Muskrat Falls’ feet of clay
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North Spur is key to the Muskrat Falls project as it is supposed to act as a “dam” and form about 50 per cent of the reservoir containment system. And it is naturally unstable because it contains “quick clay” — a very particular type of clay found in northern latitudes.
Quick clay is unique and can, upon disturbance and failure, liquefy, resulting in devastating landslides.
Quick clay is one of the most unstable soil types on Earth — a substance that is normally a wary engineer’s nightmare.
Norway’s well-documented and videoed 1978 Rissa landslide is adequate testimony to the rapid devastating potential of such events. In 1971, a quick clay landslide at SaintJean-Vianney in Quebec’s Saguenay region killed 31 people.
A significant quick clay landslide at or near the North Spur could breach the Muskrat Falls reservoir containment system and pose a very serious danger to the downriver communities of Happy Valley-Goose Bay and Mud Lake.
I have brought together various maps, pictures, drill results, geological cross-sections and links to available online public reports and documents on the North Spur issue at www.muskratinfo.ca.
These documents demonstrate that it is a public scandal that full North Spur quick clay landslide risk assessment has not yet been done — and made public.
Indeed, Nalcor failed to do the most basic North Spur geotechnical investigations prior to project sanction last December, and have been spending away in violation of the most basic rule of project management — do your homework before turning on the money tap.
Nalcor says the cost of North Spur “stabilization” is covered in its October 2012 Decision Gate 3 cost estimate. How can that be when a contract for the collection of basic North Spur data critical to devising a “stabilization plan” was not awarded by Nalcor to the Amec consulting company until March 2013?
And any solution they do propose will definitely be unproven technology as no one, as far as I can tell, has had the audacity to attempt to use a bank of soil with quick clay in its core as a dam.
But in spite of this, Nalcor is so over-committed to Muskrat Falls that it is still in a hurry to award multibillion-dollar contracts for the concrete dams, spillway and powerhouse on the south side of the proj- ect — before the North Spur problem is “solved” even as judged by Nalcor’s benighted criteria.
But fortunately for us, first Nalcor will need to raise some serious money by way of a bond issue tied directly to the project; it has already exhausted our oil revenue kitty and all other current account “loose change” (see budget cutbacks).
I say fortunately because down in New York, various financial experts are doing their due diligence and no doubt scratching their heads about the North Spur quick clay risk.
Those steely- eyed denizens of Wall Street will hardly be satisfied with the sort of facile North Spur assurances that Nalcor has served up to date, to the effect that, “we are working on it; we know the problem and there is really nothing to worry about.”
More likely, Wall Street is saying: “Hang on now, no full North Spur quick clay landslide risk assessment? No insurance? No insurance in place, we can’t buy your bonds.”
North Spur quick clay certainly seems to represent a force of nature destined to win out over wishful thinking.
In our modern day hubris, we are not much used to the idea of a problem being beyond technological reach.
But the North Spur very much appears to be such a case — a safe North Spur solution may not be possible no matter how much money Nalcor throws at it.
Within, say, six months, that fact may have to be faced and Muskrat Falls may well then be consigned to the dust bin of history — and the fallout would be unfathomable.