De Beers held to account on failure to report mercury levels

When the people elected to uphold the law don’t fulfill their obligations, at least citizens have an alternative. This is the case with a private prosecution that the Wildlands League has filed against De Beers Canada Inc. Assisted by lawyers from the Ecojustice organization, the League is trying to force the Ontario government to respect environmental reporting regulations surrounding De Beers’ Victor Mine near Attawapiskat.

“Private prosecutions are an important tool that allows private citizens to hold industry to account,” said Julia Croome, a lawyer for Ecojustice. “When governments don’t enforce their own laws, this course of action is in the public interest.”

The Wildlands League alleges that De Beers failed to report properly on mercury levels from water monitoring stations for creeks next to the open pit Victor Mine between 2009 and 2016, violating a condition of its certificate of approval. These are offences under the Ontario Water Resources Act, with a maximum fine is $250,000 per day for a first-time corporate offender. The prosecution opened in the Ontario Court of Justice on January 12.“De Beers has failed to report on five out of nine surface water monitoring stations, a mandatory requirement of its permit, for the last seven years,” said Trevor Hesselink, Policy and Research Director for the Wildlands League and the lead author of a report on the issue last December titled “Nothing to See Here: Failures of self-monitoring and reporting of mercury at the De Beeers Victor diamond mine in Canada.”

“To compound matters, it is the downstream mercury samples that are not being reported,” Hesselink added. These are just a few of several critical problems identified over the course of the 18-month investigation. The Victor Mine is upstream from the Cree community of Attawapiskat. A separate record of one of the missing monitoring stations showed a tripling of methylmercury in local waterways.

Fish are a major source of food for residents of Attawapiskat. The high price of groceries ensures that this will continue to be the case. A request for a Health Canada study on methylmercury effects in the community by the Attawapiskat Band Council has not happened to date.

The Wildlands League demands four actions from the government: for Ontario to stop relying on the existing self-monitoring by De Beers and establish independent monitoring and reporting; to recover the full suite of monitoring data, especially all downstream data; to review the monitoring program and provide additional monitoring intensity for Granny Creeks, which run past the mine; and, to remove barriers to information and ensure public access to required performance monitoring.

The Wildlands League report alleges that both De Beers and the Ontario government tried to stonewall their independent investigation. The report can be found at wildlandsleague.org.

The Victor Mine case is in sharp contrast to the experience of the Eastern James Bay Cree. When it was found that the La Grande hydroelectric project was leading to high levels of methylmercury, a committee was formed with both Cree and Hydro-Québec representatives. At all times raw data was available to both parties. Studies examined mercury in the food chain, in wildlife other than fish, and involved samples from Cree that included blood and hair levels. Information on the effects of methylmercury in the human body was made available and included consumption recommendations.

Olivier Boucher, a neuropsychologist at Sacré-Coeur Hospital in Montreal, told the Nation that prolonged exposure to methylmercury at non-toxic doses is associated with attention, cognitive, motor and sensory impairments, especially in children exposed in utero or during the first years of life.

“Acute exposure to toxic doses can lead to more severe impairments both in adults and children, including visual loss, ataxia [the loss of full control of bodily movements] and mental retardation,” added Olivier, who also teaches psychology at the Université de Montréal.