n August 4, BC suffered its

worst environmental disaster
in recent history. Five hundred
million cubic meters—the
equivalent of 2,000 Olympic-sized
swimming pools—of mining
waste and sludge seeped into the
water streams around Mount
Polley, located in the Cariboo
region just south of Quesnel. A
wastewater pond, or tailing pond,
as they are known, breached.
The tailing pond covered four
square kilometres, and in four
days, the pond was emptied
into the streams and waterways
surrounding the area, including
the salmon-bearing Fraser River.
And yet for an environmental
disaster of this scale, it raised
alarmingly few eyebrows.

While there has been demand
for inquiries about how this was
allowed to happen, there has
been little else. Residents of BC
are seemingly more and more
used to environmental damage,
with waste and sludge perpetually
washing up along BC’s coastline.
At least this is what Tomas Borsa,
a Vancouver-based environmental
journalist believes,

“When there is a disaster this
scale, there are so many different
angles that you can come at it
from,’ explains Borsa. “There is
obviously the environmental side
of things, but when you put at
risk someone’s food source, when
you're essentially destroying the
tourism to that area, when roads
are washed out by toxic tailing
pond sludge, when people are
forced to be laid off unexpectedly,
there are so many other effects
and I think it’s being treated
as just another environmental
disaster, and so the standard
feelings with the cleanup, but I
think that’s just really only telling
one side of the story.”

Borsa believes that the social
and cultural ramifications of a
disaster of this size are as great
as the environmental ones, yet
they don’t receive the same media
attention or discussion.

“[Neskonlith] is a band
that continues to fish and hunt
really heavily in that area and
... a report was released saying
allegedly that the salmon drawn
from that pond is (sic) safe to
consume, But the Neskonlith
Band leadership has told all the
band members to continue not
fishing, not eating the food, not
hunting in the area because they
don’t trust that report, and I don't

blame them one bit. I personally
wouldn't want to be eating that
fish. So it’s just—yes it is seen as
an environmental disaster and the
effect of that is seen on a political,
social, cultural, and economic
levels too because they can’t be
relying on this staple food source,
they can’t sell it—they basically
lost the keystone species to that
culture.”

NDP Environment Critic,
Spencer Chandra Herbert, agrees
that the public often doesn’t hear
exactly how harmful the impacts
of environmental disasters can
be, and exactly what it will take
to recuperate. “One of the First
Nations chiefs in the area has said
that we won't know the impact
for at least another four years,
because of the cyclical nature of
the salmon that will come back
in four years’ time after the run
has been so affected right now,’
Herbert says. “It’s those kinds of
stories. What is the real cost here?
There has been talk of the cost to
the mining company, but what
about the cost to all the people
there who have had to buy bottled
water because they don’t have
water. What’s the cost of all the
government intervention in the
area so far? Right now, it’s looking
like we are on the hook for that as
taxpayers.”

While mainstream
media does a proficient job of
covering the facts and primary
consequences, Borsa believes that
more reporting can help explain
the impacts of environmental
disasters.

“The best way always is to not
take some top-down approach
and write an op-ed from 1,000
kilometres away. Actually going
there and engaging with the
people who are affected is always
going to be the best way to do it,”
he says. “Most of the coverage I
have seen has been written in the
abstract and deals with kind of
vague micro-economic factors
and then makes predictions
about how perhaps in the future,
policy will change. But there is no
actual engagement on the kind
of ground-level. No one is going
door to door asking people to
lay out what exactly it means for
them and their family on a much
more intimate level. And I think
engaging with people directly and
trying to broadcast the human
element, it’s just a lot easier to
understand.”

With the arrival of guerrilla

journalism and anyone with a
smartphone now being able to
take video footage of a spill and
upload it to the Internet, people
are better able to see the first-
hand impacts of spills and what
they do to the water streams and
natural habitats.

What makes the media
so pertinent to environmental
issues is that the more coverage
it receives, the better. As natural
disasters and weather changes
are felt across the entire globe,
disasters and concerns about the
environment should be talked
about on a global scale.

“We are one planet so the
climate change that is created
in the Alberta oil sands affects
BC just as much as it affects
China or anywhere else. Just as
China’s environmental impact
affects us,” explains Herbert, “I
think we need to learn lessons
from environmental disasters,
but also environmental good
and environmental protection
initiatives internationally. It
seems that Alaska is now paying
attention to the Mount Polley spill
because of proposed mines that
could affect some of their salmon-
bearing rivers, which right there,
is a pretty big red flag because it
could mean that they could have
an international commission get
involved and rule on BC mines
and economic development in
that area because of potential lack
of care for how our development
affects Alaska.”

Just as the Mount Polley spill
received little attention south
of the border, the US has some
issues that we in Canada hear
very little of. Currently, there is a
dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico
the size of Connecticut. Because
of the growth of algae and other
bacteria, there is no oxygen in the
area, and it has essentially killed
all the marine life. Although it
doesn’t directly affect BC, Borsa
believes greater attention should
be brought to issues like these.

“People are increasingly
beginning to understand
that the environment is
not interested in drawing
political, national
boundaries. If there
is a spill in Japan, well
it’s all very nice
that we deem
a particular
territory as
Japan, but the
effects of that

wander freely and follow tidal
currents and end up in what
we call California,” he says. “I
think Fukushima was the first
time that I saw an awakening,

I guess you could call it, where
people began to see things as
interconnected as opposed to
kind of compartmentalized or
as somebody else’s problem. As
far as Mount Polley goes, there
is (sic) definitely going to be
some ramifications for Canada
as a whole. If that water was to
get into aquifers, it’s really quite
impossible to tell where water
goes once it gets into an aquifer
and so it’s anybody’s guess as to
who is going to be taking that
water eventually.”

Overall, it is a combined
effort of journalists, policy
makers, industry workers, and
the general public to ensure that
the impacts of environmental
disasters are understood,
controlled, and learned from.

“Journalists are pretty
restricted in how much change
they can actually enforce once
that thing has been uncovered.
And I think that’s where law
needs to take over, or policy
makers need to take the initiative.
Because the momentum can
be built by really good media
coverage, and can be accountable
to their mistakes, but I think
there does come a point, a kind
of threshold where simply talking
about it is not going to lead to
tangible change, and that’s where
a politician or somebody ina
position of power,’ Borsa explains,
“I would say it would be lovely if
the CEO of a company who has
been cast in a negative light—
would just take the initiative, be
proactive and say ‘well you know,
we recognize what we are doing
now isn't as good as it could be
and we are going to take the
necessary steps, even if it goes
into our bottom dollar, to make
the changes we feel have been

articulated by the public
and by journalists.”

 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

 

 

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