Barkerville Gold has responded about a hefty fine levied against the company for what the Ministry of Environment called violations under the Fisheries Act.
Chris Pharness is the Vice President of Environment and Sustainability…
“BGM accepts full responsibility for failing to comply with the administrative obligations under the Federal Fisheries Act. The other thing we’d like to say it there is no environmental damage, nor was there any environmental risk arising from those errors.”
The charges stem from incidents between 2014 and 2016 and Pharness says the company has made some sweeping changes to personnel and the systems since then to avoid similar administrative errors in the future…
“At the end of the day we did terminate a senior environmental employee and we hired a new group to come in and look after our environmental obligations, and they’ve done a good job of that for 2017.”
Pharness says Barkerville Gold cooperated with the investigation throughout and that it was through the information that they provided that the charges were laid.
The company was fined a total of 200 thousand dollars, 189 thousand of which will go to the Environmental Damages Fund to be used in the Cariboo…
“BGM has already initiated planning and funding for the upper Willow River Restoration Project, Caribou Monitoring and Mitigation Work as well as biological and cumulative effects monitoring and research.”