Friday, August 08, 2014

Mount Polley Disaster...The Tailings Foreman Who Quit Says The Company AND The Government Are To Blame.

ThePeopleDoingTheActualWorkShallTellUs
TheTruthVille


From Global News:

...Gerald MacBurney, a former employee of the mine, worked there for seven years, eventually ending up as a tailings foreman. He is speaking out today about why he left.

He quit this past June, saying one of the main reasons was the stress of the job.

“I fought those guys for two years,” he says, “the management at Polley, to get rock like they were supposed to, and build the dam properly. Doing my job, and then they would not do the stuff that you wanted, you know? I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

“They needed to put in five million tonnes [of rock] around the dam, because they added, once they went to a bigger mine life, they added five times the amount of water,” adds MacBurney. “That dam was never designed to hold five times that amount of water.”

“Five million tonnes, well we got maybe a couple hundred thousand. And that’s it, in two years. I’d had enough.”

He says they had a breach at the tailings pond in May and the company “just patched things together.”...

{snippety doo-dah}

...(McBurney) says the government is just as much to blame for what happened. “They were there in May because we had the breach, they call it high water, I know what a breach is and I know what high water is. It came over the till. That’s an automatic breach.”...



So.

Until the good Mr. Bennett proves otherwise (i.e. that his government and, more specifically, his Ministry, did NOT know that there had been problems with the 'dam' before this week's massive breach) he can take his 'only one of the five warnings were about tailings'  deflector spin codswallop and shove it.



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9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Acid generating rock, PAG, can continue to release toxins for 60 years. This is catastrophic, not merely a breach as they put it. It is not possible to clean-up.

Now they are saying, Mount Polley is not an acid generating mine. However, fish are dying and their skins are falling off.

Harper his Cons and Christy Clark's BC Liberals, are wearing this one. This disaster, is all about greed. The mine Barons are just as greedy as, Harper's oil and gas Barons. Deregulating safety standards, environmental standards. Running mines with a serious shortage of staff.

There is no shortage of resource workers in this country, what-so-ever. Jason Kenny is an, out and out blatant liar.

We must purge the corrupt, lying and deceving Harper, his Cons and the corrupt lying Clark BC Liberals preferably, out of this country.

Anonymous said...

Siskinds lawsuit filed.

Don F. said...

I wonder who truly is behind this lawsuit?
Now all we'll here from them is" it's before the courts"
interesting development indeed!

Don F. said...

Just guess who is the largest shareholder in that mine, Murry Edwards.
Just guess who contributed half million to the BC Liberals, Murry Edwards.
Google Siskinds lawsuit and join the dots.

Anonymous said...

Funny, Bill (Bovine Waste) Bennett was on CBC this noon hour calling this guy a liar and anyone else that had an opinion other than the BS he's peddling. His line was the Government department responsible for these tailing ponds were doing the same amount of inspections as in past years, the only thing that was cut back on was inspection of gravel pits.
There was also a fellow that phoned in saying that the water tests were based on tests that are no longer valid. He said that the new base line testing procedures showed that the water values showed that the water was unfit for human consumption.
Geesus these Lieberals sure can pile it on.
Congratulations to all of the mouth breathing knuckle draggers out there that voted for these a-holes, your reaping a lot more than you bargained for now, ain't ya.
CGHZD

Anonymous said...

One more thing for the unwashed to chew on. The reason they use water to flush the crap away from these mines is that the acid forming minerals are rendered inert under water. Without water and exposed to the oxygen in open air these same elements become,...... ACID.

CGHZD

Anonymous said...

http://globalnews.ca/news/1495505/a-closer-look-at-imperial-metals-corporation-and-the-mount-polley-mine/

ron wilton said...

Worth noting in the first(next day?) video helicopter flyover, there was a D8 or D9(very big) Caterpillar bulldozer sitting perilously close to the edge of the break and aiming away from the break, not forward as one might expect if the 'dozer arrived 'after the fact to effect some repair.

I suggest the 'dozer was doing some kind of remedial or maintenance work there prior to the break, indicating prior knowledge of some concern before the break let loose.

A confidential conversation with the 'dozer operator might be worthwhile to determine what he/she was doing there and why the 'dozer was left behind.

Anonymous said...

I hope this isn't a dumb question..I am curious as to how much of a security bond would have been posted to the govt. in case the mine had a major failing such as now ... and as the tailing pond gets bigger is there more of an assurance paid to the govt? the bigger the pond the bigger the disaster if anything goes wrong..?
Who in govt.is signing off of these self- regulated mining companies? same ones who signed off on a BC Rail (999 years) lease.
I want industry in this province but not like this...
our poor province is a scorched polluted mess these days, the Liberal Govt. seems to be nothing more than absentee landlords
many thanks for providing such a great blog that keeps us all informed.