Updated Feb. 6, 2021, at 8:40 a.m.: this story was updated to clarify that the Bell and Granisle mines have been polluting Babine Lake since they were operational.
Decades after closing, an open-pit copper mine in northwest B.C. is still discharging wastewater with metal concentrations 250 times higher than what’s considered safe for salmon into Babine Lake, the sockeye salmon engine of the Skeena River watershed, according to a new report by SkeenaWild Conservation Trust and Lake Babine Nation. And the situation at the Granisle mine — one of two decommissioned mines on the lake — is indicative of what’s happening across the province.