{"id":41113,"date":"2019-01-09T13:50:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-09T22:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/home\/operations-suspended-at-canadas-mount-polly-mine\/"},"modified":"2019-01-09T14:16:51","modified_gmt":"2019-01-09T23:16:51","slug":"operations-suspended-at-canadas-mount-polly-mine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/home\/operations-suspended-at-canadas-mount-polly-mine\/","title":{"rendered":"Operations suspended at Canada’s Mount Polly mine"},"content":{"rendered":"

WILLIAMS LAKE, British Columbia — Imperial Metals Corp. says it is suspending operations at its Mount Polley mine in south-central British Columbia due to declining copper prices.<\/p>\n

The gold and copper mine was the site of a 2014 tailings dam collapse that was one of the largest environmental disasters in the province’s history.<\/p>\n

Imperial Metals said in a news release Monday that the suspension plan includes milling of low grade stockpiles which is expected to extend operations to the end of May 2019.<\/p>\n

There will be no impact to the mine’s ongoing environmental monitoring and remediation program, it said.<\/p>\n

[After Mount Polley: The activists and filmmaker behind the documentary ‘Uprivers’]<\/ins><\/a><\/p>\n

“Full operations will resume once the economics of mining at Mount Polley improve,” it said.<\/p>\n

The company did not immediately respond to a request for more details, including how many jobs would be affected by the suspension of operations at the mine northeast of Williams Lake, B.C.<\/p>\n

The union representing Mount Polley workers, United Steelworkers Local 1-2017, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Imperial Metals said in August that unionized workers at Mount Polley had voted in favour of a new three-year contract, after initiating strike action in May following a lockout by the company.<\/p>\n

Bryan Cox, president of the Mining Association of B.C., said the mine is a significant employer in the Cariboo region and it also creates indirect jobs including supplier positions across the province.<\/p>\n

“There’s really a provincewide impact when there’s impact to our operations in B.C.,” he said. “This is big news for the province.”<\/p>\n

There has been volatility in the copper market for some time and the price is near its lowest point in about 18 months, Cox said.<\/p>\n

[Transboundary mine faces $200-million cash crunch]<\/ins><\/a><\/p>\n

B.C. is the No. 1 copper producer in Canada, but it’s a global industry and tax structures need to be as competitive as possible to protect local jobs, he said.<\/p>\n

But he added there is huge opportunity for the commodity in the long-term, as more parts of the world transition to a lower-carbon economy.<\/p>\n

It takes up to four times more copper to build an electric car than a conventional car, for example, and it’s also used in wind turbines and solar panels, he said.<\/p>\n

“As we make this transition, we’re going to need more copper,” he said.<\/p>\n

The tailings dam collapse sent 24 million cubic metres of mine waste and sludge into nearby waterways and the mine did not resume full operations for nearly two years.<\/p>\n

B.C.’s Conservation Officer Service launched an investigation of the disaster but a three-year deadline for provincial charges in the case passed in 2017.<\/p>\n

Engineers and Geoscientists B.C. announced in September that three engineers involved in the design, construction and monitoring of the tailings storage facility that collapsed will face disciplinary hearings this year.<\/p>\n

\n

\u2022 This is an Associated Press report.<\/b><\/p>\n

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Declining copper prices are to blame. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":41114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[293,253,200,230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-41113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-mining","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41113"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=41113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}