With the spring season not far off I thought I would chime in with my first hand observations of this spill. Let me say that I have no connection to the mine or the company that runs it. We have a summer place on the lake about 10k east of where the spill entered the lake.
- don't believe everything you see on the "news" they have their own bent and are in the business of sensationalizing
- my wife is the boss of a lab and i took my own water samples a few days after the spill from the mouth of hazeltine creek....granted they were just surface samples but she found nothing of any concern
- I spoke daily with an independent testing team from the states that was using the resort where we have our place as a base. They found nothing taking samples at all depths upstream and downstream from hazeltine
-I don't know about polley specifically but I do know of other mines that do in fact have fish living in the tailings ponds
- this is just opinion but from what I saw of the ariel photos, it looks to me that the majority of the material in the bottom of the pond where the nasty heavies would be, stayed in place while the water ran off the top. I also believe looking at the hillside that a lot of those heavies settled on the hillside before ever making it to the lake as the creek widened out the water to the sides would have slowed allowing the heavies to fall out. I think we will see small amounts slowly washing into the lake for many years to come when it rains, spring melt etc. The good news I think is in the old adage that "dilution is the solution to pollution" this lake is so vast and gets really really deep very close to shore almost everywhere in the lake that I think the amount of tailings would be akin to single drop of water in an Olympic sized swimming pool...if even that.
Now don't get me wrong, I think someone should definitely get their weiner whacked for this but I do think we are fortunate that it was a lake as large as quesnel with the water movement this lake has. I think the lake will dilute and disperse these materials to the point that the concentrations are irrelevant.
my .02 cents
Chris
