The holiday season has been rough for Taseko Mines (TKO-T, TGB-X), which is facing a potential strike at its operating mine and a new setback in the seemingly endless effort to permit its new mine.
The latest issue arose on Dec. 12, when workers at the company’s flagship Gibraltar mine in central B.C. issued a 72-hour strike notice. Taseko says it is firmly committed to negotiating a new contract with the Canadian Auto Workers Union, which represents Gibraltar workers, and hopes to avoid any strike action.
The potential for a strike at Gibraltar adds to Taseko’s growing pile of problems, most of which relate to the company’s New Prosperity project. New Prosperity is a copper-gold deposit 120 km southwest of Williams Lake that Taseko wants to develop into an open-pit mine, but the process to permit the development has encountered one obstacle after another.
The project name includes the word “new” to distinguish the current development plan from the old one. Two years ago, the federal government rejected Taseko’s initial development application, primarily because the plan involved draining Fish Lake, a site that holds spiritual significance to the local Tsilhqot’in First Nation.
In September, Taseko submitted a new development plan for the US$1.1-billion project, one that would preserve Fish Lake by moving the tailings facility 2 km upstream.
The submission kicked off a 235-day countdown for the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA) to finalize its response to Taseko’s environmental impact assessment (EIA), but the countdown was suspended in late November, when the CEAA halted its review citing a “major deficiency” in the EIA. The deficiency concerned Taseko’s approach to assessing how the new plan impacted the mine’s cumulative environmental impacts.
Taseko was none too pleased with the setback. In a letter to the CEAA, the company’s senior vice-president of operations John McManus says that “it is discouraging that the panel has used an apparent technicality to stop the timeline remaining for the panel to complete its review,” adding that “Taseko does not agree there is a deficiency in the EIA related to the approach that was used.”
McManus argues that the original assessment found there were no significant adverse effects on vegetation, wildlife, surface and groundwater. The company does not appear keen to revisit these issues.
The panel responded with a letter repeating that the cumulative-effects assessment is deficient, and requests more information.
If the late November scenario was annoying for a company trying to speed up a process that has dragged on for years, what happened next must have been downright aggravating.
On Dec. 10, the CEAA panel sent Taseko another letter. This time the panel asked for additional information on no fewer than 50 other aspects of the EIA submission, ranging from specific characteristics of acid-rock drainage to mitigation for effects on grizzly bears.
Opponents of the project jumped on the letter, claiming the request showed that Taseko has failed to consider a multitude of potential impacts. Chief Marilyn Baptiste of the Xeni Gwet’in First Nation writes that “the panel and the governments have now said there are serious deficiencies in [Taseko’s claims that it can save Fish Lake]. It seems to us that the company has put its efforts into pushing through a second proposal as fast as it can, without doing the homework to see if it can actually back up its proposal.”
Taseko was quick to respond to such criticisms.
“Regrettably, project opponents were quick to misrepresent the panel’s request for more information, suggesting the project was unsound and/or that the project itself had been halted,” vice-president of corporate affairs Brian Battison writes. “Information requests are an expected and routine part of any panel process.”
Taseko is working to respond to all requests for more information, which it has to do before the countdown clock will restart, while also trying to negotiate a new contract with employees at the Gibraltar mine. In the meantime, the company’s share price — which had gained more than 25% in September after Taseko submitted the New Prosperity EIA, only to lose most of this gain over the next month — continues to trade sideways near $2.90.
It all makes for a busy Christmas season for Taseko Mines.
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