Tailing Pond Collapse – No Known Cause

A complete water ban affecting about 300 local residents is in effect after five million cubic metres of tailings pond wastewater from the Mount Polley copper and gold mine was released early Monday into Hazeltine Creek.

That’s an amount of water equivalent to about 2,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Local residents are calling it an environmental disaster.

The waterways affected by the ban, which earlier included Quesnel Lake, Polley Lake, Hazeltine Creek and Cariboo Creek, now also include the entire Quesnel and Cariboo river systems right up to the salmon-bearing Fraser River.

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