While the company argued it was doing its best—investing over into water quality overall—the provincial government found the "unacceptable" pattern of non-compliance too significant to ignore.
For decades, the coal mines dotting the valley have fueled local economies, but they’ve also leached —a mineral that, in high doses, causes deformities and reproductive failure in fish—into the Fording River. Under its permits, Teck was required to have the Fording River South water treatment facility operational by December 2018.
Teck attributed the delay to a variety of factors, including: