Lucky break saves dam in Kootenays from failure and toxic Salmo spill

A scheduled dam inspection Tuesday gave the Regional District of Central Kootenay officials a lucky break when they happened to discover a damaged retaining wall seeping water from a mine tailings pond.

Undetected, it could have spilled toxins into the Salmo River.

It was just part of a regular inspection that happens monthly, said Bill Macpherson of the regional districts emergency operations centre.

They go and look at it, and make sure that its as it should be.

These monthly checkups are voluntary on the part of the regional district, which owns the former HB Mine property and uses it for its central landfill area.

The district is only required to submit an HB dam site inspection report once a year, wrote Jake Jacobs, a Ministry of Energy and Mines spokesman, in an e-mail to The Globe and Mail. Additionally, water-quality test results must be sent to the Ministry of Environment every month, he wrote.

An independent geotechnician conducts the dams more thorough annual inspection, Mr. Macpherson said, and an environmental technologist has been inspecting the site monthly since 2009 while obtaining the required water samples.

If the retaining wall damage had not been detected and the rain continued for two or three more days, the problem could have been much worse, he said.

You quite conceivably could have had complete failure of that structure, he said.

In 2010, a breached dam caused a mudslide in Oliver and devastated orchards, vineyards and some houses. In response, the government launched an investigation. The final report noted mine tailings dams, such as this one, were not monitored by the provinces Dam Safety Program. The author recommended these dams should have licensing and standards approaches consistent with those of structures monitored by the Ministry of Environment.

Here is the original post:
Lucky break saves dam in Kootenays from failure and toxic Salmo spill