Environmental effects monitoring: Equity Mine, British Columbia

Chemical and biological monitoring in streams and lakes has been part of operations and closure activities for several decades at the Equity Mine, located in north central British Columbia.  As part of an enhanced environmental effects monitoring (EEM) program, water quality sampling of streams and lakes in three receiving environments has been ongoing by Limnotek every four years since the 1990’s. This work followed early mesocosm scale experiments by Limnotek to test the scale of effect of acid mine drainage on biological communities in streams at Equity and the effectiveness of liming treatment for ongoing mitigation (see the original mesocosm in image below).

Equity 1989