Call it a tale of two companies.
A Calgary oil company has won a rare honour from Washington state for cleaning up an old gold mine, while a B.C. mining firm is battling federal U.S. environmental officials over a waste legacy in the same state.
ConocoPhillips Canada received an award from Washington state's Department of Natural Resources for a $6-million US project that turned an exhausted gold and silver mine into a popular recreational attraction and wildlife area.
Gulf Canada (now Conoco-Phillips) had inherited responsibility for reclaiming the Cannon Mine, near Wenatchee, Wash., as part of acquiring Asamera Companies' oil assets in 1987. The mine encompassed more than 1,700 acres, including about 280 acres of leased state land.
Lin Callow, ConocoPhillips' senior manager of environment and regulatory affairs, says executives at Gulf Canada and then ConocoPhillips supported the reclamation project, even though it would cost the company more than $6 million US compared with a reclamation bond held by the state of only $2 million US.
"They could have walked away and left this $2 million on the table and let (Washington state) deal with it," Callow says. "This is a Canadian company that lived up to its responsibilities, even though those responsibilities were south of the border."
Cut to waste tale No. 2, involving Teck Cominco Ltd.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has slapped the Vancouver-based company with an enforcement order and is considering hauling the firm before a U.S. court if it doesn't comply.
The U.S. federal agency wants Teck Cominco to fund a $10-million US study of slag, or smelting waste, in Lake Roosevelt in Washington state. The waste is discharged into the Columbia River from the firm's lead and zinc smelter in Trail, B.C.
Teck Cominco argues that the U.S. agency has no international authority to force the Canadian firm to pay for anything.
The company also says the EPA has ignored its offer to fund approximately $13 million US worth of human health and ecological studies – to be done by Teck Cominco's U.S. affiliate – of Lake Roosevelt. The electricity-generating reservoir on the Columbia River is about an hour's drive south of the B.C. border.
"We've also committed in that offer to undertake any remedial or restoration or whatever action is deemed to be necessary, based on the risk assessment," said Doug Horswill, Teck Cominco's senior vice-president, environmental and corporate affairs.
But back to waste tale No. 1, which has a happy ending.
The challenge for ConocoPhillips in cleaning up the old mine site – which took 10 years to complete – was to do the job in a way that would convince Washington state to grant the Calgary oil firm a reclamation certificate releasing it from future liability for the site.
The task included reclaiming the old mine's waste-tailings storage pond and ensuring that water contaminated by metals from the former mining operation didn't escape downstream into the Columbia River.
Fortunately, Lin Callow and his team had one big advantage.
The Cannon Mine had never used toxic cyanide to extract the gold and silver. Instead, the operation had always used a controlled dynamite blasting-extraction technique that also broke down part of the mine's massive, cement-filled support pillars.
The crumbled cement, or calcium carbonate, mixed with the waste metal tailings and helped neutralize the waste tailings material.
That means there's no toxic acidic water drainage from the mine's tailings pond, Callow says. "It couldn't have worked out any better if had been designed to do that."
To speed the drying of the saturated tailings pond and allow a crew to work on top of it, Callow and his team set up water cannons on the 60-acre impoundment that sprayed the water into the air in the semi-arid Washington valley.
Callow then hired a company whose reclamation technology involves rolling out and hand-stitching together huge sheets of "geo-textile" – super-tough fabric to cover the pond's entire surface.
Layers of gravel were placed on top of the fabric, to prevent the remaining tailings pond water trapped beneath from migrating to the surface. An additional two metres of soil was added to allow for replanting.
But how could they ensure that water still trickling from the bottom of the tailings pond never escaped downstream?
Callow and his team had been developing engineered or man-made wetlands to treat hydrocarbon contamination in projects for Gulf's Canadian operations.
The team constructed three terraced wetlands at the base of the old mine's tailings pond. These planted wetlands are designed to catch any metals that might conceivably leak from the pond, Callow explains.
The wetlands plus a small lake created on top of the tailings pond added a lot more surface water to the parched valley, and created wildlife habitat and an asset to the nearby town of Wenatchee.
"It's actually a really nice piece of recreational property for them to have there for hiking and horseback riding," Callow says.
Along with receiving the state reclamation award, ConocoPhillips Canada got its entire $2 million US reclamation bond back.
Ron Teissere, a geologist with Washington state's natural resources department, says the Cannon Mine reclamation will set an example for other mining projects. Doug Sutherland, the state's commissioner of public lands, agrees: "This is the way it can be done."
Waste tale No. 2, however, appears headed for a legal fight.
For 90 years until 1994, when the B.C. government tightened waste-discharge rules, Teck Cominco dumped an estimated 10 to 20 million tonnes of metal-laden slag – in accordance with Canadian law – from its Trail smelter into the Columbia River, which flows into the U.S.
The sand-like slag flowed downstream, ending up in Lake Roosevelt in Washington state.
The waste has polluted the lake sediments and in some locations the water, says Bill Dunbar, a spokesman for the EPA's Region 10 office in Seattle, Wash.
Teck Cominco's Horswill says his company believes the discharged waste presents little or no health risk, and that any remedial actions will be limited.
Teck Cominco is also concerned about the EPA trying to make a Canadian company subject to the U.S. Superfund law designed to clean up significant hazardous waste sites south of the border.
Surrendering jurisdiction to the EPA could lead to Teck Cominco having to pay to clean up pollution caused by other companies that operated in the area, Horswill says.
But the EPA's Dunbar says the B.C. firm's position "has been one of obfuscation." He says the EPA is willing to sign an agreement with Teck Cominco's U.S. affiliate giving it the same legal rights under the Superfund law that any American firm would have.
Horswill, however, says Teck Cominco in B.C. sees no point in engaging in a drawn-out battle over who has international jurisdiction.
Instead, the company volunteered to have its U.S. affiliate conduct approximately $13 million US worth of health and ecological studies. Those studies would be under direct supervision of the EPA, the area's Indian tribes and local governments – but not be subject to the Superfund law.
Dunbar says the EPA's scientists and attorneys believe the proposed Teck Cominco studies "would not be scientifically credible or legally defensible."
Teck Cominco should be held to the same standard that all companies operating in the U.S. in similar circumstances would have to meet, Dunbar says.
In response, Horswill says that Teck Cominco has said from the start of negotiations with the EPA a year ago that the B.C. firm will do "whatever is required" to clean up pollution if studies find health or environmental risks.
"Our whole point here . . . has been to indeed meet any responsibilities the public thinks we have on this," Horswill adds. "We just want to be sure that it's a science-based, scientifically sound approach."
But Dunbar says the EPA has decided to proceed with its own studies of Lake Roosevelt, for which U.S. taxpayers will have to pay. "We think that's unfair but it's work that needs to be done and we're proceeding."
Dunbar and Horswill both say their respective sides are still willing to negotiate a deal to the impasse.
But in waste tale No. 2, each side is waiting for the other to pick up the phone first.
