A large crowd gathered at the Scout Island Nature to hear a presentation from a UNBC researcher regarding the Mt. Polley tailings pond breach Tuesday evening.
Sam Albers, Facility Manager with the Quesnel River Research Centre, says although it still remains unclear of what exactly the potential repercussions will be from the August 4th collapse, he has discovered some conclusions including that the small particles from the sediment are moving both up lake and downstream.
25 million cubic meters of tailings, waste-waters, and scourings from the breach had flooded downstream surface waters on August 4th with the dominant amount remaining unknown.
Some of the questions moving forward now, according to Albers will be finding out how resilient Quesnel Lake is to these changes, to what extent will the breach impact the food web, and how the size of the particles and metal concentrations interact.