Save Fish Lake (again!)

On Monday, the federal government announced that they were accepting public comments for an Environmental Assessment for Taseko Mines Ltd's New Prosperity Gold-Copper Mine project.

If that sounds familiar to you it is because just over a year ago Taseko's first Prosperity Mine proposal was turned down by the same government process.

Taseko’s original proposal was to use Fish Lake as their tailings pond, where they would store toxic waste rock produced by mining operations. During the first assessment, the company was told they needed to find an alternative to this, because it would destroy Fish Lake. Taseko’s engineers offered Little Fish Lake as an alternate site for the tailings pond. However, eventually the toxins from the Little Fish Lake site would make their way downstream to Fish Lake. In fact, the review panel concluded that this “would result in greater long-term environmental risk.”

Despite this history, the new mine plan that Taseko is seeking approval for proposes turning Little Fish Lake in to a toxic tailings pond.

If you are confused as to why the company would return with a proposal that has already been deemed worse than the one that was just rejected, you are not alone. In fact the whole idea of turning a lake, especially a lake called Fish Lake, in to a dump site for toxic tailings probably seems like a crazy idea.

It’s not just that this proposal has already been rejected once; or that it will threaten tens of thousands of fish and pollute the headwaters of a river network that supports the world’s largest run of wild salmon; or that the locally blue-listed population of grizzly bears would be threatened by this project; or even that the Tsilhqot'in Nation, the area's First Nations people, are strongly opposed to the project. The craziest thing about this project is that – if people like you and I don't take this opportunity to speak up – there is a good chance that this mine will get built.

That is why I'm writing you today to ask you to take action. Please go to our website and use our letter writing tool to submit a comment to the Environmental Assessment!

Together, we can save Fish Lake. Again.

Sven Biggs | Outreach Director
Wilderness Committee