Conuma fined for permit violations

Above Photo: The Wolverine Mine, currently being decommissioned. File photo.

Earlier this month Conuma was issued a pair of administrative penalties for failing to comply with the terms of their operation permit at Brule Mine.

The mine was originally facing $22,000 in fines for the amount of dust it has been generating.

The mine is required to keep the amount of dust generated by the mine below 1.75 mg/dm2 per day, on average. But according to the province, the mine has exceeded that amount.

In the ruling, Jason Bourgeois says the Permit authorizes the discharge of air contaminants to atmosphere from Brule Mine. “As a result of the coal mining process, including blasting, crushing, earth moving, ore conveyance, ground disturbance, and hauling traffic, air contaminants in the form of particulate matter are released to the atmosphere,” writes Bourgeois. “On January 25, 2022…Conuma was found to be out of compliance with Section 3.1.1 of the 2017 Permit Amendment for exceeding the monthly average limit at five of five dustfall monitoring locations throughout the inspection period.”

But not just once; according to Bourgeois, the mine exceeded its limits 52 times in 18 months, between December 2020 and December 2022.

In November of 2023, the Ministry issued a notice saying the administrative penalty was going to be issued, allowing the mine a chance to respond, which it did in May of this year. And, while Bourgeois compliments Conuma on a “very thorough and well organized” submission, he still found the company to be in violation.

According to Conuma, the monitoring stations do not just monitor the activity at Brule. “Particulates captured by the monitoring stations at the Brule Mine are caused by a variety of operations, including forestry operations and wildfires, in addition to Conuma’s mining activities,” they wrote. “Alongside dust produced from mine activities, dust also reaches Brule from nearby forest fires, activities on logging roads near measurement points and burning of slash piles from forestry operations.”

They say that during this time period, the region experienced frequent wildfires. This “likely contributed to air emission measurements at Brule.”

Conuma requested the penalty be waived because of these contributing factors. Bourgeois says that this argument was persuasive, but still found the company in violation of their permit 19 of the 52 times listed.

However, he says these additional factors fail to explain the fact that, on average, the dust monitoring station registered dust levels 50 percent over the permitted amount and up to 729 percent over the permitted amount. Even when things like wildfires are factored in, Conuma was sometimes more than 200 percent over the permitted amount.

Even if it is over the permitted amount of 1.75 mg/dm2 per day, Conuma says that limit is very restrictive for a coal mine well away from inhabited areas. “The Brule Mine site is located in a remote location between the municipalities of Chetwynd and Tumbler Ridge,” writes the company. “This area is more appropriately categorized as industrial, for which areas the 2016 Memorandum suggests a daily deposition of 2.90 mg/dm2/day.”

However, says Bourgeois, 1.75 mg/dm2/day is the agreed to amount. “[This] is a valid legal requirement that Conuma must follow. Based on the information before me, I am unable to conclude that a higher limit, other than the 1.75 mg/dm2/day required in the Pemit, ought to be applied.”

Even if he were to agree to the higher limit, Conuma would still be above that limit 12 times. He agrees with the mine’s argument that the violations are not as serious as originally proposed. But instead of considering them as existing “at the minor end of the spectrum,” Bourgeois says they meet the definition of a moderate contravention.

As a result, Bourgeois issued the company a $5000 penalty.

However, that is not the end. Because the violations occurred repeatedly, Bourgeois increases the penalty 20 percent, to $6000. But because Conuma has been taking steps to reduce the problem, he is reducing the fine by $1250.

So, instead of having to pay $22,000 as originally assessed, the company only has to pay $4750.

Conuma was not as successful arguing its case for a similar administrative penalty over water monitoring conditions, where only two of the 408 cases were dismissed.

Of the remaining 406 cases, Bourgeois describes 73 of these as “of particular concern.”

In this case, it wasn’t what the company did, but what it failed to do, which was to take water samples and report them to the Ministry.

He says the 73 cases of concern were times when measurements with very specific parameters, were not done. “Because Conuma failed to conduct the monitoring required in Appendix A, the Ministry could not determine whether the limits in Section 1, set to protect the environment, were exceeded. Not providing this required data interfered with the Ministry’s ability to adequately assess Conuma’s compliance with Section 1 of the Permit and to determine if any changes to the Permit were required.”

Because it failed to properly monitor its water discharge into the Blind Creek watershed, Bourgeois applied a $10,000 base penalty. In addition, because Conuma has continued to fail to collect test samples, he added an extra 30 percent, or $3000, to the base fine.

More problematic, says Bourgeois, is the fact the company appears to have benefited financially from these violations.

Conuma disputes these claims. “There was no economic benefit obtained from failing to sample in accordance with the monitoring requirements,” writes the company. “Conuma allocated time and resources to sampling in accordance with its Permit. … Conuma did not obtain an economic benefit for failing to monitor. This is not a case of Conuma avoiding its monitoring requirements, or delaying costs associated with monitoring.

Indeed, they say, the company has invested significant financial resources to uphold these requirements. The trouble, they say, was lack of staff. “Ultimately, in an effort to address staff hiring and retention difficulties for the Brule location and in an effort to grow commercial capacity in the Treaty 8 Indigenous Nations, Conuma worked with Salteau First Nation to develop a third-party ground water sampling program. Significant investment has been made into hiring dedicated Conuma personnel with respect to environmental monitoring which is further articulated in Section H of this Submission. Conuma has spent more than $1 million in the hiring and training of devoted compliance personnel.

“Conuma submits the missed sampling events were not caused by any deliberate actions on Conuma’s part and that it neither intended to or did gain financially from missed sampling.”

However, this argument did not persuade Bourgeois. He says that, while the company has taken steps to address the problem, “I find those expenditures were made in response to the failures and are not relevant to my consideration of the economic benefit that Conuma obtained from the failures.”

Because of this, Bourgeois assesses an additional $32,700. However, he says, the company has been working hard to solve the issue, and so he reduces the overall amount by $3000, leaving the company with a $42,700 penalty, as opposed to the proposed $53,000 originally assessed.

Rather than treat each incident separately, Bourgeois says he has lumped all the violations together.

The maximum amount that can be assessed per violation is $40,000. Add to that a $1100 penalty for not providing the reports within the legislated timeframe, and the total amount Conuma owes the government is $45,850.

They have 30 days to pay.