The Mess of Kemess

At the Amnesty International film night Monday May 8, the Northern BC Mining Action Group & spokespeople from 2 First Nations groups spoke there about the Kemess mine.

Jessica McGregor gave a presentation on behalf of the Northern BC Mining Action Group about the Kemess north proposal. This group is a research group affiliated with PG PIRG at UNBC.

The Kemess mine project is comprised of 2 parts: Kemess south and Kemess north. The Kemess south is already operating as an open pit copper & gold mine. Kemess is a subsidiary of Northgate Minerals with an office in Vancouver. It is estimated that the supply of copper & gold from that open pit mine will end by 2009.

The Kemess north mine if developed could extend the supply of copper & gold to 2020. The prices of these metals on the market is currently very high. To develop the Kemess north portion of the project, Kemess proposes to dump tailings into Duncan (Amazay) Lake which is a multi-species fish (dolly varden, rainbow trout, whitefish) & pristine wilderness lake in the mountains (gorgeous too). It flows into the Finlay River which in turn flows into the Peace River. It is also in the heart of the traditional land of the Tse Keh people.

To do this dumping so would exceed current provincial water quality guideline standards. In addition, section 35 of the federal Fisheries Act and a Metal Mining Effluent Regulation bear on the situation. Schedule II of the federal regulation in question could be amended to allow for this dumping to take place if federal Parliament chose to amend it by Order in Council to name this lake as an allowable dumping place. There are apparently other available options to dumping; however, the cost for Northgate to implement would be considerably higher.

The speaker expressed concerns about the cutting back of BC environmental assessment procedures. The view is that there have not been adequate nor comprehensive environmental impact studies undertaken. There is little data about this remote area other than First Nations traditional ecological data which has been ignored completely to date. Apparently in April 2004, there was a meeting about this project between government & Northgate & First Nations were not invited to participate & only found out about the meeting 3 months later.

The Northern BC Mining Action Group can be contacted for more information at: 960-7474, email nbcmag@gmail.com.


Also, there were spokespeople present from Takla & Tse Keh communities (2 of the 3 First Nations groups whose traditional territories would be directly impacted if this project is allowed to proceed). The spokesperson of the Takla community read out a very eloquent letter from the Chief there by the name of Chief French asking for the support of other people in regard to this issue.

It is very important to the First Nations people of this area that this pristine state of this lake & the quality of the Arctic watershed be protected. These were some of the same people who were dislocated by the Williston Lake project.

There are plans to try to put together a community to community forum sometime this summer at which the chiefs will hopefully speak about these issues & their concerns. They have already been in contact with Peter Ewart of the local Active Voice Coalition to see to organizing such an event.