The Dirty Dozen 2025

What’s in the Report?

The Dirty Dozen 2025 profiles twelve existing or proposed mines that illustrate the risks and shortcomings of BC’s current mining approach. Among the most common concerns:

• Inadequate tailings management and water pollution

• The lack of sufficient ‘boots on the ground’ for monitoring and enforcement, and weak penalties for environmental violations

• Weak financial safeguards for cleanup and reclamation

• High costs to local communities, Indigenous Nations, and the environment when mines bypass environmental assessments

This pattern is deeply concerning in fish-bearing watersheds, especially in the northwest, where the stakes couldn’t be higher.

A Risky Proposal: The KSM Open-Pit Gold, Copper and Silver Mine Impacting the Unuk & Nass Watersheds

One of the mines spotlighted in the Dirty Dozen report is Seabridge Gold’s KSM Mine. KSM is the world’s largest undeveloped gold mine, with potential impacts spanning two major salmon-bearing watersheds. Mine discharges of selenium- and metal-laden water to the Unuk watershed will require water treatment for hundreds of years by technology not yet proven at the scale the mine will require. At 239 metres tall, KSM’s wet tailings storage facility will contain acid-generating materials and will be the highest permitted dam in BC and among the highest in the world. A dam failure could impact hundreds of kilometres of the Nass River, one of BC’s top salmon-producing systems.

To cut costs and maximize shareholder payback, Seabridge has altered the KSM mine plan in recent years to i) maximize extraction of gold, a luxury metal that is not required to support the renewable energy transition, and ii) prioritize more destructive open-pit mining and defer any underground mining. In July 2024, KSM was deemed “substantially started” by the Environmental Assessment Office, thereby removing the expiration date on its Environmental Assessment (EA) Certificate, even though only one out of 32 physical components identified in the EA Certificate had been constructed. KSM’s EA is already over ten years old, and this decision allows the mine to proceed indefinitely based on outdated science that doesn’t consider new information about climate change effects and tailings dam failure impacts. KSM’s substantial start determination is facing legal challenge from a Canadian First Nation who claim a lack of consultation, and another legal challenge asserting the decision was legally and factually unreasonable. Provincial regulators should require a reassessment of the KSM project based on current information, Indigenous consent, and a mine plan that prioritizes critical minerals extraction and minimizes the scale of water- and waste-related risks.

Despite the enormous risks, Seabridge has made misleading public claims about the project’s size and environmental footprint. We’ve called them out and joined the legal challenge in an effort to hold the government accountable. We believe projects of this scale must be assessed with integrity and Indigenous leadership, based on current information, laws, and science, not greenlit behind closed doors.