This aerial image shows Monday’s Mount Polley Mine tailings dam break and some of the damage downstream. Fishing and environmental groups say the same could happen at new B.C. mines near the Southeast border. (Cariboo Regional District Emergency Operations Centre photo)

A tailings-dam break at a British Columbia copper and gold mine could threaten Southeast Alaska salmon fisheries.

That’s according to critics, who say similar dams closer to the border could suffer the same fate, polluting Alaska waters.

Monday morning’s dam break took place at the Mount Polley Mine, about 400 miles southeast of Ketchikan.

Scroll down or click here for a video showing the damage.

Observers estimate enough water, mud and rock to fill 2,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools escaped. Emergency officials warned downstream residents against drinking from affected waterways.

That includes salmon-rich tributaries of the Fraser River, which empties into the Pacific Ocean at Vancouver, B.C.

Brian Lynch of the Petersburg Vessel Owners Association says some of those fish swim north.

“The United States has a harvest-sharing arrangement for Fraser sockeye and pink salmon through provisions of the Pacific Salmon Treaty. So any problem associated with salmon production on the Fraser will affect U.S. fishermen,” he says.

Muddy water from the breached Mount Polley Mine tailings pond dam floods a downstream creek and road Monday. (Cariboo Regional District Emergency Operations Centre photo)

Imperial Metals, the Mount Polley Mine’s owners, did not respond to a request for comment. That’s been the case with requests on other issues too. The corporate website says the mine is not operating and they don’t know how long repairs will take.

A half-dozen or so similar mines are planned for northwest British Columbia, closer to the Alaska border.

Guy Archibald of the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council says they all plan to store tailings, which contain acidic rock and toxic metals, behind dams similar to the one that broke.

“They’re all basically the same systems. They have to comply with the same regulations and design criteria,” he says.

Archibald and Lynch are especially concerned about the Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell project, under development about 20 miles from the Alaska border.

KSM will store tailings behind dams upstream from the Nass River, which ends just south of Alaska’s border with British Columbia.

Environmental Affairs Vice President Brent Murphy says it’s not the same as the Mount Polley dam.

“The design of the tailings management facility is such that water will not be standing up against the crest of the dam. Any ponds will be at least kilometers away from the crest of the dams,” he says.

The Mount Polley break may have been caused by heavy rainfall and increased production added pressure to the dam.

The KSM also plans a water treatment storage dam upstream from the Unuk River, which enters the ocean northeast of Ketchikan. It would be part of a system treating acidic water from mine pits and tunnels.

Murphy says it’s designed to spill extra water rather than hold it beyond capacity.

“That contact water would have characteristics very similar to the water that is currently flowing naturally within the Suphurets-Unuk river system,” he says.

KSM’s dam plans have been OK’d by Canadian provincial and federal officials. Murphy says they also passed muster with independent engineers.

Lynch of the Petersburg Vessel Owners Association says the Mount Polley dam had the same approval.

“This was not only obviously a tailings dam failure but it appears to be a regulatory oversight failure as well. And that’s what we want to prevent on any mines going into the transboundary systems,” he says.

Public comments on provincial environmental approval are being taken through Aug. 20.

The Mount Polley mine owner, Vancouver-based Imperial Metals, plans to open the Red Chris Mine, in the Stikine River watershed this fall. Like Mount Polley and KSM, it’s an open-pit copper and gold mine.

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The KSM, Red Chris and Galore Creek projects are among several planned for northwest British Columbia, near the Alaska border. (Map courtesy Seabridge Gold)

Canadian investors are putting millions of new dollars into mining projects near the Southeast Alaska border. They include the KSM and Tulsequah Chief prospects, which critics say could damage regional fisheries.

KSM is a multi-metal deposit about 150 miles northeast of Ketchikan. It’s near rivers or their tributaries that drain into the ocean northeast of Ketchikan and just south of the Alaska-B.C. border.

A group of Canadian financial firms are in the process of purchasing a million shares of Seabridge Gold, KSM’s parent company. They have an option to buy more, with the total new investment between $13 million and $15 million.

That’s not a lot for a large mine. So Seabridge, headquartered in Toronto, is negotiating to find much larger investors.

“We continue to seek partners and we have confidentiality agreements with several,” says Brent Murphy, vice president of environmental affairs for Seabridge Gold.

Exploration continues at the KSM project, sometimes compared Western Alaska’s Pebble Prospect.

In an interview at a Vancouver, British Columbia, office, Murphy said the company has drilling rigs on site right now.Officials say the more-than-$5-billion project could be built and ready for operations by the end of the decade.

“We currently have about 35 to 40 people in camp and the drilling program will continue until the end of September,” he says.

Seabridge has numerous regulatory steps to complete. But officials say the more-than-$5-billion project could be built and ready for operations within five or six years.

Another near-border project is within a few months of completion.

The Red Chris Mine is already stockpiling copper and gold ore. The project, about 125 miles east of Juneau, is completing its onsite buildings, mill and tailings-storage system. It’s near the upper watershed of the Stikine River, which empties into the ocean near Petersburg and Wrangell.

Officials at its owner, Vancouver-based Imperial Metals, did not respond to repeated interview requests. But Imperial’s website says the $530 million project is expected to open within a few months.

Imperial Metals’ Red Chris Mine is close to opening. Camp housing is shown in this photo. (Courtesy Imperial Metals

Like most other near-border mines, development is being helped along by a transmission line to new hydroprojects in the province’s northwest.

“The ability to hook up to power is a very important part of development or any considerations for investment,” says Karina Brino, president of the Mining Association of British Columbia.

She says the line is part of a province-wide effort to boost mineral-extraction projects.

Another project in the Stikine watershed is the Galore Creek copper-gold mine.

Development has been suspended so co-owner NovaGold can focus on its Donlin Creek project in Western Alaska.

But Communications Vice President Mélanie Hennessey says exploration continues. During an interview in her Vancouver office, she said the corporation is reviewing drilling and other work conducted during the past two summers.

“It involves quite a bit of work, quite a bit of technical work on modeling. And so it’s more desktop work than it is physical, onsite work,” Hennessey says.

Identifying more ore would allow NovaGold and co-owner Teck Resources, also Vancouver-based, to find new investors.

“We do have a process underway to looking at selling a portion of our interest or our full interest in the asset,” she says.

Another near-border project is the Tulsequah Chief Mine, which Chieftain Metals Corp. is trying to reopen. It’s on a tributary of the Taku River, which ends near Juneau.

Toronto-based Chieftain recently announced it had acquired a nearly $20 million loan to look for ways to lower construction and operational costs.

Those and other mines have raised numerous concerns with Southeast Alaska environmental, fisheries and tribal organizations.

“It’s going to create a lot of acid-generating waste rock,” says Guy Archibald, mining and clean water program manager for the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council.

He says that acidic water can disrupt transboundary rivers, and those nearby.

“It can have very significant impacts, starting with the fisheries. And that leads to problems with the economy, which leads to issues in the small communities, whether they can continue to maintain their populations,” Archibald says.

The group Rivers Without Borders is also highly critical of the projects’ impacts.

Several other mine projects are being explored or developed in the near-border region.

One is Schaft Creek, a copper, molybdenum and gold mine owned by Calgary, Alberta-based Copper Fox Metals and Vancouver’s Teck Resources. It’s in the Stikine River watershed, about 150 miles northeast of Petersburg.

Copper Fox says this summer’s work includes a series of studies aimed at finding more ore and reducing construction and mining costs.

(This report is one in an ongoing series on mines that could affect transboundary rivers flowing into Alaska and nearby waters.)

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