While people in Tumbler Ridge are cautiously celebrating the sale of Quintette mine to Conuma Coal, feelings are less enthusiastic about the Federal and Provincial Government’s decision to not issue an Environmental Assessment Certificate on Dec 21.
Glencore has been working on the Sukunka projects since purchasing the property (as Xstrata) for $500-million from Talisman Energy in 2012. Talisman (formerly BP) had been working on the project in the 1970s and early 1980s, but shelved the project in 1982 after the mine was deprecated in favour of the Quintette and Bullmoose Mines.
The BC Environmental Assessment Office recommended a certificate not be issued “after concluding that the key mitigation measures proposed would be unlikely to reduce the potential negative impacts of the project to an acceptable level.”
According to the assessment, “the project would have significant adverse and cumulative effects on the threatened and red-listed Quintette caribou herd, increasing the risk of its extinction,” despite extensive conversations between parties and proposed mitigation measure.
The project would also have “significant cumulative effects on grizzly bears, by adding to existing impacts from previous development in the region, as well as adverse impacts to First Nations, such as treaty rights to hunt.”
The proposed project would have been an open-pit mining operation and coal processing plant about 55 kilometres south of Chetwynd and 40 kilometres west of Tumbler Ridge. The proposal was for production of approximately three megatonnes (MT) of metallurgical coal per year for export to overseas steel manufacturers over 22 years.
The environmental assessment on the project began nearly a decade ago, but was placed on hold in 2015 as Glencore worked to mitigate the mine’s potential impact on the environment.
At the time, Glencore was 164 days into their 180 day application review.
That review was restarted earlier this year, and was finally completed on August 1, 2,749 days after the 180 day process started. The environmental assessment was referred to provincial and federal ministers for decisions on Oct. 17, 2022, and a decision was made Dec 21.
The review was led by the province and involved extensive consultation with technical experts and First Nations, as well as federal and local government agencies. The EAO also hired a third-party caribou expert to verify effects to caribou were appropriately characterized.
According to the BC-EAO, the project impacts to caribou would have directly impacted 125 ha of prime caribou habitat, and indirectly impacted about 4,186 more hectares used by the Quintette caribou herd.
According to the EAO, the proposed mine would have added to the cumulative impacts to caribou habitat in the Bullmoose-Chamberlain mountain area.
Parts of the area were previously mined in the 1980s and 90s by Teck, whose Bullmoose Mine closed in 2003. The area has also seen logging and oil and gas development over the last twenty years.
In addition to the impact to the Quin-tette herd, the assessment concluded that Treaty 8 Nations’ treaty rights were likely to be impacted by the project, in particular, a moderate to serious impact to the treaty right to hunt caribou and minor to moderate impacts on the treaty rights to fish and gather plants, as well as impact to the health and socio-economic conditions related to the perceived increased human health risk from elevated mercury and selenium concentrations; physical and cultural heritage related to impacts on hunting caribou; and resource harvesting and current use of lands and resources for traditional purposes related to impacts on hunting caribou.
Glencore says they are evaluating their options. “We will now review the decision, while also having regard to our Climate Change commitments, before determining next steps.”
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
