Cameco to enter plead soon regarding pollution charges

A plea to a charge in February by Saskatchewan’s justice department regarding a spill of contaminants leading to water pollution is expected to be entered by Cameco< in the near future. The charge relates to a spill of 1.9 million litres of contaminated minewater from Cameco's Rabbit Lake uranium operation in northern Saskatchewan last November. The company is being charged under the province's Environmental Management and Protection Act. The maximum fine for offenders is $1 million.

The spill area is 2,350 metres from Collins Bay, whose waters flow into Wollaston Lake. A federal agency, the Atomic Energy Control Board, charged Cameco, jointly owned by the federal and Saskatchewan governments, shortly after the spill with infractions under the Uranium and Thorium Mining Regulations.

The company was accused of operating the Rabbit Lake waste management system without the control of instrumentation required by the approved design, and of failure to provide competent supervision of the waste system.

This prosecution led to a court hearing last December. Cameco appeared before a provincial court judge, pleaded guilty and paid a maximum $5,000 fine. (The penalty for summary conviction under the regulations was set in 1946.)

In January, a breach in the same pipeline released 90,000 litres of minewater into a containment ditch. Control equipment installed after the November spill functioned properly in this incident; Cameco is not being prosecuted for this second spill.