A controversial water treatment facility is expected to reopen later this year after being fitted with new technology to address challenges relating to selenium.
Located at Teck’s Line Creek Operations, the West Line Creek Active Water Treatment facility was constructed to remove selenium and nitrate from mine-affected water at a cost of approximately $120 million.
However, prior to becoming operational, a fish mortality incident occurred in the area of the water treatment works in October 2014.
The fish kill is believed to have been caused by levels of certain constituents unintentionally discharged into the water during commissioning and resulted in environmental charges against Teck, which was fined $1.425 million.
The West Line Creek plant became fully operational in February 2016 when it achieved 100 per cent of its design target, reducing selenium concentrations by about 96 per cent in treated water, to below 20 parts per billion.
It initially used biological treatment technology to precipitate selenium into a solid form that could be extracted from the water and safely disposed of in a secure onsite waste facility.
However, it was revealed the facility was inadvertently releasing a more biologically aggressive form of selenium that was more likely to bioaccumulate in the aquatic environment.
Last year, Teck announced a new advanced oxidation process had been identified as a solution to this challenge and would be installed at the plant.
Teck’s Manager of Social Responsibility Nic Milligan said West Line Creek had been offline since March and was expected to reopen later this year.
“We have completed the successful piloting of a new advanced oxidation process, which has been identified as a solution to a challenge related to compounds of selenium in discharge water from the West Line Creek Active Water Treatment Facility and are proceeding with construction of plant modifications, expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2018,” he said.
Elk River Alliance Interim Executive Director Allie Ferguson said the challenges Teck had experienced at Line Creek showed there was no simple fix to reducing selenium in the watershed.
“Multiple selenium management approaches such as changes to mining practices and passive water treatment should also be used so that there is less at stake when technology like treatment plants experience hiccups,” she said.
“We are encouraged by the results of Teck’s Research and Development program as explained at the recent public meeting and hope that the additional selenium management methods can be applied at full scale in the near future.”