The highly anticipated final report from the independent expert panel investigating the tailings storage facility breach at Mount Polley Mine on Aug. 4, 2014 is due on or before Saturday, June 31.
Since it was established on Aug. 18, the panel of three geotechnical experts has been working to identify what caused the failure and to comment on what actions could have been taken to prevent it.
Before being made public, the report will be submitted to the Minister of Energy and Mines and the Williams Lake and Soda Creek Indian Bands.
Meanwhile, Mount Polley has been conducting environmental monitoring and studies, including testing the toxicity of affected waters and sediments since the breach. Recently the mine released a summary of its toxicity testing program and said results of this testing did not find toxicity that could be attributed to metals concentrations.
Additionally a total of 53 toxicity tests using six different species, such as trout and fathead minnows, were carried out on water samples from Polley Lake, the discharge to Hazeltine Creek, Quesnel Lake and the Quesnel River.
Results of the species testing did not find toxicity that could be attributed to metals concentrations.
Minnow Environmental did find a small number of responses and although they weren’t related to metals, the company recommended there be some resampling and retest of those new samples.
Mount Polley said once it has results from toxicity testing done on sediment it will release that information as well.
