Judge orders Nunavut gold miner to pay $50,000 for failing to report spill

After more than a year of back-and-forth plea bargaining, Agnico Eagle has plead guilty to charges under the Fisheries Act for pond tailings that contaminated land at the Meadowbank Mine, about 110 km north of Baker Lake, and threatened fish stocks and other marine life in a nearby lake. (FILE PHOTO)

Agnico Eagles Mines Ltd. will pay a $50,000 fine for failing to report a spill at its Meadowbank gold mine near Baker Lake, which potentially threatened a fish population in a nearby lake.

Deputy Justice John Mitchell accepted a guilty plea to the charge, which was laid under the federal Fisheries Act, entered May 1 by Agnico Eagle at the Nunavut Court of Justice

The guilty plea was followed by a joint submission by lawyers for the $50,000 fine—accepted by Mitchell—ending more than a year’s worth of litigation and “intensive plea negotiations on both sides,” Crown lawyer Sarah Bailey told the court.

The contravention relates to “red coloured water and sediment” discovered by an Indigenous Northern Affairs Canada water resource officer at North Portage Lake Two, near the Meadowbank mine, in July 2013.

According to an agreed statement of facts submitted by lawyers, seepage from a collection pond entered a nearby sampling station, which in turn seeped through a gravel road into a nearby lake called Lake NP-2.

An earlier environmental assessment performed at the lake determined it supported a population of lake trout.

Agnico Eagle lawyer Alexandra Pike told the court her client accepted the statement of facts, but disagreed with the conclusions submitted by the Crown that the company did not act with due diligence in notifying authorities of the spill.

“We did not want it on the record that we consented to the conclusion that it was known or reasonably expected,” Pike told the court.

The Canadian-based gold mining company, which has mines in Canada, Finland and Mexico, alleges that its duty to inform authorities ended when the INAC officer discovered the contamination during the inspection.

But the INAC officer had no authority to enforce infractions under the Fisheries Act, and 22 days passed before that officer informed Environment Canada of the infraction.

Environment Canada officers are tasked with enforcing the Fisheries Act in Nunavut.

The Crown claims that Agnico Eagle failed to uphold its diligence regarding the spill by not contacting Environment Canada directly, or reporting the contamination on a 24-hour spill hotline.

Pike told the court that new preventative measures were immediately started at the site following the spill.

Agnico Eagle is also developing new spill reporting policies for its employees throughout Nunavut, Pike said.

Those policies are scheduled for implementation in June, she said.

Pike repeated that the company believes the spill was an “unfortunate circumstance,” but one “[Agnico Eagle] believes could not have been foreseen.”

Bailey explained to the court that the Crown’s recommendation of a $50,000 fine was based on Agnico Eagle’s previously clean record.

In a statement issued after the resolution of the case in court, Agnico Eagle said toxicity tests “confirmed” that the water that seeped out was non-toxic to trout and daphnia. (Daphnia is a species of crustacean.)

“Our Nunavut environment management team has revised spill procedures and plans, including a new spills notification protocol that will be shared with all Agnico Nunavut employees and we remain deeply committed to environmental protection by ensuring that measures are in place to control our activities and minimize our effects,” Dominique Girard, Agnico Eagle’s vice president of Nunavut operations said in a statement.

Just last month, Agnico Eagle had to deal with another spill, this time at its Meliadine mine near Rankin Inlet. On April 8, an estimated 30,000 litres of fuel leaked out of a storage tank because of a defective safety valve.