First Nation files for emergency injunction over raising B.C. gold mine’s tailings dam

A aerial view shows the debris going into Quesnel Lake caused by a tailings pond breach near the town of Likely, B.C., on August, 5, 2014. A B.C. First Nation that is going to court to try to stop a mining company from raising its tailings dam is now applying for an emergency injunction to put the construction on hold. (Jonathan Hayward / The Canadian Press)

VANCOUVER — A B.C. First Nation that is going to court to try to stop a mining company from raising its tailings dam is now applying for an emergency injunction to put the construction on hold.

The Xatsull nation announced earlier this month that it had filed a legal challenge over the plan to allow the Mount Polley mine to raise its dam, a decade after a similar storage site at the mine collapsed, setting off an environmental disaster in the nation’s territory.

The nation says in a statement issued Friday that when it filed the request for the review of the government decision, it also invited Imperial Metals, Mount Polley’s parent company, to suspend its construction until the court decision is made.

The statement says Imperial’s president Brian Kynoch responded by saying it would not hold off on the construction and in fact was already raising the dam.

The First Nation says the response prompted it to file the injunction application on an urgent basis and it expects the B.C. Supreme Court to hear the case in early May.

No one from Imperial Metals was immediately available to comment on the nation’s news release.

In August 2014, a tailings dam at the open-pit gold and copper mine in B.C.’s Cariboo region collapsed, spilling waste into nearby waterways, in a disaster that the Xatsull said in its initial injunction has devastated its territory and is “still harming the nation’s rights, culture and way of life.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 25, 2025.