The federal government is reviewing the environmental assessment report for the proposed New Prosperity copper and gold mine but is not directly commenting on issues being raised by Taseko about the accuracy of the findings.
On Tuesday afternoon, Taseko, the company behind the plan to build an open pit mine south of Williams Lake, said it found a major flaw in the report that, if confirmed, could negate some of the negative findings.
According to Taseko's vice-president of corporate affairs Brian Battison, Natural Resources Canada failed to take the company's tailings pond design into account when it issued an opinion on the rate of seepage expected to flow into Fish Lake. That seepage rate was the basis for the environmental assessment to conclude that the project could have significant adverse effects on fish and fish habitat.
A media request to Natural Resources Canada asking if the federal department still stood by the evidence it presented to the three-member environmental review panel was re-directed to the Canadian Environment Assessment Agency. In an emailed response, a spokeswoman for the agency would only say that the report is being reviewed and that it will offer no further comment at this time. The agency would not specify if it was reviewing the specific allegations raised by Taseko or other aspects of the report.
In the absence of Natural Resources Canada making any comments Wednesday on the quality of its own evidence, two opponents of the mine both believe the government department was correct in its initial findings.
"These are all professionals, they're highly respected people," Tsihqot'in National Government tribal chairman Joe Alphonse said. "What [Taseko] is talking about are childish mistakes that you make in elementary school, not at this level of government, not at this level of conducting business."
Those views were echoed by Sierra Club of B.C. executive director Bob Peart.
"Our understanding that [Natural Resource Canada] was very careful about replicating the proponents data, whatever data they had from the proponent," he said. "Our position stands that the science is really, really clear and it seems to me this is a little bit disingenuous on the part of the proponent."
At issue is how Taseko plans to build its tailings storage area. The company said it will line the area with glacier till soil and compact it in such a way that there is a minimum depth of soil, which will reduce the seepage rate.
"Bulldozers will go in and push the dirt around where it needs to be pushed around so that its at least a designated depth of till," Battison said. "You're actually engineering a structure to receive water."
But the company said Natural Resources Canada neglected to factor in that layer of soil when it made its calculations on seepage.
Soon after the report was publicly released on Oct. 31, Taseko said it believed an error had been made around the effects on fish.
"Now we know why it was strange, it was based on the wrong design," Battison said.
Peart said Taseko had the chance to challenge any of the evidence during the public hearings in July and August, but chose not to raise the issue surrounding the design until after the report came down.
Battison countered that the company wasn't aware of the mistake until this week. Up until recently Taseko had been trying to find a flaw in the model Natural Resources Canada used to interpret the data provided by Taseko, rather than the design the federal agency was basing its model on.
Alphonse doesn't buy the company's claims that the data is flawed and said the initial report should stand.
"Maybe [Taseko's] been smoking the same stuff [Toronto] Mayor Rob Ford has been smoking a little too long," Alphonse said.
