How toxic impact of Mount Polley disaster filters through B.C. waters, 10 years later [Video]

Former Xatsull First Nation chief Bev Sellars recalls an emergency meeting after the Mount Polley Mine disaster, where elders were in tears as they thought of fish swimming through the toxic waste that had inundated their territorial waters.

She thinks of the 2014 disaster often.

“There are physical changes you can still see,” Sellars said. “There’s still things happening in the lake.”

The catastrophic collapse of a tailings dam in the B.C. Interior sent about 25 million cubic metres of poisoned water from the copper and gold mine surging into waterways including Polley and Quesnel lakes on Aug. 4, 2014.

The impact is now filtering though the legal system, with 15 federal Fisheries Act charges laid last week against Imperial Metals Corp. and two other firms.

The environmental impacts are still being felt too, scientists fear, with toxic particles swirling in Quesnel Lake’s water a decade later.

Research also shows tiny invertebrates that form the basis of …