B.C. woman files private charges over Mount Polley tailings spill
VANCOUVER — An Indigenous women has filed private charges in 2014 collapse of the tailings dam at the Mount Polley mine, days after British Columbia’s government announced that provincial charges would not be laid.
Bev Sellers has filed court documents alleging that Mount Polley Mining Corp. polluted the environment when a tailings dam burst, sending 24 million cubic metres of mine waste into local waterways.
Sellers was the acting chief of the Xat’sull First Nation, located near the gold and copper mine in B.C.’s Cariboo region, when the dam collapsed on Aug. 4 three years ago.
The 15 charges, filed in Vancouver provincial court under both the provincial Environmental Act and the Mines Act, come after the newly elected NDP government announced Wednesday there would be no provincial charges laid by Friday’s three-year deadline.