Before reading the timeline of the aftermath of the Mt Polley disaster, please go to the following site where there are a number of photos of the consequences of the breach of the lagoon dam (which was 130 feet tall) when a portion of it dissolved and failed.
The remains of the state-of-the-art tailings ”pond” at Mount Polley still holds 80% of the original toxic waste from the massive, adjacent open pit copper mine. “Only” 24 million cubic meters of the sludge (only 20%) was discharged over the few hours of the dam failure.
The enormous flow of the toxic mixture of sludge and liquid permanently - and drastically - eroded the downstream, originally “tiny”, Hazeltine Creek that emptied into Quesnel Lake. The sludge permanently contaminated the now huge creek bed and severely eroded the adjacent forest land and, of course, filled the bottom of the once pristine Quesnel Lake with highly poisonous and carcinogenic heavy metals and other toxic materials.
