the mine that they did not put enough rock on the outside of the dam to shore it up.
Likely resident Gerald MacBurney worked at Mount Polley for seven years, the last two he says as a foreman directing work on the tailings dam.
He says AMEC instructed the company to bring in five million tonnes of rock to shore up the outside of the dam in order to handle the increased amount of water in the tailings pond.
He said the company never carried through, perhaps only bringing in one million tonnes of rock.
That’s because they didn’t want to take their large equipment — big haul trucks that can carry as much as 120 to 200 tonnes — away from delivering ore to the mill, according to MacBurney.
He said he was always fighting with the production side of the company to get trucks to lay down the rocks. Eventually they hired a firm with 40-tonne trucks to deliver rocks — trucks that were too small to get the job done, he said.
MacBurney said he raised the issue with bosses numerous times, at one point warning one of them that if the rock wasn’t brought in, the dam would break.
His concerns increased after what he calls a breach in May 2014. He says he saw water spilling over the top of the dam, (while Imperial Metals says there was no breach). He quit the next month. “(The company) dropped the ball. I just can’t stress enough how much it made you want to throw up,” said MacBurney, who quit his job after he won a significant amount of money playing online slots.

Imperial Metals president Brian Kynoch told community residents at a meeting Thursday night the company followed engineering advice.

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“If the people engineering our dam told us to build a bigger dam, we would have built a bigger dam,” he said. Kynoch said there was enough rock placed on the outside of the dam. “The dam continuously grows — it gets bigger. For each level we are at, we have to have so much. So, yeah, we need to put more because we fully expected to go higher. But at any given time, we have the right amount for that elevation,” he said.

Steve Robertson, Imperial’s vice-president of corporate affairs, said that when consulting engineering firm AMEC “puts a design out in front of us, that’s what we’ve built.”

AMEC was hired to provide advice on raising the height of the dam necessary to contain the growing amount of tailings and water. On Friday, Knight Piesold’s Smyth said in the statement that the company’s original work — conducted between 1995 and 1997 — passed an independent third-party review. He added that the tailings facility “operated safely and as it was designed” during Knight Piesold’s involvement, and the structure passed a third-party dam safety review, conducted by AMEC, in 2006.

Smyth said the firm is no longer familiar with the design, its operation or water-management practices and could not comment on the incident.

However, Smyth said “the original engineering done by Knight Piesold accommodated a significantly lower water volume that the tailings storage facility reportedly held at the time of the breach.”

All AMEC spokeswoman Lauren Gallagher would say about the situation Friday is that the firm, “along with several other firms, assisted Imperial Metals with dam designs and annual reports.”

She added that AMEC is aware of the investigation that is underway, but “until all the facts are understood, (any statements) would be speculative.”

Likely resident Larry Chambers, who was dismissed from the mine, said he also raised safety and environmental concerns to the company.

Environment Minister Mary Polak said Friday afternoon that her ministry didn’t have any of these complaints on record and that she was “very, very concerned about what we’re hearing anecdotally from people in the community, those that have been employees, former employees, First Nations — we’re asking them please to come forward to talk to our inspectors.”

She added that six inspectors from the Conservation Officer Service are now in and around Likely eliciting complaints. Each officer is “like a police officer”that is independent of the ministry and has the ability to recommend charges to provincial Crown counsel, Polak said.

United Steelworkers local 1-425 president Paul French confirmed there had been complaints from workers about the integrity of the tailings dam, but said when they talked to management, they got answers that satisfied them at the time that things were being done right.

with files from Mike Hager

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An aerial view shows an excavator on top of the Mount Polley mine dam at the tailings pond near the town of Likely on Tuesday, a day after the tailings dam broke, spilling waste water and tailings into nearby waterways and lakes.