Teck Resources has submitted a remediation plan to Environment Canada to clean up decades-old toxins that have seeped into the groundwater from its smelter in British Columbia.
Richard Deane, the manager of environmental health and safety at Teck's Trail operations, said the five-year plan calls for a treatment plant to remove heavy metals that have tainted the groundwater under the smelter.
The public will have to take his word for it, as Environment Canada will not release the company's plan to deal with the arsenic, ammonia, lead and other heavy metals that have leeched from historic tailings ponds and trenches.
"Teck Metals Ltd. is the author of the plan in question. It would therefore be inappropriate for Environment Canada to distribute it," Mark Johnson, spokesman for the federal department, said in an email. "For further queries about the plan, please contact Teck Metals Ltd."
Teck declined to release the plan, which is under review by the federal agency, but did offer an interview with Deane.
Environment Canada would not comment.
The remediation plan was originally due March 31, but that deadline was extended to Oct. 31 to allow for further testing.
Deane said the contamination comes from ponds and trenches used at the smelter in the 1980s and earlier. "The smelting and refining operations have existed on this site since 1896, well over 100 years at this site," he said.
The contamination was discovered in 2001, as part of an ecosystem risk assessment being conducted by the company.
They have since discovered the tainted water runs under the Columbia River into an aquifer in east Trail.
Testing has shown that contamination is not detectable in the river itself, Deane said.
"There is some upwelling along the river bottom in some localized spots, and then into the east Trail aquifer," Deane said.
"The purpose of the remediation plan is to intercept the groundwater as it leaves the Trail operations site before it gets to the area under the Columbia River or to the east Trail aquifer, and also to prevent any upwelling of the affected ground water into the Columbia River."
Studies conducted to date suggest fish populations in the river are not affected, and the aquifer is not used for drinking water, he said.
The remediation involves a series of wells that will capture the water for the treatment plant.
"The plan itself is going to take about five years to fully implement, but fairly quickly the installation of those wells will basically reverse the flow of groundwater immediately in the area and bring it into the wells and bring it up to the surface," Deane said.
Over the past few decades, Teck has invested more than a billion dollars into environmental improvements at the Trail smelter, and in 1996 stopped dumping slag into the Columbia. Last year, Teck said it would invest $210 million to increase capacity of an electronic waste recycling operation at its zinc smelter and hydroelectric plant in Trail.
