Arts, Faculty of
Sociology, Department of
DSpace
UBCV
Chewinski, Max
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD
University of British Columbia
A central goal of my dissertation research is to better understand how cultural dynamics shape environmental politics and generate inequalities in decision-making processes. I draw on the 2014 Mount Polley mining disaster and subsequent water management plans to examine public participation and mobilization in Likely, British Columbia. I use 42 semi-structured interviews, 4,723 pages of documents including emails and letters associated with Mount Polley’s public liaison committee, and 208 news articles to assess the relationship between culture, inequality, and environmental politics. I begin by adopting a procedural justice framework to examine how cultural dynamics facilitate or constrain meaningful opportunities for residents to shape decision-making. I find that strategies of agenda denial (nonrecognition and symbolic placation) prevent residents from meaningfully participating in the definition of environmental problems and their proposed solutions. I develop the concept of manufactured confusion to highlight inequalities in meaning-making resources and capabilities. Manufactured confusion is a taken for granted condition that emerges from three practices: (1) a reliance on a large volume of scientific information (2) insufficient resources to interpret complex scientific data and (3) insufficient opportunities to discuss scientific data. Next, I examine how emotions shape the social relations and practices that structure environmental deliberations. I find that trauma from the disaster and experiences of procedural injustice sparked intense and durable negative emotions including anger, animosity, fear, and frustration. The presence of unmanaged negative emotions influences two related outcomes. First, negative emotions facilitate the emergence of polarization as empathy walls between stakeholders are secured instead of scaled. Second, often linked to the first, negative emotions facilitate disengagement as participants seek to avoid emotional harm. Finally, I shift to examine how cultural context and capacity prevent social movement emergence and channel residents towards quiet mobilization. I find that a cultural disavowal of contentious collective action, the presence of community corrosion, and the absence of formal mobilizing structures inhibit contentious mobilization. In its place, individual and collective forms of quiet mobilization emerge in the face of mounting environmental risks. Quiet mobilization includes civic practices such as writing op-eds, letters, launching public awareness campaigns and initiating environmental permit appeals.
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS AFTER DISASTER STRIKES: THE CULTURAL DYNAMICS OF PUBLIC PARTICIPATION AND MOBILIZATION by MAX CHEWINSKI B.A., York University, 2012 M.A., Carleton University, 2015 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Sociology) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) July 2022 © Max Chewinski, 2022 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled: Environmental Politics After Disaster Strikes: The Cultural Dynamics of Public Participation and Mobilization submitted by Max Chewinski in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology Examining Committee: Catherine Corrigall-Brown, Professor, Sociology, UBC Supervisor Emily Huddart Kennedy, Associate Professor, Sociology, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Rima Wilkes, Professor, Sociology, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Thomas Kemple, Professor, Sociology, UBC University Examiner Leila Harris, Professor, Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, UBC University Examiner iii Abstract A central goal of my dissertation research is to better understand how cultural dynamics shape environmental politics and generate inequalities in decision-making processes. I draw on the 2014 Mount Polley mining disaster and subsequent water management plans to examine public participation and mobilization in Likely, British Columbia. I use 42 semi-structured interviews, 4,723 pages of documents including emails and letters associated with Mount Polley’s public liaison committee, and 208 news articles to assess the relationship between culture, inequality, and environmental politics. I begin by adopting a procedural justice framework to examine how cultural dynamics facilitate or constrain meaningful opportunities for residents to shape decision-making. I find that strategies of agenda denial (nonrecognition and symbolic placation) prevent residents from meaningfully participating in the definition of environmental problems and their proposed solutions. I develop the concept of manufactured confusion to highlight inequalities in meaning-making resources and capabilities. Manufactured confusion is a taken for granted condition that emerges from three practices: (1) a reliance on a large volume of scientific information (2) insufficient resources to interpret complex scientific data and (3) insufficient opportunities to discuss scientific data. Next, I examine how emotions shape the social relations and practices that structure environmental deliberations. I find that trauma from the disaster and experiences of procedural injustice sparked intense and durable negative emotions including anger, animosity, fear, and frustration. The presence of unmanaged negative emotions influences two related outcomes. iv First, negative emotions facilitate the emergence of polarization as empathy walls between stakeholders are secured instead of scaled. Second, often linked to the first, negative emotions facilitate disengagement as participants seek to avoid emotional harm. Finally, I shift to examine how cultural context and capacity prevent social movement emergence and channel residents towards quiet mobilization. I find that a cultural disavowal of contentious collective action, the presence of community corrosion, and the absence of formal mobilizing structures inhibit contentious mobilization. In its place, individual and collective forms of quiet mobilization emerge in the face of mounting environmental risks. Quiet mobilization includes civic practices such as writing op-eds, letters, launching public awareness campaigns and initiating environmental permit appeals. v Lay Summary My dissertation seeks to better understand how culture shapes public participation in environmental politics and generates inequalities in decision-making processes. I focus on the experiences of residents living at the site of the 2014 Mount Polley mining disaster. I find that the nonrecognition of community concerns about the environment, a lack of resources for interpreting complex science, and insufficient opportunities for discussion prevent meaningful participation in public consultations. Next, I demonstrate how feeling ignored and powerless elicits negative emotions. In turn, negative emotions increase polarization between stakeholders and/or facilitates disengagement from public consultations. Finally, I argue that the cultural context of the community, a lack of formal organizations, and a breakdown in social relationships prevents the emergence of oppositional mobilization. Instead, rural residents engage in more civic forms of participation that include letter-writing, shaping public conversations in the media, and launching appeals of environmental permits. vi Preface This dissertation is Max Chewinski’s original, unpublished, and independent work. The research presented in Chapters 2, 3, and 4 was covered by University of British Columbia’s Behavioural Research Ethics Board (certificate number H19-00913) under the study’s Principal Investigator, Dr. Catherine Corrigall-Brown. vii Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iii Lay Summary .................................................................................................................................v Preface ........................................................................................................................................... vi Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................ vii List of Tables ................................................................................................................................ xi List of Figures .............................................................................................................................. xii List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................................. xiii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... xiv Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................1 1.1 Situating the Dissertation: Environmental Politics and Culture ..................................... 3 1.2 Environmental Justice, Culture, and Emotions in Environmental Deliberations ........... 5 1.3 The Cultural Dynamics of Quiet Mobilization ............................................................. 10 1.4 The Case: Environmental Politics in the Aftermath of Disaster ................................... 12 1.5 Methods......................................................................................................................... 16 1.6 Overview of the Dissertation ........................................................................................ 18 Chapter 2: Agenda Denial, Manufactured Confusion, and the Cultural Production of Procedural Environmental Injustice ..........................................................................................19 2.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 19 2.2 Literature Review .......................................................................................................... 22 2.2.1 Cultural Dimensions of Procedural Justice ........................................................... 22 2.2.2 Public Participation in Environmental Deliberations ........................................... 25 viii 2.2.3 Agenda Setting, Agenda Denial, and Public Policy ............................................. 27 2.3 The Case: The Mount Polley Mine ............................................................................... 30 2.4 Methods......................................................................................................................... 32 2.4.1 Interviews .............................................................................................................. 33 2.4.2 Freedom of Information (FOI) Documents ........................................................... 36 2.4.3 News Articles ........................................................................................................ 36 2.4.4 Analysis................................................................................................................. 37 2.5 Results ........................................................................................................................... 38 2.5.1 Agenda Denial Strategies in Environmental Deliberations .................................. 38 2.5.1.1 The Strategy and Tactics of Nonrecognition .................................................... 39 2.5.1.2 The Strategy and Tactics of Symbolic Placation .............................................. 43 2.5.2 The Perils of Science in Environmental Deliberations ......................................... 47 2.5.2.1 “What the heck are all these random dots?” Accessibility and Manufactured Confusion .......................................................................................................................... 47 2.5.2.2 “I’m not interested in being talked to” Resource Availability and Manufactured Confusion .......................................................................................................................... 50 2.5.2.3 “There wasn’t enough time” Deliberation and Manufactured Confusion ........ 52 2.6 Discussion and Conclusion ........................................................................................... 54 Chapter 3: “It Became a Battlefield”: Emotions, Polarization, and Disengagement from Environmental Deliberations ......................................................................................................58 3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 58 3.2 Literature Review .......................................................................................................... 61 3.2.1 What are emotions? What do they do? ................................................................. 62 ix 3.2.2 Centering Emotions to Explain Environment Deliberation Outcomes ................. 63 3.2.3 Centering Emotions to Explain Environmental and Procedural Justice ............... 66 3.3 The Case: The Mount Polley Mine ............................................................................... 69 3.4 Methods, Data, and Analysis ........................................................................................ 73 3.4.1 Interviews .............................................................................................................. 73 3.4.2 Freedom of Information (FOI) Documents ........................................................... 76 3.4.3 News Articles ........................................................................................................ 77 3.4.4 Analysis................................................................................................................. 77 3.5 Results ........................................................................................................................... 78 3.5.1 Emotions in the Aftermath of Disaster ................................................................. 79 3.5.2 From Scaling to Securing Empathy Walls: Emotions and Polarization ............... 81 3.5.3 Emotions, Polarization, and Disengagement ........................................................ 86 3.6 Discussion and Conclusion ........................................................................................... 89 Chapter 4: Rural Mobilization in the Face of Mounting Environmental Risks ....................94 4.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 94 4.2 Literature Review .......................................................................................................... 97 4.2.1 Disasters and Emergent Collective Action ........................................................... 97 4.2.2 Nonmobilization, Quiet Mobilization and Environmental Risks ....................... 102 4.3 Mounting Environmental Risks After Disaster Strikes .............................................. 107 4.4 Methods, Data, and Analysis ...................................................................................... 110 4.4.1 Interviews ............................................................................................................ 111 4.4.2 Freedom of Information (FOI) Documents ......................................................... 113 4.4.3 News Articles ...................................................................................................... 114 x 4.4.4 Analysis............................................................................................................... 114 4.5 Results ......................................................................................................................... 115 4.5.1 Barriers to Contentious Collective Action .......................................................... 116 4.5.1.1 Cultural Context: Disavowal of Contentious Collective Action ..................... 116 4.5.1.2 Mobilizing Structures: Community Corrosion ............................................... 119 4.5.1.3 Mobilizing Structures: Formal Organizations and Leaders ............................ 121 4.5.2 Quiet Mobilization After Disaster Strikes (August 2014-December 2015) ....... 123 4.5.3 Quiet Mobilization in the Face of Mounting Environmental Risks (January 2016-August 2019) ....................................................................................................................... 128 4.6 Discussion and Conclusion ......................................................................................... 133 Chapter 5: Conclusion ...............................................................................................................139 5.1 Summary of Dissertation Findings ............................................................................. 140 5.2 Contributions, Limitations, and Future Directions ..................................................... 144 5.3 Policy Implications ..................................................................................................... 149 5.4 Final Remarks ............................................................................................................. 150 References ...................................................................................................................................152 Appendices ..................................................................................................................................172 Appendix A List of Participants ............................................................................................. 172 Appendix B Interview Guide .................................................................................................. 173 xi List of Tables Table 1 Key Events Following the Mount Polley Disaster (2014-2019) ...................................... 15 Table 2 Descriptive Statistics of Participants (N=42) .................................................................. 35 Table 3 Descriptive Statistics of Participants (N=42) .................................................................. 75 Table 4 Descriptive Statistics of Participants (N=42) ................................................................ 112 Table 5 Op-ed Authors' Stance Towards the Mount Polley Mine (2014-2015) ......................... 125 Table 6 Op-ed Authors' Stance Towards the Government (2014-2015) .................................... 127 Table 7 Op-ed Authors’ Stance Towards the Mount Polley Mine (2016-2019) ........................ 129 Table 8 Op-ed Authors’ Stance Towards the Government (2016-2019) .................................... 129 xii List of Figures Figure 1 Study Area ...................................................................................................................... 31 Figure 2 Quesnel Lake Time Series Images (2007-2017) ............................................................ 41 Figure 3 Study Area ...................................................................................................................... 70 Figure 4 Satellite Image Prior to the Mount Polley Tailings Dam Failure (July 29th, 2014) ....... 71 Figure 5 Satellite Image Following the Mount Polley Tailings Dam Failure (August 5th, 2014) 72 Figure 6 Model of Negative Emotions and Deliberative Outcomes ............................................. 79 Figure 7 Study Area .................................................................................................................... 108 Figure 8 Billboard Sponsored by CCQL .................................................................................... 131 xiii List of Abbreviations CRD Cariboo Regional District CCQL Concerned Citizens of Quesnel Lake FOI Freedom of Information LTWMP Long-Term Water Management Plan LULUs Locally Unwanted Land Uses MOE Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy MPMC Mount Polley Mining Corporation PLC Public Liaison Committee QRRC Quesnel River Research Centre STWMP Short-Term Water Management Plan xiv Acknowledgements I would like to sincerely thank my participants who offered their time and energy to share their stories about the Mount Polley disaster and its aftermath. This dissertation would not have been possible without your contribution, and I hope that you will not be disappointed in the outcome. I would especially like to thank Pohney Whitmer, Richard Rujanschi, Wayne Henke, Denise Carlson, Richard Holmes, Elma Sol, Skeed Borkowski, Sharon Borkowski, and Lucas for their hospitality and companionship during my stay in Likely. The dinner parties, boating and fishing trips on Quesnel Lake, and day trips huckleberry picking in the bush are some of the fondest memories I have of my dissertation fieldwork. Graduate school, and academic writing specifically, is often a solitary enterprise. I would not have been able to do it without the encouragement and support of a diverse group of people. First, a big thank you to Catherine Corrigall-Brown for years of intellectual guidance, financial and emotional support. My graduate student experience improved drastically once you took me under your wings. Your mentorship has taught me a lot about what it means to an excellent supervisor and colleague, and I cannot wait to pay it forward. Thank you, Rima Wilkes and Emily Huddart Kennedy, for providing thoughtful and quick feedback on iterations of my dissertation chapters, grant applications, and for writing supportive letters of reference as I advance to the next stage of my academic career. It would be remiss of me to leave out the administrative powerhouse of the Department of Sociology—May Chan, Kristin Sopotiuk, Dan Harper, and Conor Trahar—who have always helped me navigate the complexities of university bureaucracy – thank you! Second, to my friends: thank you for always being present, and for making my time in Vancouver exceptional. Whether escaping to Wreck beach or the north shore mountains, I xv always appreciate your company. There are so many of you, but I want to specifically thank: Kate Jaffe, Adam Howe, and Christina Treleaven for enriching my experience at UBC; Peter Pawlak for reigniting my interest in, and dragging me out to, hardcore punk shows locally and in the U.S.; Kyle Sutherland for the bike rides and hiking expeditions; Agata Zienowicz for always planning adventures that serve as a reminder that there is much more to life than the academy; Sarah Rodimon for her commitment as my long-distance best friend; Alex Matheson and Alex Korzuchowski for the brewery crawls, RPDR viewing nights, and weekend getaways; Erik Zannier and Nathan Cornale for the patio hangs and camping adventures; and Dylan Kafka and Tabitha Wilkinson for our annual pub nights in Toronto. Third, I would not have been able to get through this degree without the support of my family. Huge thanks to my parents, Monika and Artur, for their endless love and support as I completed yet another degree; my sister Alex, whose sense of humor always brightens my day; and my husband, Pavlo Bereas, for being the most compassionate and empathic partner a guy could ask for. Finally, I would like to acknowledge that this research would not have been possible without financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the University of British Columbia (from the Public Scholars Initiative, the Department of Sociology, and the Faculty of Arts). 1 Chapter 1: Introduction At around 1 a.m. on August 4th, 2014, a tailings dam from the Mount Polley copper and gold mine, located in the central interior of British Columbia, endured a catastrophic failure.1 Over a sixteen-hour period, twenty-five million meters3 of mining waste—enough to fill 10, 000 Olympic swimming pools—flooded Polley Lake before making its way down Hazeltine Creek and into Quesnel Lake. Residents along Quesnel Lake, including in Likely, Mitchell Bay, and Winkley Creek, were either awoken in the middle of the night by the disaster itself or by concerned neighbours calling by phone or pounding on their door to warn of an impending tsunami. The tsunami never happened. But Mitchell Bay resident, Kim Goforth, vividly recalls being woken up by the sound of the spill. In the darkness of night, he stood on his deck, recalling, “I could not figure out what it was… It sounded as if ten Boeing 747 planes were taking off at the same time.” Further up the lake in Likely, Pohney Whitmer and Richard Rujanschi stood on their deck in the dark, listening but unable to see what was unfolding before their eyes. Richard explained, “we didn't know what the heck was going on. It sounded like Niagara Falls. There was this incredible noise, as if you’re living next to a waterfall.” As the hours went by, Quesnel Lake area residents sprang into action. At 5 a.m. volunteers with Likely First Responders woke up Robin Hood (the President of the Chamber of Commerce, but commonly referred to as Likely’s unofficial Mayor) to evacuate campsites at Cedar Point Provincial Park. Residents who drew water from Quesnel Lake shut off their water 1 Tailings are the waste produced through the extraction process containing water, ore, and hazardous materials. 2 pumps, drained their water lines and gathered water from nearby creeks. Other residents removed their boats from the lake fearing they would be swept away by the encroaching debris (floating islands of logs) that were pummeled into the lake. Over the next days and weeks, a pall of uncertainty, mixed with shock, sadness, and anger hung like a thick cloud over the once quiet rural community of approximately 350 residents. Community members began to fear what the release of toxic substances including arsenic, mercury, and lead would mean for water quality and the salmon migrating through Quesnel Lake. And as a rural community with historically deep ties to resource extraction and eco-tourism, the spill stoked fears and uncertainty about the consequences of this tragedy on the local economy. In an interview on August 5th with regional news source The Williams Lake Tribune, Robin Hood made these concerns very clear: “The whole economy of [Likely] is dependent on the mine and tourism. Now we might have lost both overnight” (Birchwater 2014). Technological disasters, such as the Mount Polley spill, are disruptive events that present challenges for recovery as uncertainty over impacts spread and fears of environmental risks emerge.2 For example, uncertainty related to economic loss, exposure to oil, and environmental contamination following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill negatively affected recovery in Mobile County, Alabama as significantly high levels of stress became widespread in the community (Gill, Picou, and Ritchie 2012). Although there are significant challenges 2 Technological disasters can be traced to human error and tend to create chronic uncertainty about economic impacts, health effects, and environmental damage (Gill et al. 2012). Examples include dam failures and oil spills. Risks, including environmental risks, refer to “outcomes that have an impact upon what humans value; the possibility of occurrence (uncertainty)” and the context-specific combination of each of these two elements (Renn 2008:2). 3 associated with technological disasters, they can also act as catalysts for political action (Picou, Marshall, and Gill 2004). For example, over two-thirds of survey respondents residing in Baldwin County, Alabama and Franklin County, Florida, reported engaging in one or more forms of political action (from signing petitions or attending community meetings to participating in protests) in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (Bergstrand and Mayer 2017). Disasters are clearly disruptive, but they also present opportunities for affected communities to participate in environmental politics. A central goal of my dissertation research is to better understand the cultural dynamics that shape public participation in environmental politics after disaster strikes. I focus on the five-year period following the 2014 Mount Polley disaster, which includes the 2017 approval of Mount Polley’s long-term plan to discharge wastewater into Quesnel Lake, to examine political participation in the face of mounting environmental risks. I begin this introduction by situating the three empirical chapters contained within this dissertation as investigations of environmental politics, public participation, and culture. Next, I review the key theoretical frameworks that inform Chapters 2, 3 and 4 and the contributions I make to each. I then briefly review the case and methods before concluding with a brief outline of the dissertation. 1.1 Situating the Dissertation: Environmental Politics and Culture Environmental politics are fundamentally about the social processes and actors involved in making decisions about the environment (DeSombre 2020). Environmental decisions may be related to the use and management of natural resources such as minerals or about addressing the environmental risks posed by industrial pollution. There are institutional, noninstitutional, and 4 civic avenues for individual or collective participation in environmental politics. Some people participate in environmental politics through existing institutions. These include, for example, participating in deliberations related to issues such as climate adaptation (Bowden, Nyberg, and Wright 2020) or environmental litigation directed at either corporations or government (Chewinski and Corrigall–Brown 2020).3 Noninstitutional forms of participation tend to be oppositional, contentious, and associated with social movements.4 Participating in protests against mining companies accused of environmental degradation is an example of contentious political engagement (Chewinski 2019). Civic modes of engagement, captured by Jerolmack and Walker's (2018) concept of quiet mobilization, stand in sharp contrast to noninstitutional politics because they disavow contentious tactics such as protest and direct action. Quiet mobilization represents a blended form of social action that may include institutional forms of participation (deliberations), the formation of interest groups as well as everyday political interactions with neighbours, friends, and family (Jerolmack and Walker 2018). Common to all forms of participation in environmental politics is the practice of defining environmental problems and the appropriate solutions required to address them (DeSombre 2020). This is fundamentally a cultural process that involves the mobilization of values, worldviews, and norms.5 The cultural dynamics of environmental politics includes attention to 3 Deliberations include spaces in which multiple stakeholders converge to share knowledge and opinions about specific issues and engage in debate and reflection (Parkins and Mitchell 2005). Deliberations hold the promise of creating decisions that are consensual and thus more legitimate (Baber and Bartlett 2018). Examples of deliberations include public consultations, mini-publics, and citizens’ juries. 4 Social movements include sustained, collective efforts to promote or resist change, and they are often readily associated with noninstitutional tactics (McAdam and Boudet 2012). 5 Culture refers to “processes of meaning-making” that include the “various rituals, symbols, evaluations, norms, and categories that people may share and take for granted as natural.” (Spillman 2020:17). According to Spillman 5 how meaning is socially produced, disseminated, and contested as people attempt to shape decisions related to the environment (Brulle 2010). Cultural dynamics not only facilitate the development of new meanings and worldviews but may also result in the emergence of collective action as status quo interpretations of environmental problems and solutions are challenged (Brulle 2010). A growing body of environmental sociological research examines the role of cultural dynamics in explaining how people participate (or not) in environmental politics (Brulle 2010; Chewinski 2022; Jerolmack and Walker 2018; Kennedy and Johnston 2019; Kojola and Pellow 2020). Culturally driven meanings of place, for example, can shape whether residents who are facing the development of copper mines in their communities mobilize support for, or against, new mining projects (Kojola 2020). Researchers argue that cultural dynamics are an important driver of environmental politics, and greater analytic attention is needed to fully appreciate the social contexts that shape individual ideas, beliefs, and action related to the environment. Thus, “it is time to welcome culture back” into research on the relationship between society and the environment (Kennedy and Johnston 2019:594). My dissertation research contributes to this research stream by tracing how cultural dynamics contour environmental politics and generate inequalities in decision-making processes. 1.2 Environmental Justice, Culture, and Emotions in Environmental Deliberations Chapters 2 and 3 adopt an environmental justice framework to assess public participation in environmental politics. Environmental justice “is a vision of a possible future” and refers to (2020:17), a focus on meaning-making processes helps reveal “how taken-for-granted ideas may generate power, inequality, and conflict.” 6 the fair distribution of environmental and health impacts and the meaningful involvement of all people in the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental policies, laws and regulations (Pellow 2018:12). Environmental justice research frequently focuses on cases on injustice, where disparities in exposure to environmental hazards, risks, or decision-making processes exists. Environmental justice scholarship has a long history of examining environmental inequalities related to locally unwanted land uses (LULUs) such as resource extraction projects, hazardous waste sites, and polluting industrial facilities. Since the 1970s, and inspired by the rise of the environmental justice movement in the United States, research has focused on the disproportionate burdens placed on racialized and working-class communities located near LULUs (Brulle and Pellow 2006; Bullard 2000; Taylor 2014). This research has provided strong evidence that such communities are more likely to be located near LULUs and thus disproportionately exposed to environmental risks and negative health outcomes (Clark, Millet, and Marshall 2014; Mohai and Saha 2006, 2007). Issues of distribution (uneven exposure to environment risk and associated health disparities) have been the primary area of focus in the environmental justice literature (Konisky 2015; Malin, Opsal, et al. 2019; Schlosberg 2007). Yet, environmental justice is much more than uneven exposure to environmental risk. Environmental justice considerations also include disparities in people’s abilities to participate in environmental politics and influence decision-making. A growing body of scholarship now focuses on procedural environmental justice, or the presence or absence of meaningful opportunities for everyday people to influence the decisions that affect their community and local environment (Roberts, Pellow, and Mohai 2018). Procedural environmental justice is present when: scientific information is provided to 7 communities (Schlosberg 2007); culturally distinct identities and worldviews are included and recognized (Whyte 2018); and communities have power and influence in shaping environmental decisions (Hunold and Young 1998). The sufficiency of these conditions are being challenged as scholars develop a more robust account of procedural environmental justice that focuses on culturally-inflected disparities in capabilities and resources (Bell and Carrick 2018; Bustos, Folchi, and Fragkou 2017; Jalbert et al. 2019; Malin, Opsal, et al. 2019). Chapter 2 contributes to existing efforts to develop a more robust procedural environmental justice framework by magnifying the disparities in capabilities and resources that prevent people from meaningfully participating in public consultations. I do this by integrating theoretical insights from two cognate fields: public participation in environmental deliberations and research on agenda denial. Informed by Habermas’ theory of communicative action which stresses collaboration, mutual understanding and negotiation, scholarship on public participation in environmental deliberations has focused on determining the indicators associated with effective and meaningful participation. Researchers consistently highlight how aspects of fairness (sufficient opportunities to express interests and the equal consideration of viewpoints) and competence (the provision of information and the tools for its interpretation) are required for effective and meaningful deliberations (Dietz 2003; Nenko et al. 2019; Webler 1995). Agenda denial research focuses on the cultural strategies, including nonrecognition and symbolic placation, that prevent the meaningful consideration of public issues and knowledge (Cobb and Ross 1997b; Cook 2015; De’Arman 2020). Nonrecognition and symbolic placation strategies include multiple tactics that are deployed to either deny, dismiss and/or refute public 8 issues and solutions. Together, both literatures emphasize the meaning-making capabilities and resources that can either diminish or facilitate procedural environmental justice. I show how agenda denial strategies of nonrecognition, and symbolic placation prevent residents from being able to define environmental problems related to water quality in Quesnel Lake or propose solutions about wastewater management. I develop the concept of manufactured confusion to show how taken for granted norms and practices associated with public consultations deprive people of the time and resources to makes sense of large volumes of complex scientific data. Incorporating strategies of agenda denial and manufactured confusion present one opportunity for further developing a framework on the cultural production of procedural environmental injustice. Chapter 3 is also focused on the cultural dynamics related to procedural environmental justice, but with an analytic focus on the role of emotions in environmental deliberations. A great deal of research in sociology and psychology indicates that experiences of injustice (whether related to procedures or unfavourable outcomes) evoke intense and durable emotional reactions (Demarest 2021; Hegtvedt and Parris 2014; Kals and Müller 2012; Mikula, Scherer, and Athenstaedt 1998). And we know from decades of research that emotions, and the expectation of specific emotions, powerfully shapes individual practices and decision-making processes (Davidson and Kecinski 2022; Loewenstein, O’Donoghue, and Bhatia 2015; Turner and Stets 2005). Positive emotions such as joy tend to be associated with adaptive practices that facilitate social connection whereas negative emotions such as anger may contribute to maladaptive practices such as avoidance or disengagement (Barclay and Kiefer 2014). Negative emotions are particularly significant for individual practices because they narrow the options for behaviour 9 and motivate outcomes such as disengagement as a protection against emotional harm (Barclay and Kiefer 2014; Fredrickson 2001; Lazarus 1991). Emotions and their consequences are thus critical for understanding how people respond to environmental and procedural injustice. The powerful role of emotions in social life has influenced research on deliberations and environmental justice. Some deliberative scholars have found emotions to be productive by encouraging the development of more thoughtful arguments and opinions (Polletta and Gardner 2018). Others have found emotions to function as a challenge for deliberations by impeding ongoing participation (Komporozos-Athanasiou and Thompson 2015). Environmental social scientists have repeatedly stated that the role of emotions in environmental deliberations and their associated outcomes remains underdeveloped (Buijs and Lawrence 2013; Peltola et al. 2018). Environmental justice researchers are also increasingly examining how emotions shape participation (or not) in environmental politics or people’s responses to injustice (Kojola 2020; Kojola and Pellow 2020; Norgaard 2011; Norgaard and Reed 2017). Missing in much of this work is an exploration of the role of emotions in the context of procedural environmental justice. My research in Chapter 3 contributes to this developing area by arguing that experiences of procedural injustice may facilitate the development of intense negative emotions (anger, animosity, fear, and frustration) that have significant consequences on social relations and practices. I show that negative emotions entrench polarization and threaten participatory practices within environmental deliberations as people disengage to avoid emotional harm. 10 1.3 The Cultural Dynamics of Quiet Mobilization Chapter 4 shifts to an assessment of environmental politics outside of public deliberations. I examine why contentious collective action failed to materialize and the forms of mobilization that took its place. Sociologists have found disasters to be catalysts for collective action, with emergent groups typifying community responses following a disaster event (Picou et al. 2004; Stallings and Quarantelli 1985; Tierney 2014). Emergent groups refer to collective actions that either respond to the immediate needs of disaster victims (e.g., search and rescue teams) or to pursue long-term community goals (e.g., by forming interest groups). A large share of disaster research has focused on explaining and describing the factors contributing the emergence of contentious collective action after disaster strikes (Aldrich 2012; Blocker, Burke, and Sherkat 1991; Cable and Degutis 1991; Luft 2012; Walsh 1981). There are at least three factors frequently cited as contributing to the emergence of contentious collective action: the presence of mobilizing structures (formal organizations and social networks), grievances, and threat appraisals. Due to the empirical focus on successful cases of contentious collective action (selecting on the dependent variable), there is a lack of research explaining why collective action fails to materialize after disaster strikes. My dissertation breaks with methodological conventions by investigating the emergence of contentious collective action through an analysis of populations at risk of mobilization. In doing so, I follow the work of social movement scholars who examine counterfactual cases or populations at risk of mobilization (Boudet 2011; McAdam and Boudet 2012; Messer, Shriver, and Adams 2015; Wright and Boudet 2012). Researchers have found that nonmobilization is often a function of the absence of capacity (formal organizations, social 11 networks, and political opportunities) and motivation (community context). My research traces the lack of contentious collective action by Quesnel Lake area residents to three factors. The first is related to community context, which is fundamentally rooted in cultural practices. Residents disavow contentious collective action because it is at odds with the community’s dependence on mining, individual lifestyle choices, and assessments of effectiveness. The second and third factors reflect capacity issues. The disaster facilitated the emergence of community corrosion, which refers to the emergence of social conflict and a breakdown in social relationships following a technological disaster (Freudenburg 1997; Gill, Ritchie, and Picou 2016; Mayer, Running, and Bergstrand 2015). Community corrosion is partly attributable to differences in meaning-making. In cases of community corrosion, residents frequently disagree on the problem (e.g., the severity of the spill on the environment) and who is to blame. Finally, a lack of capacity also includes the absence of formal organizations and leaders within the community to activate contentious collective action. The lack of contentious collective action by Quesnel Lake area residents would likely be categorized as nonmobilization because noninstitutionalized tactics such as protest were missing (McAdam and Boudet 2012; Wright and Boudet 2012). There is growing concern that a narrow focus on contentious tactics may lead to a “a fundamental misreading of the situation” (Jerolmack and Walker 2018:510). Jerolmack and Walker (2018) introduce the concept of quiet mobilization to capture the types of political practices that reflect mobilization by people living in small, rural communities. Quiet mobilization refers to individual and collective forms of political engagement that are either supportive or against new resource development projects. They include, for example, attendance and participation in public consultations, conversations 12 with neighbours, and the formation of interest groups (Jerolmack and Walker 2018). My research is some of the first to apply the concept of quiet mobilization to a context in which resource development is already occurring. In Chapter 4, I argue that the three factors constraining the emergence of contentious collective action channeled residents into quiet forms of mobilization. Quiet forms of mobilization were largely related to competing definitions of the problem (environmental contamination and disaster recovery) and expressed in opposite the editorials (op-eds) and letters/emails to members of government, Ministry and MPMC staff. As the mine began its consultations in 2016 about its plans to discharge mine wastewater into the environment, the tactics associated with quiet mobilization became more blended, collective, and oppositional. Quesnel Lake area residents who were economically independent of the mine and/or participating in consultations continued writing op-eds. This same group of residents also adopted more collective and institutional forms of advocacy, including the formation of an interest group and an environmental permit appeal process. Disasters and mounting environmental risks may not have spurred contentious collective action in Likely, but it did incite different forms of quiet mobilization that typify political participation in rural communities surrounding Quesnel Lake. 1.4 The Case: Environmental Politics in the Aftermath of Disaster The 2014 Mount Polley disaster offers a unique lens through which to examine environmental politics. This is largely because environmental politics between 2014-2019 include public participation during both extraordinary and more ordinary events. The first period, 13 marked by the 2014 tailings dam failure, initiated a public consultation process related to disaster response and recovery. The second period, beginning in 2016, is associated with issues related to Mount Polley’s long-term water management plan (LTWMP). During this period, the scope of consultations expanded to include deliberations on how to manage excess wastewater at the Mount Polley mine. Between 2014-2019, over 40 community meetings were organized in the Cariboo Region. A significant number of these meetings occurred in Likely, but some were also organized in Big Lake, Horsefly, Quesnel, and Williams Lake. Separate consultation processes were organized in Xatśūll First Nation and Williams Lake First Nation, but the scope of this project is limited to the experiences of Quesnel Lake area residents. 6 While community meetings are informal public consultation processes, I also examine formal public consultation processes that occurred through a public liaison committee (PLC). The PLC was established prior to the disaster as a vehicle for multiple stakeholders to keep informed on, and deliberate, issues related to the Mount Polley mine. Stakeholders involved in the PLC include: members of rural communities (Big Lake, Horsefly, Likely, and Mitchell Bay), economic associations (such as the Williams Lake Chamber of Commerce), representatives from 6 Consequently, this is a partial history of environmental politics after disaster strikes. I focus on the experiences of predominantly white participants living in the Quesnel Lake area. I decided to focus on these residents after reviewing the 2016 Annual Environmental and Reclamation Report for the Mount Polley Mine. Appendix B of the report includes minutes from a public liaison committee (PLC) meeting. In the meeting minutes, Joan Sorley, Cariboo Regional District (CRD) representative for Likely, spoke about numerous procedural issues related to the public consultation process including a lack of public inclusion in wastewater management planning. At one point in the meeting, Joan stated “the community of Likely and the CRD need to be consulted at the same level as the First Nations. Consultation needs to be more holistic” (Mount Polley Mining 2016:7). It is this quote, and the procedural issues identified by Joan in a non-Indigenous community, that also sparked my interest in this case. My general interest in mining issues can be traced to previous involvement in mining justice activism (see Chewinski 2015:55–57) and subsequent research on environmental justice mobilizations in response to Canadian mining abroad (see Chewinski 2016, 2017). 14 Xatśūll First Nation and Williams Lake First Nation, elected officials from the Cariboo Regional District, environmental non-profits such as the Cariboo Conservation Society, numerous Ministries from the Government of British Columbia (Ministry of Environment; Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources; Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development), and MPMC consultants and staff. Between 2014-2019, 19 PLC meetings were organized. As with community meetings, PLC meetings addressed the same scope of issues related to disaster response, recovery, and long-term water management. Quesnel Lake area residents had at least two other opportunities to participate in environmental politics. The first includes engaging in noninstitutional tactics associated with a vibrant Indigenous-led social movement that was active in the aftermath of the 2014 Mount Polley disaster. The first protest was organized by the Secwépemc Women’s Warrior Society on August 11th, 2014, in Vancouver, B.C. On August 20th, Secwépemc people established a 40-day checkpoint and camp at the entrance of the Mount Polley mine. Members of the Secwépemc Women’s Warrior Society formed the group Imperial No More in 2015 which organized annual protests (2015-2018) at shareholder meetings of Mount Polley’s parent company, Imperial Metals. On the second anniversary of the disaster, the group blockaded the entrance of the Mount Polley mine. The second opportunity available to Quesnel Lake area residents includes joining the Concerned Citizens of Quesnel Lake (CCQL). The CCQL is an interest group formed by Mitchell Bay residents in the spring of 2016. The group largely engages in public awareness campaigns, letter-writing, and legal action against the permit associated with the LTWMP. Table 1 presents key dates, events, reports, and investigations that inform environmental politics over the five-year period informing my dissertation research. 15 Table 1 Key Events Following the Mount Polley Disaster (2014-2019) 2014 August 4th Mount Polley tailings dam failure and operations suspended August 5th First public consultation in Likely, B.C. August 11th Secwépemc Women’s Warrior Society lead first protest in Vancouver, B.C. August 20th 40-day Yuct Ne Semxiymetkwe Camp established outside Mount Polley Mine December 9th First Public Liaison Committee (PLC) meeting post-disaster 2015 January 30th Report on Mount Polley Tailings Storage Facility Breach released by the Independent Expert Engineering Investigation and Review Panel (Morgenstern, Vick, and Van Zyl 2015) • Panel concludes dam breach due to design failure (a weak sub-glacial layer) May 27th First Imperial No More annual general meeting protest August 5th Mount Polley resumes restricted operations 2015 November 30th Mount Polley Mine Tailings Storage Facility Breach: Investigation Report of the Chief Inspector of Mines released by Al Hoffman (2015) • Report concludes dam breach due to design in addition to the condition of the tailings pond (e.g., excess supernatant water) and MPMC’s inadequate water management plan Mount Polley’s Short-Term Water Management Plan (STWMP) approved 2016 May 3rd An Audit of Compliance and Enforcement of the Mining Sector released by Auditor General of B.C. • Overall finding is that “compliance and enforcement activities of the mining sector are inadequate to protect the province from significant environmental risks” (Bellringer 2016:6) May 5th Concerned Citizens of Quesnel Lake formed in Spring 2016 with first blog posted on May 5th 16 2016 June 23rd Mount Polley Mine resumes full operations August 4th Secwépemc Women’s Warrior Society and allies block entrance to Mount Polley mine 2017 April 7th Mount Polley’s Long-Term Water Management Plan (LTWMP) approved 2019 May 30th Mount Polley suspends operations 1.5 Methods My dissertation research is based on three sources of data I collected between June 2019 and September 2020: semi-structured interviews, documents collected from two separate Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, and newspaper articles from The Williams Lake Tribune. In each chapter, I draw on personal narratives, supported by documentary evidence, to provide a rich and textured account of people’s experiences participating in environmental politics over time. The primary source of data informing this research includes 42 semi-structured interviews I conducted while living on and off in Likely, British Columbia between June 16th, 2019, and October 6th, 2019. Likely is an unincorporated rural community located 60 kilometers northeast of Williams Lake in the Cariboo Region of British Columbia. The small pockets of homes scattered around Quesnel Lake, including Mitchell Bay and Winkley Creek, are part of Likely proper. Likely, Quesnel Lake, and the Mount Polley Mine are located on Secwépemc territory. I made four separate trips to Likely with each ranging from two to three weeks long. I oscillated stays between the Likely Lodge and the Northern Lights Lodge. I spent most of my days wandering between the only two restaurants in downtown Likely and the pub at the Likely 17 Lodge. I also visited the local library (to work and meet residents) and the museum (to learn about the history of Likely). By immersing myself in the social spaces of the community, I was able to meet residents and recruit participants. I was eventually invited to Friday night dinners at the pub, numerous dinner parties in people’s homes, fishing for Kokanee on Quesnel Lake, and huckleberry picking in the thick bush outside Likely. Although I do not use them in the dissertation, I wrote 19 fieldnotes based on these experiences, documenting informal conversations with residents about life in the community after the disaster and people’s experiences of the public consultation process. Secondary data sources that I used to enrich interviews and triangulate my findings include 4,723 pages of documents from two FOI requests and 208 news articles. The FOI documents are drawn from two sources: the Ministry of Environment and the Cariboo Regional District (CRD). I received all email communications, meeting minutes, letters, and associated documents related to the public liaison committee from the Ministry of Environment on September 27th, 2019. Joan Sorley (a Big Lake resident, PLC member, and CRD elected official for Likely at the time of disaster) indicated during our interview that her CRD emails capture, in real time, resident concerns about consultations, mine activities, and her experience participating in the PLC. Upon her consent, I requested and received all emails related to the 2014 Mount Polley tailings spill on September 22nd, 2020. FOI data provide unprecedented access to decision-making processes (Walby and Larsen 2012) and are an underutilized data source in procedural environmental justice research. I also supplemented interviews with news articles from regional newspaper The Williams Lake Tribune. I selected this newspaper because it is based out of the nearest city to the site of the disaster. As a result, journalists frequently reported 18 on the activities related to the Mount Polley mine, included interviews with residents, and posted 77 opposite the editorials (op-eds) and letters to editor related to the Mount Polley mine. Reporting by The Williams Lake Tribune facilitated quiet forms of participation rooted in making meaning out of mounting environmental risks. 1.6 Overview of the Dissertation The three empirical chapters that follow are based on the same set of qualitative data. The chapters are self-contained to facilitate the publication of each as a stand-alone article in academic journals. Each chapter also includes a thorough discussion of theory, literature, methods, and analysis. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on two deliberative settings—public consultations and public liaison committee (PLC) meetings—to examine the relationship between inequality, culture, and procedural environmental justice. Chapter 2 focuses on the cultural conditions and strategies that shape people’s experiences of participation in public consultations. In Chapter 3 I assess the consequential role of emotions on the social relations and practices that structure environmental deliberations. Chapter 4 shifts to an assessment of the quiet forms of environmental politics that emerge in the face of mounting environmental risks. I explain why social movement mobilization did not materialize and trace the development of quiet forms of mobilization over time. Chapter 5 concludes with a review of the key findings on the cultural dynamics of environmental politics and considers the limitations, contributions, and larger implications of my dissertation research. 19 Chapter 2: Agenda Denial, Manufactured Confusion, and the Cultural Production of Procedural Environmental Injustice 2.1 Introduction Communities residing near toxic waste sites, resource extraction projects, and polluting industrial facilities are disproportionately affected by environmental hazards or risks (Brulle and Pellow 2006; Bullard 2000; Taylor 2014). Democratic deliberations present an opportunity for residents to remedy environmental inequalities by sharing local knowledge, use science to make sense of risks, and participate in the definition of problems and solutions. Environmental decision-making is thus partially rooted in cultural processes (Sass and Dryzek 2014). A growing body of scholarship on procedural environmental justice implicitly investigates the cultural conditions and practices associated with meaningful public engagement in decision-making (Blue, Bronson, and Lajoie-O’Malley 2021; Deacon and Baxter 2013; Schlosberg 2007; Walker and Baxter 2017).7 Within this work, the provision of scientific information (Čapek 1993; Ottinger 2013) and the recognition and inclusion of culturally distinct identities and worldviews (Barnhill-Dilling, Rivers, and Delborne 2020; Whyte 2018) have historically been viewed as sufficient cultural conditions for meaningful public participation. But as scholars develop a more robust account of procedural environmental justice that centers disparities in capabilities and resources, the sufficiency of these conditions are increasingly being challenged (Bell and Carrick 2018; Jalbert et al. 2019; Malin, Opsal, et al. 2019). 7 Procedural justice, or procedural environmental justice, refers “to the presence or absence of meaningful opportunities provided for residents to influence government and industry decisions affecting their communities” (Roberts et al. 2018:238). 20 The provision of scientific information itself does not guarantee meaningful participation; information must be usable and accessible (Jalbert et al. 2019) and free from misinformation intended to sway public opinion (Malin, Opsal, et al. 2019). Researchers also argue for the extension of inclusion to non-marginalized groups and the expansion of nonrecognition to include issue minimization (Bustos et al. 2017). Common to contemporary approaches is greater engagement with the cultural production of procedural (in)justice that underscores the importance of meaning-making conditions and strategies. A more explicitly cultural lens affords analytic leverage to explanations of procedural (in)justice because it highlights the toolkit—the beliefs, norms, and symbols—that inform strategies of action within environmental deliberations (Sewell Jr. 2005; Spillman 2020; Swidler 1986). Theoretical and empirical insights from two cognate literatures—public participation in environmental deliberations and agenda-setting/agenda denial— are particularly instructive for two reasons. First, they emphasize the meaning-making capabilities and resources that help or hinder procedural justice. Second, they provide a series of indicators to measure the cultural conditions and practices that contribute to meaningful participation. This research integrates insights from both bodies of scholarship to further develop a robust framework on the cultural production of procedural (in)justice. I use 42 semi-structured interviews, 4,723 pages of Freedom of Information (FOI) documents and 208 newspaper articles to make sense of the cultural strategies and conditions that structured people’s engagement in environmental deliberations following the catastrophic 2014 Mount Polley tailings dam failure and subsequent wastewater management decisions. I find that two cultural dynamics prevented people from meaningfully engaging in environmental 21 deliberations. The first includes agenda denial, a strategy associated with the deployment of multiple nonrecognition and symbolic placation tactics that ignore or minimize local knowledge. The second includes a condition I term manufactured confusion.8 Manufactured confusion includes at least three practices: 1) the provision and reliance on a high volume of complex scientific data 2) a lack of resources for interpreting environmental science and 3) few opportunities to engage with scientific knowledge. I argue that agenda denial and manufactured confusion contribute to disparities in the meaning-making capabilities and resources associated with a procedurally just process. Incorporating both into investigations of procedural justice offers one avenue for enriching assessments of power, inequality, and culture in environmental deliberations. This chapter is organized into five sections. In the first section, I review the cultural dimensions of procedural justice. I show how theories and concepts derived from research on public participation in environmental deliberations and agenda denial can enrich our understanding of the cultural production of procedural injustice. In the second section, I provide a detailed overview of the Mount Polley mine, the disaster, and ensuing public consultations. The third section reviews my methods, data, and analysis strategy. I highlight how the use of Freedom of Information (FOI) data is underutilized in procedural environmental justice research, despite its important role in illuminating decision-making processes. The fourth section uses 8 Much like the cultural processes described by Lamont et al. (2014), manufactured confusion becomes a habitual and taken for granted condition that is codified into social structures. In this way, manufactured confusion is not necessarily a function of willful obfuscation, but an unintended consequence of existing institutional practices. Manufactured confusion is also distinct from Michaels' (2006) manufactured uncertainty as well as Auyero and Swistun's (2008) labor of confusion because it does not deal with contested or contradictory science. 22 interview quotes, e-mail exchanges and newspaper articles to frame my results. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of my main findings and implications for future research. 2.2 Literature Review 2.2.1 Cultural Dimensions of Procedural Justice Environmental justice scholars adopted a procedural justice framework to examine inequalities beyond the distribution of environmental hazards and risks. In the context of environmental inequalities, procedural justice refers “to the presence or absence of meaningful opportunities provided for residents to influence government and industry decisions affecting their communities” (Roberts et al. 2018:238). There are at least three dimensions associated with the presence or absence of meaningful opportunities in environmental deliberations: science and information; recognition and inclusion; and power and influence. Given my interest in the cultural production of procedural (in)justice, I focus on the first two. Historically, research has indicated that a procedurally just process must include the availability of scientific information as means of ensuring informed consent (Bullard 2000; Čapek 1993; Ottinger 2013; Schlosberg 2007). Čapek's (1993) environmental justice framework, for example, links the provision of accurate information about potential contamination with democratic participation in public hearings. However, the assumption that the simple provision of information is enough to ensure procedural justice is increasingly being challenged (Deacon and Baxter 2013; Hunold and Young 1998; Jalbert et al. 2019; Malin, Opsal, et al. 2019). Researchers have found that providing accessible and usable information in the context of unconventional oil and gas (UOG) deliberations enhances procedural justice because it provides 23 greater opportunities for residents to manage development (Jalbert et al. 2019). Others show how strategies of misinformation— by exaggerating the urgency required for signing mineral leases— effectively undermine the ability of the public to authentically participate in the zoning and regulation of unconventional oil and gas production (Malin, Opsal, et al. 2019). The scope of concerns related to the politics of information are not limited to its provision but include greater attention to the cultural conditions and strategies that prevent meaningful participation. Recognition and inclusion represent a second dimension across which evaluations of procedural justice hinge. Recognitional justice refers to the acknowledgement of difference and the inclusion of diverse cultural identities and worldviews as equals (Blue et al. 2021; Pulido 1996; Schlosberg 2007; Whyte 2018). Injustice occurs when there is a lack of acknowledgement, and this may take a variety of individual and cultural forms such as the denial of difference and through practices of disrespect (Schlosberg 2007; Whyte 2018). Since recognitional justice primarily deals with the acknowledgement of difference, it is often examined with respect to nonwhite social groups (Barnhill-Dilling et al. 2020; Blue et al. 2021; Fan 2016; Young 1990). For example, Barnhill-Dilling et al. (2020) research on decision-making related to the use of genetically engineered American chestnut (GEAC) seedlings argues that a precondition for procedural justice is the recognition of Indigenous sovereignty and worldviews in deliberations. Existing research has provided important lessons on the racial and ethnic inequities that characterize decision-making processes, and more work remains to be done to address the causes and consequences of recognitional injustice. 24 However, inequalities in recognition can apply to cases of cultural sameness. A case in point includes the experiences of a white ranching community in Isla Riesco, Chile participating in an environmental impact study associated with a coal mine proposal (Bustos et al. 2017). Of the 1,532 community comments submitted, 78 per cent of concerns about cumulative environmental effects, contamination, and impacts on local economic activities (tourism) and ranching culture were ignored, rejected or refuted (Bustos et al. 2017). An example of strategies employed by the company to refute community concerns about tourism includes minimizing the visual impacts of the mine on the landscape, arguing that alterations are trivial and restricted to a small region of the island. The failure of state and corporate actors to recognize community values, cultural concerns, and lifestyles prevented “real and meaningful participation” (Bustos et al. 2017:300). These findings suggest that procedural injustices related to issues of recognition can include non-marginalized social groups and strategies that are not simply based on rejection but the minimization of local concerns. As research on the cultural production of procedural (in)justice flourishes, some scholars have argued that state-centered approaches have been largely ineffective, result in co-optation, and strengthen existing power asymmetries (Kojola and Pellow 2020; Konisky 2015; Pellow 2018). While it is true that state-centered procedural justice has been limiting for environmental justice movements, participation in deliberations gives community residents the opportunity to present their grievances, set the agenda, and inform environmental policies (Baber and Bartlett 2018). Meaningful engagement in deliberations has been associated with several positive outcomes for participants and their communities including a decrease in social conflict, an increase in perceptions of procedural legitimacy and the quality of deliberations, and greater 25 public approval of final decisions (Bulkeley and Mol 2003; Cretney 2018; Daley and Reames 2015; Dietz and Stern 2008). Public participation in environmental deliberations thus holds “tremendous promise for both ameliorating existing environmental justice problems and preventing future concentrated risks” (Daley and Reames 2015:148). Expanding conceptualizations of recognition and inclusion (Bustos et al. 2017) as well as the meaning-making processes informing the provision of science and information (Jalbert et al. 2019; Malin, Opsal, et al. 2019) signal an opportunity to revisit and further develop the cultural conditions and strategies associated with procedural (in)justice. Insights from the public participation in environmental deliberations literature help in this endeavor. 2.2.2 Public Participation in Environmental Deliberations Deliberation meets culture where meanings, norms, and symbols shape the processes and interactions within decision-making settings (Sass and Dryzek 2014). The significance of culture to public participation in deliberations is reflected in prevailing concerns about the characteristics associated with effective and meaningful forms of public participation in environmental and risk decision-making. Much of this work has been influenced by Habermas’ theory of communicative action whereby deliberative forums based on collaboration, mutual understanding and negotiation are preferred over spaces of strategic action that are based on competition and technocratic authority (Nenko et al. 2019; Renn and Schweizer 2009; Smith and McDonough 2001; Webler and Tuler 2021). Although scholars have cautioned that a one-size-fits-all approach is not feasible, there is consensus regarding the centrality of fairness and competence as two key concepts against which public participation in deliberation is evaluated (Dietz 2003, 26 2013; Habermas 1970; Meissner and Everingham 2021; Nenko et al. 2019; Webler 1995; Webler and Tuler 2021). First, a fair approach to public participation requires sufficient opportunities for individuals’ expression of interest and concerns, which are then meaningfully incorporated into decision-making (Dietz 2003; Lockwood et al. 2010; Nenko et al. 2019; Webler 1995; Webler and Tuler 2021). In other words, a process is fair when the public contributes to agenda-setting and enough time is dedicated to the discussion and deliberation of public concerns. Nenko et al. (2019) use national survey data of public advisory committee members engaged in forest management across Canada to test whether fairness is significantly associated with perceptions of effectiveness and satisfaction. The authors find that beliefs about fairness—such as the inclusion of public interests in deliberations, adequate opportunities for the public to raise concerns, and the belief that all viewpoints are considered in decision-making— are strongly and significantly associated with evaluations of effectiveness and satisfaction (Nenko et al. 2019). This indicates that agenda-setting and opportunities for discussion are critical components of a meaningful and fair public participation strategy. Second, effective and meaningful public participation processes require competence (Dietz 2003; Meissner and Everingham 2021; O’Connor et al. 2019; Renn 1992; Webler 1995; Webler and Tuler 2021). Habermas' (1970) idea of communicative competence— defined as the use of language to create mutual understanding and agreement— has been adopted by public participation scholars. In this literature, a public participation process is deemed competent when local or scientific knowledge and its interpretations are made available and understood by all 27 (Meissner and Everingham 2021; O’Connor et al. 2019; Renn 1992; Webler 1995). Meissner and Everingham (2021) show how the provision of a large volume of complex technical information about four coal mine proposals in Queensland, combined with a lack of resources to assist in interpretation and verification, prevents everyday people from meaningfully engaging in environmental decision-making. Research with natural resource managers in both South Africa and Australia revealed that the presence of communicative competence facilitated meaningful engagement and positive evaluations of “process legitimacy and acceptance” (O’Connor et al. 2019:4). Meaningful opportunities for decision-making are thus linked to communicative competence. Theoretical and empirical research on public participation in environmental deliberations has much to offer scholarship on procedural environmental justice. Both are concerned with authentic, fair, and meaningful public engagement strategies. By incorporating the elements associated with fairness (agenda setting, deliberations, and discussions) and communicative competence (knowledge, information, and understanding), environmental justice researchers will have at their disposal a culturally informed toolkit that can enrich assessments related to the conditions for, and violations of, meaningful engagement in environmental decision-making. Although the concept of fairness has received much attention in the deliberation literature, the strategies by which agenda setting is denied have been relatively absent. 2.2.3 Agenda Setting, Agenda Denial, and Public Policy Environmental deliberations are deeply intertwined with the dynamics of policymaking. But how governments come to identify problems and propose policy solutions is informed by the 28 cultural process of agenda-setting (Birkland 2016). Agenda-setting includes competitions over meaning-making, as the media, public actors, and interest groups vie to have their ideas explicitly considered by decision-makers (Birkland 2016; Cobb and Ross 1997a). Agenda-setting research in sociology and political science consistently shows that social movements and public opinion are often successful in influencing a diverse range of policy outcomes (Burstein 2020; Johnson, Agnone, and McCarthy 2010; Vliegenthart et al. 2016). In their assessment of the American environmental movement from 1961 through 1990, Johnson et al. (2010) show that mobilization is significantly and positively associated with the agenda-setting activities of Congress, and that protest influences the passage of laws. While there is evidence that public opinion and social movement activity has been successful, agenda-setting is a conflict-prone process. Agenda conflicts are cultural processes rooted in contested interpretations of political problems and the worldviews, identities, and groups informing them (Cobb and Ross 1997a). Agenda denial researchers examine how issues are prevented from active consideration during agenda conflicts (Cook 2015; Davis and Hoffer 2012; De’Arman 2020; Lopez and Reich 1997; Stephan 2020). In doing so, the cultural and symbolic strategies driving agenda denial are revealed. Agenda denial occurs through the deployment of four key cultural strategies and their associated tactics against issue proponents: 1) refusing to recognize issues and/or minimizing them; 2) attacking the posture of issue proponents; 3) creating the impression that issues will be addressed but failing to do so (symbolic placation) and 4) issuing legal, political or economic threats, sanctions or other actions such as arrest or imprisonment (Cobb and Ross 1997b). 29 A small body of scholarship is now considering the role of agenda denial in environmental deliberations (Cook 2015; Davis and Hoffer 2012; De’Arman 2020). Research on hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) in Colorado examines issues of agenda denial in a collaborative decision-making program—the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC)— related to groundwater monitoring (Cook 2015). During deliberations, some members of the COGCC (industry representatives, agency staff and the Governor) blocked public agendas by downplaying the importance of groundwater monitoring. When nonrecognition (a lack of acknowledgement) was no longer a feasible strategy, a voluntary water monitoring program entitled Rule 609 was established (Cook 2015). The use of superficial actions to address public concerns (a voluntary water program) is a symbolic placation tactic. By implementing Rule 609, public grievances were acknowledged, but their proposed solutions were ignored. Insights from agenda denial research reveal that environmental deliberations involve contentious meaning-making processes. Agenda denial theories and concepts can also enrich environmental justice scholarship concerned with issues of recognition in decision-making processes. Recognitional injustice is often associated with the refusal to acknowledge a group or the existence of a problem, but agenda denial research points to this as only the first in a series of probable outcomes (Cobb and Ross 1997b; Cook 2015; Lopez and Reich 1997). For example, once an issue can no longer be ignored, issue opponents may: deny it outright; dispute the facts associated with the issue; suggest that it is not a public issue and should be resolved privately; admit the problem exists but that it is isolated; and admit the problem exists but postpone its resolution (Cobb and Ross 1997b). The use of these tactics produces inequalities in recognition and offers a series of new 30 indicators for assessing procedural injustice. Incorporating these insights expands the empirical scope of issues of recognition and how they impact opportunities for meaningful engagement in environmental deliberations. 2.3 The Case: The Mount Polley Mine The Mount Polley Mine is situated in the central interior of British Columbia, Canada (see Figure 1). The Mount Polley mine neighbours several unincorporated rural communities (Likely, Big Lake, and Horsefly) as well as small pockets of homes scattered around Quesnel Lake (Mitchell Bay and Winkley Creek). The mine started producing copper and gold on June 13, 1997, but suspended operations in May 2019 due to declining copper prices. It is owned by the Mount Polley Mining Corporation (MPMC), a subsidiary of Imperial Metals Corporation. When in full production, the mine processed 21,000 tonnes of ore per day (Hoffman 2015). Ore was crushed and processed on-site, producing waste in the form of tailings – a mixture of sandy silt and trace clay particles. The tailings were mixed with water to become a slurry that was stored in a dam encompassing 300 hectares of land (Hoffman 2015). 31 Figure 1 Study Area. Source: Author. The larger Landsat-8 image is courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey. The smaller light grey map is courtesy of Esri, HERE, Garmin, © OpenStreetMap contributors, and the GIS User Community. In the early hours of the morning on August 4th, 2014, the tailings dam endured a catastrophic failure. Over a sixteen-hour period, twenty-five million meters3 of mining waste— the volume of 10,000 Olympic swimming pools—flooded into Polley Lake and Hazeltine Creek before polluting Quesnel Lake. According to National Pollutant Release Inventory data, some of the substances deposited into Quesnel Lake include 216,150kg of arsenic, 112,005kg of lead, and 27,608 tonnes of phosphorus (Canada 2018). The spill contaminated a critical watershed for salmon and a primary water source for the 350 residents living on Quesnel Lake and in Likely, British Columbia. The spill constitutes the largest environmental disaster in Canadian history. 32 Over sixty public consultations were organized in the Cariboo region by the mine in response to the disaster. The consultations occurred in small rural communities such as Likely as well as larger cities such as Williams Lake. Consultations also occurred through a public liaison committee (PLC). The PLC includes government personnel from various Provincial Ministries (such as the Ministry of Environmental and Climate Change Strategy), regional politicians, MPMC staff, non-governmental organizations, and members of the public. Both sites give members of the public an opportunity to learn about the disaster, MPMC’s remediation and reclamation efforts, and to participate in decision-making in response to the tailings dam failure. Beginning in 2015, the consultations also included deliberations about the mine’s short and long-term water management plans. Both plans, opposed by locals, included daily discharge of mine wastewater into Quesnel Lake via a seven-kilometer pipeline. The short-term water management plan was approved on November 30, 2015 and the long-term water management plan on April 7, 2017 (Ministry of Environment 2017). The deliberations present an opportunity to investigate rural resource extraction issues that are largely unexamined in environmental and procedural justice scholarship (Kojola and Pellow 2020; Malin, Ryder, and Lyra 2019). 2.4 Methods My research draws on 42 semi-structured interviews, 4,723 pages of documents (emails, meeting minutes and letters) acquired through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and 208 newspaper articles. By weaving together personal narratives with accounts acquired through news articles, emails, reports, meeting minutes, and letters from the public, I provide a rich and textured account of public participation in environmental deliberations. 33 2.4.1 Interviews I conducted 42 semi-structured interviews in 2019. I interviewed members of the public who participated in at least two public consultations and/or were members of the PLC following the disaster. I recruited participants in three main ways. First, I distributed posters in the community of Likely and Horsefly. Second, I contacted some individuals via email whom I identified through news articles, meeting minutes and online searches. Third, I used a snowball sampling strategy by asking interviewees to share my contact information with their networks. Interviews took place in people’s homes or public spaces and a small gift was provided. Appendix A includes a table of participants who either opted to use their legal name or were assigned a pseudonym to protect confidentiality. Since the disaster occurred five years prior to the interviews, I addressed issues of memory and reliability by adopting two techniques. The first included providing participants with a timeline and description of the disaster and the consultations that occurred within its first year. The second included beginning interviews asking participants to tell me the story of how they became involved in the meetings. Although I was primarily interested in discussing public consultations, many participants spoke at length about the significance of the area for them as children, as workers in the resource extraction sector, for establishing meaningful social networks, and as a place to raise their families. As a result, a vast majority had very detailed and vivid memories about their rural lives, including the first days, weeks, months, and years following the disaster. This is not surprising given that disaster research consistently shows that people have accurate memories of major and personally salient events (Wu 2020). 34 The main topics addressed in the interview guide include people’s experiences in the process and outcomes of the consultations/PLC meetings. Process-related questions addressed issues of diversity and inclusion, information sharing, deliberations, and agenda-setting. Outcome questions were related to participant perceptions about their role in shaping decisions, the effectiveness of the consultations/PLC meetings and changes in opinion about the mining industry. The average interview was 1 hour and 48 minutes long. I administered a brief questionnaire following each interview requesting socio-demographic details related to gender, age, race, political ideology, income, education, place and length of residence, political trust, and corporate trust. A full interview guide can be found in Appendix B. Table 2 provides descriptive statistics of research participants. A vast majority of participants (79%) live in the Quesnel Lake area—the site of the disaster—in the communities of Big Lake, Horsefly, Likely, Mitchell Bay and Winkley Creek. The remaining participants (21%) live in Prince George, Quesnel, Williams Lake, and Xatśūll First Nation. The average participant was 65 years of age and lived in their community for 29 years. One participant identified as Indigenous while the rest identified as white. I interviewed 24 women and 18 men, and a majority (62%) did not have a university degree. In terms of political ideology, the sample is quite diverse with strong representation across the political spectrum. While all participated in public consultations, eight participants were members of the PLC at the time of or immediately following, the Mount Polley tailings spill. 35 Table 2 Descriptive Statistics of Participants (N=42) Characteristics Number of Participants Average Range Age 65 40-87 Length of Residence (years) 30 1-70 Place of Residence Quesnel Lake Area (Likely, Big Lake, Horsefly, Mitchell Bay, Winkley Creek) 33 Outside Quesnel Lake Area (Xatśūll First Nation, Williams Lake, Quesnel, Prince George) 9 Gender Men 18 Women 24 Race/Ethnicity* White 41 Indigenous 1 Education University Degree (BA, MA, PhD) 15 University, College, or Trade Certificate/Diploma** 18 High School Diploma or less 8 Did not answer 1 Total Household Income (CAD) Over $100,000 7 $50,000 - $99,999 17 Under $49,999 11 Did not answer 7 Political Ideology Liberal 16 Moderate 12 Conservative 11 Indigenous Worldview 1 Did not answer 2 *This was an open-ended question, but these were the only two responses provided by participants. **Note: University certificates or diplomas do not require a bachelor’s degree and are often connected to professional associations in accounting, public administration, etc. 36 2.4.2 Freedom of Information (FOI) Documents FOI requests are an innovative but underutilized method in the social sciences (Walby and Luscombe 2017). They strengthen case study research and assist in the triangulation of data (Greenberg 2016). More importantly, FOI documents provide unprecedented backstage access to decision-making processes (Walby and Larsen 2012). I requested two sets of documents: one from the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy and the other from the Cariboo Regional District (CRD).9 The former requested all meeting minutes and associated documents, presentations, reports, and email communications related to the PLC. The latter requested all email correspondence, letters, reports, and updates written by one of my participants who was an elected official in the CRD at the time of the disaster. I received 4,723 pages of documents that span a five-year period (2014-2019). These data provide unique access to the complex process of governing, delineating what and whose issues are deemed worthy of investigation as well as whose concerns and interests are reflected in environmental deliberations over time. 2.4.3 News Articles A final source of data includes 208 articles from The Williams Lake Tribune, a regional newspaper. Using Factiva, I searched for all articles containing “Mount Polley” written between August 4, 2014, and August 5, 2019. The search yielded 333 articles. I reduced this to 172 articles by including only those articles that: (1) quoted residents from affected communities; (2) mentioned public consultations or meetings related to the Mount Polley mine; (3) were opposite 9 The Cariboo Regional District includes 12 electoral areas and 4 incorporated municipalities in the Central Interior of British Columbia. Rural area voters elect a representative for each of these 16 positions. The CRD delivers local government services such as emergency and land-use planning and provides access to libraries and recreational facilities. 37 editorials (op-eds) about the Mount Polley mine; (4) discussed community events and gatherings and (5) discussed political actions targeting the Mount Polley mine. After coding the articles, I found references to other articles (op-eds or letters to the editor) that were not captured in my initial search. I searched for “Mount Polley” and “Opinion” and “Mount Polley” and “Letters” on the Williams Lake Tribune website to include an additional 36 articles to my sample. Paired with interviews and the FOI documents, these news articles provide additional details and perspectives about public responses to the disaster and subsequent experiences in environmental decision-making. 2.4.4 Analysis I imported transcribed interviews into NVivo for coding. I adopted a two-step flexible coding strategy which begins with indexing transcripts and then analytic coding for data reduction (Deterding and Waters 2021). Indexing involves using the interview guide to code large chunks of text for broad topics, with each question assigned a code. An example of this includes the code “scientific communication.” Analytic coding begins by applying thematic codes to specific index codes. Following the previous example, an analytic code includes “scientific communication – difficult to understand.” This coding strategy increases the likelihood of reliable and valid codes (Deterding and Waters 2021). I also developed inductive codes as new themes emerged in the data. Analytic and inductive codes derived from the interview transcripts were applied to the newspaper articles in NVivo. FOI data was coded in Adobe Reader because the documents are image-only and thus cannot be marked up in NVivo. 38 2.5 Results Over three-quarters of participants did not believe that their input directed the course of disaster response or wastewater management plans. Given the ubiquity of this perception, how are members of the public prevented from meaningfully participating in environmental deliberations? I argue that two cultural conditions and strategies lead to experiences of procedural injustice: strategies of agenda denial and a concept I term manufactured confusion. The first describes the experience that the most salient questions and concerns brought forward by residents were frequently, but not always, ignored, denied, or minimized. The second describes the prevailing belief that the meetings relied on a large volume of highly technical information without adequate resources for its interpretation or time for deliberation. 2.5.1 Agenda Denial Strategies in Environmental Deliberations Agenda denial includes the strategies and tactics deployed by issue opponents to prevent concerns from active consideration in the decision-making process (Cobb and Ross 1997a). Nonrecognition and symbolic placation are two key strategies associated with the public consultations following the Mount Polley mining disaster. Agenda denial processes illuminate the cultural dynamics underpinning procedural issues in environmental deliberations. I argue that recognitional injustice is not simply about a lack of acknowledgement; it is a multivalent strategy that includes tactics that defuse, minimize, and delay the active consideration of public issues. Incorporating agenda denial into research on procedural justice clarifies the diverse ways that every day people are prevented from the cultural construction of environmental issues and solutions. 39 2.5.1.1 The Strategy and Tactics of Nonrecognition Nonrecognition is typically the first strategy deployed to deflect public concerns (Cobb and Ross 1997b). A common tactic associated with nonrecognition includes ignoring issues entirely. But nonrecognition can take a variety of forms. Tactics commonly associated with nonrecognition include: recognizing that a problem exists, but arguing that it is a non-issue; invoking procedural reasons to argue that an issue is inappropriate for consideration; and admitting a problem exists, but claiming that it is isolated, not part of a larger pattern, exaggerated, or misunderstood (Cobb and Ross 1997b; De’Arman 2020). These tactics were used by MPMC, and Ministry staff to a lesser extent, to deny the consideration of public issues and concerns. Most participants indicated their disappointment with the public consultations because they felt that their questions and concerns were either ignored entirely or admitted but dismissed as non-issues. Likely resident Travis described this process, I guess when I say I got frustrated, is the fact that you didn't get a direct answer to some of the questions. So, you're getting the same old BS [bullshit] that was going on six meetings back, and the people have asked questions, not six meetings, but a while back, they asked this question and then they would ask it again. Never got a definitive answer. That's why they kept asking the same questions and it wasn't just the mine people [who wouldn’t answer], it was the Government too. The public consultations were a frustrating experience for people like Travis. Participants lamented how they would bring the same concerns and questions to numerous consecutive meetings, only to leave frustrated and without a direct answer. Elma Sol, another Likely resident, describes this as politician talk: “They were not answering questions directly - like a politician, you can answer a question without answering the question. There was a lot of that.” 40 In the early weeks and months following the disaster, key concerns and questions from locals were related to water quality in Quesnel Lake. Locals were concerned about three interrelated issues: turbidity due to the seasonal mobilization of tailings sediment and contaminants, the resulting greening of Quesnel Lake, and clogged water filters. I use the first two issues to examine the various tactics associated with nonrecognition. Turbidity—a measure of the cloudiness of water due to the (re)suspension of clay, silt or sediment—in Quesnel Lake is historically low (Hamilton et al. 2020). However, three months following the disaster, residents and independent scientists have reported increased turbidity and the greening of Quesnel Lake (see Figure 2). Both are attributed to the resuspension of tailings as the lake turns over (Hamilton et al. 2020).10 Residents were concerned about the seasonal resuspension of 18 million meters3 of tailings because it leads to elevated levels of contaminants (copper) in the water column (Hamilton et al. 2020). 10 Lake turnover occurs twice a year (spring and fall) when the bottom and top layers of a lake mix. 41 Figure 2 Quesnel Lake Time Series Images (2007-2017). Source: Hamilton, Andrew K et al. 2020. “Figure 6”. Seasonal Turbidity Linked to Physical Dynamics in a Deep Lake Following the Catastrophic 2014 Mount Polley Mine Tailings Spill, Water Resources Research. DOI: 10.1029/2019WR025790. CC BY-NC 4.0. Kim Goforth, a Mitchell Bay resident located close to the site of the spill, described his experience trying to bring up the issue of turbidity at his beach-front property with a representative of Golder Associates.11 Reflecting on his experience at the consultations, Kim commented, They would try to publicly intimidate you at the meetings with just smart-ass remarks. Like, I brought up the turbidity in the lake that never used to be there. And one of the 11 Golder Associates is an environmental consulting company hired by Mount Polley. On behalf of the mine, they frequently presented scientific data at public consultations. 42 consultants said, "Well, it's a beach, what do you expect?" Just like that. The whole thing, it was nasty at times. They would just try and shut you down. The quote from Kim indicates the use of two nonrecognition tactics: the characterization of the problem as a non-issue (“Well, it’s a beach, what do you expect?”) and the denial of the issue (“they would just try and shut you down”). The denial of water quality issues was confirmed by Joan Sorley, a Big Lake resident, PLC member and elected representative for the region. During our conversation on what an improved public consultation process would look like, she stated: A time for agenda-setting that allowed for public input… A process where citizens who are directly impacted by their operation have a chance to give their input and get answers and all of that. That's a real collaborative process, not just [imitates resident concern] "my water filters are clogged. [imitates Mount Polley staff] “Too bad, so sad, file closed." When they did get a complaint, in my opinion, they didn't deal with it in a way that even respected the complaint. It was more like "how are we going to get out of this?" or "You're wrong. What you're seeing, you're not seeing. The lake's green? No, it's not. End of story.” That's how they reacted to complaints. Participants frequently expressed disappointment in how concerns related to turbidity and water quality were either ignored, admitted but minimized, or admitted but perceived as misunderstandings of the problem. E-mails associated with the PLC confirm this too. On November 26, 2016, Likely resident Lionel Guiltner wrote an email to the Ministry of Environment expressing his doubts that the greening of Quesnel Lake is due to water runoff from local creeks. The email was left unaddressed. On February 16, 2017, Likely resident, a study participant, and PLC member Doug Watt forwarded the email stating, As I and others have stated before, there are significant changes that have occurred to the lake since the breach, and they have nothing to with the red herrings that MPMC mention, ad nauseam, such as the natural water quality of the streams flowing into the lake nor any minute contribution made by human use of the lake [other than MPMC], pre-or post-breach. As these examples illustrate, residents of the community have consistently brought forward issues related to turbidity and the greening of Quesnel Lake. Concerns related to water quality 43 have consistently been denied vis-à-vis a diverse number of tactics associated with nonrecognition. The resuspension of tailings and greening of Quesnel Lake were either ignored entirely, dismissed as non-issues, or admitted but viewed as misunderstandings of the problem. As interviews, news articles and emails show, nonrecognition includes multiple tactics beyond a refusal to consider or recognize an issue. In the section below, I discuss another agenda denial strategy that prevents meaningful participation: symbolic placation. 2.5.1.2 The Strategy and Tactics of Symbolic Placation Symbolic placation is a second agenda denial strategy. It involves the admission of issues and problems but blocks public solutions (Cobb and Ross 1997b). Symbolic placation is distinct from nonrecognition because of its focus on delaying or denying opponent-initiated solutions. Cobb and Ross (1997b) highlight at least seven tactics associated with symbolic placation, some of which include delegating issues to a committee; focusing on a small part of the problem, or redefining it narrowly, to indicate commitment in addressing it (referred to as showcasing and tokenism); and increasing existing activity to address the issue (do more of the same). The most prominent symbolic placation tactics deployed since the 2014 Mount Polley disaster include increasing public consultations (doing more of the same) and showcasing as a means of appearing to deal with a problem. The “doing more of the same” placation tactic was used when Mount Polley sought two permits to resume full operations. Both permit processes required doing more of the same: organizing public consultations in local communities to discuss short- and long-term water management options. This includes organizing water workshops in the community of Likely as 44 well as multiple consultations throughout the Cariboo Region. The purpose of these meetings was to discuss and receive input from the community members about ten options for discharging mine wastewater into the environment. One option, favoured by the community, was for a pipeline to bring water from the mine site down to Quesnel River. The second and approved option, favoured by the mine and its consultants, was to install a seven-kilometer pipeline that would bring water from the Mount Polley mine, down Hazeltine Creek, and into the West Basin of Quesnel Lake. Participants believed that by engaging in the extra workshops and consultations, their preferences would be seriously considered by government and MPMC staff. Ellen Petticrew, a scientist associated with the Quesnel River Research Centre, participated in the water workshop organized in the Likely community in February 2016. Ellen believed that “the plan was to get a consensus on what the solution should be.” However, she explained that “there was no consensus on the solution and they kind of just drove their solution all the way through… I think people came away feeling it was a done deal, whether or not it was.” Likely resident and PLC member Richard Holmes also believed that the water management consultations would consider resident input in the final solution. However, in retrospect, …the mining company had already made their mind up with the consultants saying, "This is going to go forward with the pipeline into Quesnel Lake. We're not even going to address in detail the other nine options.” It just seemed like a sham to me. "Thanks very much for your public opinion, but we've already decided how we're going to move forward with this, and we're going to present our ideas to the government, thanks so much for your input. Here are some excellent sandwiches.” Residents participating in workshops and consultations regarding the short- and long-term water management strategies overwhelmingly did not want mine water to be discharged into local 45 water bodies. But if it had to be, the preference of the community was for it to be discharged into Quesnel River over Quesnel Lake. According to lifelong Likely resident Kathleen, “people think it’s [discharge into Quesnel Lake] the stupidest idea that was ever brought out.” Kathleen explained that the diffusers would be pumping out water at the same spot where the tailings were deposited in 2014. Her concern is that the original tailings sediment would not solidify if the company “keeps dumping stuff through that pipe and churning it all up again.” Additionally, Doug Watt stated that residents “didn't like the idea of virtually untreated water being discharged, which is what it is. All they do is take the solids out, they don't do anything to the chemistry in the water.” It is for these reasons that residents provided the solution of discharging the mine water into Quesnel River, where dilution was believed to be faster. Yet, as described above, the “more of the same” approach associated with symbolic placation gave the façade of community input since the core of community concerns were ignored and their preferred solution ultimately denied. Showcasing was another symbolic placation tactic frequently deployed by government and MPMC personnel. One prominent example includes instances when residents expressed concerns about water quality and tailings in Quesnel Lake, but the mine focused instead on its remediation and reclamation efforts of Hazeltine Creek.12 Marlene Watt, a Likely resident, pointed to the use of reclamation efforts as a means of deflecting from community concerns: Marlene: A lot of the questions were just put off. And some of the original questions from five years ago have never been answered. 12 Remediation and reclamation are strategies that deal with environmental impacts from resource extraction activities. Remediation includes with the stabilization or removal of contaminants while reclamation involves the physical reconstruction of a disturbed environment. 46 Interviewer: So what are some of those questions? Marlene: Oh, they were always related to the water. People would always bring up the water and the mine, they'd always bring up the reclamation [chuckles]. The reclamation of Hazeltine Creek was brought up whenever residents wanted to discuss the water. The placating nature of this was expressed by Megan, another Likely resident when she stated They're programming you to move in a certain way and I don't think they hear a thing you say. I don't believe it. I don't believe in the process… I just find that this process is used almost in a brainwashing way to change your opinions or change your beliefs, and that's what sometimes this felt like. The focus was on, say, Hazeltine Creek. Well, sure, it was scraped down to the bones, but the big deal was the water. Megan indicates that while Hazeltine Creek is important, the focus on it, as opposed to more important issues related to the water, is akin to “brainwashing.” She also indicates that the use of showcasing as a tactic leads to a distrust of the process. But it was not only the water that residents wanted to discuss instead of reclamation; it was also the massive volume of tailings that remains in Quesnel Lake. Residents Skeed and Sharon Borkowski made this clear during our conversation, Sharon: …And if you disagreed with how they were handling what was happening out at the mine site and Hazeltine Creek, they would show you this big production of what they were doing. Skeed: It was all focused on Hazeltine Creek, which didn't matter - it's a logging slash. They knocked the shit out of it and they're planting trees upside down and they're planting willows. Meanwhile, we have 24 million cubic meters of solids in the lake and… that was never addressed. When residents wanted to hear about the tailings in the lake, the company would put on a “big production” by discussing all the resources that are being put into reclaiming Hazeltine Creek. As is common with showcasing, this does little to get to core resident concerns. The symbolic placation strategies of showcasing and “doing more of the same”, in addition to the tactics 47 associated with nonrecognition, represent two primary means by which agenda denial occurred in the aftermath of the catastrophic Mount Polley disaster. As a result, participants felt their concerns were ignored, delayed, or minimized. By engaging in such agenda denial strategies, opportunities for meaningful engagement—procedural justice—are effectively diminished. 2.5.2 The Perils of Science in Environmental Deliberations Competence and fairness are key criteria associated with meaningful deliberation processes. A competent process ensures that local and scientific knowledge is equally considered and understood by all. A fair process facilitates public agenda-setting and provides sufficient opportunities for engagement. What I refer to as manufactured confusion abounds when fairness and competence are absent from environmental deliberations. Manufactured confusion emerges when deliberations: 1) rely on inaccessible scientific information 2) do not provide resources for interpreting information and 3) do not provide sufficient opportunities to discuss and engage with complex environmental data. Put simply, manufactured confusion occurs when science and the resources required for its interpretation are inaccessible and deliberation is absent. Manufactured confusion operates as a cultural condition that prohibits meaningful engagement in environmental decision-making. 2.5.2.1 “What the heck are all these random dots?” Accessibility and Manufactured Confusion Public consultations included an abundance of technical, scientific information: there were handouts available, presentations about water quality, sediment analysis, physical lake dynamics, and environmental impact assessment reports—numbering in the thousands of 48 pages—were made available at the local library for participants to reference. Phil Owens, a scientist with the Quesnel River Research Centre located in Likely, participated in several public consultations. While he made it clear that communicating scientific information is a challenge, and that he is not sure “they [the company] were trying to hoodwink anyone,” he did admit that, Phil: I do have a sense that so much information was thrown at people. There are some documents, Environmental Impact Assessment Reports, which are so large and cumbersome. Interviewer: In more than one binder, right? Phil: Yeah, thousands of pages, and they are unintelligible even to us [scientists] because there's so much information and we just don't have time to spend a month to read it, to digest it. Yes, I think a lot of information was thrown at everybody that unfortunately just made... was either confusing or frustrating and then it probably switched people off. As Phil stated, so much “unintelligible” information was “thrown at everybody”, resulting in confusion. Although Phil did not believe this was necessarily a strategy of deception, multiple other interviewees perceived it to be. For example, Likely resident Catherine stated, The thing is that they can talk one level or more above you. It all sounds good, but you don't really have a clue what they're telling you. I never knew what the word freshet was until this happened. Just say it in words that people understand. But you see, that's the little game. I don't care, you can watch TV and watch politics and see the same damn thing going on. When they talk, they just slide around [the issue]. By speaking a “level or more” above the average person, company staff and consultants were perceived to be “sliding around” the issue, making it difficult for people to follow. But whether the provision of complex information was intended to “hoodwink” anyone does not detract from the fact that confusion was still the outcome. Likely resident Denise Carlson found “…it all quite mind-boggling, really. Unless you're specifically trained to think in a certain way, it's hard for a lot of us to kind of keep it together to ask the right questions of what we want to know.” As Denise’s comment shows, the inaccessible nature of the information leads to confusion (“mind-49 boggling”) and prevents people from meaningfully participating (“ask the right questions”). Concerns about the inaccessibility of the information was shared by many other residents. Doug Watt, for example, was worried for his community members: “I was starting to get concerned that there was nobody in town that had the technical understanding and knowledge to know what the company was telling them.” But even residents and former MPMC employees like Lori Lockyer who have some familiarity with this type of data were left “flabbergasted” by the consultations. When I asked Lori whether she thought everyone understood the material provided she quickly responded (emphasis added), No, for sure not. For sure not. It was a lot to take in and they were going through different parts of it. Yeah, it was very complicated… I think the terminology was very scientific and I think it would've been better if it was a layman's term report instead of coming up with all these numbers, and these graphs, and all these little dots that mean nothing. That means nothing. I've got an Economics degree. My husband has an Engineering degree and I found it difficult. I remember thinking, "I did statistics, I did math, but this is hard. Like what the heck are all these random dots?” There’s a few people [in Likely] that have an education, but there are a lot more people who don't. It's a simple town, so a more simple approach would have been way nicer, instead of mind-boggling them with details. Although she earned an undergraduate degree and took classes that may have helped her understand some of the data presented, Lori, like her fellow residents, found the information presented overwhelming and confusing. Members of the PLC also found this to be the case. One of the expectations of PLC members is that they share information about the mine with their community members. But Likely resident Agatha did not think that this happened often because “… you don't hand things out you don't understand. If I don't understand it and I've been sitting in the meetings, how's Joe Blow going to understand it?” The PLC meetings and public 50 consultations were spaces where a large volume of complex information was disseminated. However, inaccessibility prevented meaningful participation in disaster response and recovery. 2.5.2.2 “I’m not interested in being talked to” Resource Availability and Manufactured Confusion Public consultation participants frequently mentioned how the provision of both information before meetings and scientific support for the community throughout the process would have facilitated meaningful engagement. In a series of emails on May 28, 2019, Likely resident Richard Holmes expressed his dissatisfaction with the fact that supporting documents related to agenda items are not provided ahead of meetings and asked that they be provided to the committee in the future. He wrote to the PLC, I am not interested in being talked to, rather I would prefer to be informed prior to any PLC meetings and hopefully, that will subsequently result in informed dialogue between those at the meeting…. You, as an MPMC employee come fully prepared with information and support staff while we struggle through this process as volunteers expecting the province to address our concerns in lieu of the fact that we are under-represented and without funding. Ask me how that has been going. The response from the company was that providing information before a meeting “is something we typically don’t do” and concluded that information will be provided to the committee after meetings. The denial of this request prevents residents like Richard from meaningfully engaging in “informed dialogue” and causes them to “struggle” through the process. Several other residents similarly expressed that they would have preferred to have information ahead of time as well as have access to the resources required for its interpretation. Winkley Creek resident Amelia summarized this well when she said It would have been nice to have had the slides ahead of time, so you could have reviewed them. If I could have read [them], maybe done some research myself, then ask an 51 intelligent question, so then you feel comfortable that you know enough information. Here you are Googling while they’re doing stuff to try to understand what some of this stuff means. The presentation of complex environmental data for the first time at meetings prevented residents from meaningfully engaging in the process. This is because the information given is inaccessible and highly technical, causing people like Amelia to divert their attention to Google to make sense of what is being said. One way to make sense of confusing and complex data is to provide the tools necessary for its interpretation. Speaking to the utility of this approach, Likely resident Denise Carlson stated, What I think would help is to have somebody provided to the community that has expertise in the area, that can help the community deal with it other than relying on the mine to tell them what’s going on or rely on the community members to ask the right questions Many other participants echoed the need for the community to have access to scientists who can help residents navigate the large volumes of environmental data presented at meetings. Another Likely resident, Pohney Whitmer, similarly wished there was a “third party” that would help the community interpret environmental data because she was never sure if the information provided was “good, solid, and truthful information.” For many participants, timely access to information and scientific support would have dispelled confusion and facilitated more meaningful engagement. 52 2.5.2.3 “There wasn’t enough time” Deliberation and Manufactured Confusion Another corrective for confusion is to provide members of the public with sufficient opportunities to ask clarifying questions and to discuss complex material. This would allow for more informed input on disaster response and waste management decisions. Yet, most of the participants claimed that not enough time was provided at the end of presentations for participants to meaningfully engage with the material. When asked about this, Winkley Creek resident Amelia responded There wasn’t enough time, and it [discussions] would be left to the very end. I couldn’t have anything to say because there wasn’t a lot of time left…. It was a lot of information, and some of it was really intense and unclear. It could have been easier to understand. Lori Lockyer shared similar concerns. She believed that there was not enough time dedicated to, in her words, “digest” the complex information because most of the time was spent going over PowerPoint presentations where “… they would read through the spill pretty much, and it would mean nothing to a lot of people and it’s not what they wanted to hear.” Participants frequently lamented the volume of complex information presented without an equal amount of time dedicated to its discussion and deliberation. Steve Forseth, a Williams Lake resident, PLC member, and public consultation participant believes that the company did not make a “genuine effort to get the community to understand” complex environmental data. Speaking to this, Steve reported that They try to cram everything into two hours. Well, if you're going to ask residents to A) participate and B) to give their opinion forthright, you can't restrict how long you're in that meeting for… Don't restrict it to two hours and then take half the time to present and then say “we don't have time to talk about any concerns you have or any of your reaction to the information we're presenting.” It doesn't work. Residents must have time to hear the information. Residents also must have time to say “this is how I feel based on what you're presenting.” And a lot of times if they're seeing it for the first time, they're going to 53 have a lot of clarification questions. Perhaps on the technical side, maybe more on the philosophical side. That's going to take time to process out. And my experience is cramming it into a very short time window never helps anybody. It doesn't help the presenters and it certainly doesn't help the residents you're trying to work with to have that continual social license [to operate]. As with the public consultations, the PLC meetings frequently did not include enough time for residents to engage with the complex information presented. Email communications between PLC members indicate this was brought up numerous times by different members. In one email on May 3, 2018, Joan Sorley wrote “PLC meeting agendas are set by Mount Polley staff, and I have been present for at least two meetings when Doug Watt and Christine McLean have been told that there was no time to deal with their specific concerns.” A year later, on May 28, 2019, Richard Holmes responded to an email from the mine stating Additionally, for a number of PLC meetings in the past, the time has been taken up with MPMC presentations with little time left for dialogue and I don’t think that has provided a balanced discussion on topics very important to those of us who live here. We are the ones negatively impacted by the Mount Polley disaster. Many PLC participants explained that meetings prioritized the agenda of the company, with few opportunities to address community concerns. In my interview with Richard Holmes, he stated that although he feels “pretty comfortable” with the information “there are many people who don’t. I don’t even know if they would know what questions to ask. So they would sit through the presentations and oftentimes many of them would not ask questions.” The presentation of complex science without the tools for interpretation or time for discussion prevented meaningful public participation. Consequentially, manufactured confusion prevailed and eroded the prospects for procedural justice. 54 2.6 Discussion and Conclusion The primary goal of this research is to understand how members of the public are prevented from meaningfully participating in environmental deliberations. In other words, I am interested in tracing the cultural production of procedural environmental injustice. Drawing on a unique dataset and theoretical insights from research on agenda denial and environmental deliberations, I show how two cultural dynamics inhibit meaningful participation. The first includes strategies of agenda denial—nonrecognition and symbolic placation—and their associated tactics that prohibited participants from defining environmental problems and their associated solutions. The second includes a condition I term manufactured confusion, which is the outcome of at least three taken for granted practices. Manufactured confusion deprived people of both the time and the resources to make sense of complex environmental data. The presence of agenda denial and manufactured confusion prevented rural residents from meaningfully shaping the decisions that affect their community and local environment. Agenda denial strategies and manufactured confusion contribute to an emerging body of scholarship that extends the sufficient conditions and practices associated with procedural environmental justice (Bell and Carrick 2018; Bustos et al. 2017; Jalbert et al. 2019; Malin, Opsal, et al. 2019). Bustos et al. (2017) study of a white community’s experiences with environmental deliberations in Chile represents a significant departure from existing approaches that tend to focus on the inclusion of Indigenous groups (Blue et al. 2021) and limit nonrecognition to a lack of acknowledgement (Whyte 2018). They show that nonrecognition is a multivalent strategy that can include, for example, the acknowledgement and minimization of public issues: the impacts of coal mining on tourism are admitted but not considered significant 55 because of the small scale of disruption (Bustos et al. 2017). My findings also show that nonrecognition is multivalent and includes issue minimization. However, by adopting the insights from Cobb and Ross (1997b) and other researchers (Cook 2015; De’Arman 2020), I show how nonrecognition includes multiple other tactics that deny or dispute public concerns as made evident by competing explanations for the greening of Quesnel Lake. Other agenda denial strategies I identified, such as symbolic placation, present another opportunity for enriching the cultural practices associated with procedural environmental injustice. Among the seven tactics indicative of symbolic placation, I focused on two key tactics: 1) “doing more of the same” and 2) deflecting salient community concerns by showcasing commitment to other issues. The use of these symbolic placation tactics signals the deployment of elite power to prevent the serious consideration of public issues and solutions to environmental problems. Agenda denial researchers have shown this to be the case in other contexts as well (Cook 2015; Lopez and Reich 1997). Cook (2015) argues that the establishment of a voluntary water monitoring program to address concerns about groundwater contamination due to fracking is an example of another common symbolic placation tactics: the use of superficial actions to deal with a problem. Bustos et al. (2017) research on procedural injustice arguably provides evidence of this tactic as well when the mining company pointed to the establishment of a dissemination plan (distributing leaflets and hosting bi-annual information sessions) in response to community demands for ongoing dialogues and the development of a long-term strategy for the island. Agenda denial theory provides a comprehensive framework with numerous indicators that may help organize future research on the cultural production of procedural environmental injustice. 56 In addition to strategies, cultural conditions structuring environmental deliberations have important implications for the exercise of power and influence in decision-making processes. Fairness and competence are two culturally informed conditions associated with meaningful public participation that have received extensive attention in environmental deliberation research. A fair and meaningful decision-making process includes opportunities for the expression of public interests and concerns, agenda-setting, and sufficient opportunities to discuss complex environmental problems (Dietz 2003; Nenko et al. 2019; Webler and Tuler 2021). A meaningful process promotes competence when knowledge (accessible information) and tools (the resources for interpreting information) are provided to assist with decision-making (Meissner and Everingham 2021; O’Connor et al. 2019; Renn 1992; Webler 1995). Informed by this rich and culturally inflected literature on public participation in environmental deliberations, I show how violations of fairness and competence produce manufactured confusion. My concept of manufactured confusion contributes to existing scholarship (Hunold and Young 1998; Jalbert et al. 2019; Malin, Opsal, et al. 2019) seeking to develop a more robust account of procedural environmental (in)justice by highlighting the consequences of disparities in capabilities and resources for meaningful decision-making. Research on unconventional oil and gas development in Pennsylvania lends strong support for the argument that information provided to communities must be both accessible and usable so that people can plan for development in a meaningful and informed way (Jalbert et al. 2019). I also find that the provision of accessible information would be beneficial because it would avoid confusion and assist residents in making sense of environmental hazards and risks. But my research suggests 57 that if accessible information is not provided, the resources for its interpretation—technical support and sufficient time for discussion—are critical for meaningful participation. In this way, my research mobilizes indicators associated with fairness and competence in the environmental deliberation literature to strengthen the sufficient cultural conditions required for procedural justice. There are a few limitations to this study and generative questions for future researchers to explore. One limitation is that my research examines deliberations emerging after disaster strikes, which might make this a unique case. Another includes the qualitative nature of the research design meaning my results are not generalizable, and it remains to be seen if the cultural strategies and conditions described herein can be replicated. Despite these limitations, my findings mirror some of the claims made across environmental justice, deliberative democracy and agenda denial research which are rooted in more routine cases of environmental hazards and risks or in different contexts entirely. The strength of this research includes synthesizing cognate literatures that extend analyses of procedural environmental justice by expanding the scope of nonrecognition vis-à-vis strategies of agenda denial and cultural conditions vis-à-vis manufactured confusion. Conceptually, agenda denial and manufactured confusion combine a series of indicators that can be tested, refined, and compared across procedural environmental justice research. Applying manufactured confusion and agenda denial strategies to future research, whether through interviews or surveys, may further illuminate the cultural dimensions of power that structure decision-making processes. 58 Chapter 3: “It Became a Battlefield”: Emotions, Polarization, and Disengagement from Environmental Deliberations 3.1 Introduction Emotions are powerful. Research shows that emotions influence individual responses to injustice, shape decision-making, and structure social behaviour (Bericat 2016; Buijs and Lawrence 2013; Davidson and Kecinski 2022; Lerner et al. 2015; Turner and Stets 2005). Drawing on these insights, environmental justice research is increasingly incorporating emotions to better understand how people respond to environmental change and risks (Kojola 2020; Kojola and Pellow 2020; Norgaard 2011; Norgaard and Reed 2017). Norgaard's (2011) research on climate change denial in Norway indicates that emotions such as helplessness and guilt, in addition to community identities and norms, allow residents in positions of privilege to avoid environment justice issues. Kojola's (2020) study of conflicts over the development of copper mines in Minnesota indicates that both opponents and proponents draw on emotional connections to place but differ in their appraisals of mining for community and environment. New research clearly centers emotions in explaining how people make meaning from, and react to, environmental justice issues (Kojola and Pellow 2020). Missing in most accounts is a focus on the role of emotions in procedural environmental justice, which refers to the presence or absence of meaningful opportunities for community residents to influence decision-making (Roberts et al. 2018).13 Norgaard and Reed (2017) offer clues to the important role of environmental decline and emotions in shaping resource 13 For more on procedural environmental justice, see Chapter 2. 59 management. They find that declining salmon populations instill feelings of hopelessness in Karuk Tribal members which in turn reduces their ability to participate in traditional resource management practices (Norgaard and Reed 2017). I contribute to this emerging body of scholarship by considering the following research questions: What emotions do people experience as they participate in environmental deliberations after disaster strikes? How do these emotions shape the social relations and practices that structure environmental deliberations? What are the implications of emotional dynamics and their outcomes for procedural justice? I use the deliberations emerging from the 2014 Mount Polley disaster in British Columbia, Canada, as a strategic case to answer these research questions. The Mount Polley copper and gold mine endured a catastrophic tailings dam failure on August 4th, 2014. Millions of meters3 of tailings (mine waste) flooded Polley Lake, uprooting forests surrounding Hazeltine Creek before flooding Quesnel Lake. Quesnel Lake is a primary water source for neighbouring rural communities and a critical salmon habitat. The disaster prompted a five-year public consultation process. At first, the consultations were venues for residents to express concerns, questions, and learn about—and provide input on—remediation and reclamations plans. A year later, the scope of the consultations expanded to include public input on the mine’s short- and long-term water management plans. I collected three sources of data to illuminate deliberations in response to environmental change: 42 semi-structured interviews, 208 news articles and 4, 723 pages of email communications, letters, and other documents associated with a Public Liaison Committee (PLC). The latter were gathered from Freedom of Information (FOI) requests which are an underutilized but important resource for social scientists investigating deliberation and decision-making processes over time (Greenberg 2016; Walby and Luscombe 2017). 60 I find that environmental change and experiences of procedural injustice in public consultations fuel and reinforce negative emotions and feelings. The intensity and durability of negative emotions (anger, animosity, fear, and frustration) in turn have two consequences for the social relations and practices of participants in democratic deliberations. First, negative emotions encourage polarization as participants are organized into opposing factions and empathy walls14 between stakeholders are secured. Second, and linked to the first, the prevalence of negative emotions and polarization leads to disengagement as people seek to avoid emotional harm. Consequently, I argue that unmanaged negative emotions produce outcomes that further undermine meaningful public participation processes. Combined, polarization and disengagement prevent the “social integration and political stability” required for the public to meaningfully engage in decision-making (Baldassarri and Gelman 2008:409). My research contributes to a small body of scholarship on emotions, deliberations, and procedural justice by investigating the consequences of negative emotions on the social relations and practices that structure environmental decision-making. I begin with a theory and literature review that centers research on emotions. I highlight what emotions are, how they have been addressed in public deliberation and environmental justice scholarship, and the benefits of further integrating emotions into both research streams. I move on to discuss the Mount Polley case as well as the data, methods, and analysis informing 14 Empathy walls represent “an obstacle to deep understanding of another person, one that can make us feel indifferent or even hostile to those who hold different beliefs…” (Hochschild 2016:5). 61 my research. In the results section, I weave together personal narratives and textual accounts to illuminate the relationship between environmental change, procedural justice, emotions, and their social consequences. In the final section, I discuss my research results in relation to scholarship on emotions, deliberation, and environmental justice and the implications of my findings for future research. 3.2 Literature Review At least two bodies of scholarship address public engagement in environmental issues. The first is the literature on public participation in deliberative processes. The second includes environmental and procedural justice scholarship. Scholars within both fields have highlighted the need for greater engagement with emotional dynamics to explain the processes, outcomes, and justice implications of environmental deliberations (Buijs and Lawrence 2013; Kojola and Pellow 2020; Norgaard and Reed 2017; Peltola et al. 2018). 15 In the following sections, I center interdisciplinary research on emotions and their consequences to show how the integration of emotional dynamics can enrich analyses of public participation processes and procedural environmental justice. 15 There are other bodies of scholarship that focus on emotions, but they draw on a resource governance or political ecology framework (for example, see Morales and Harris 2014; Sultana 2011). Missing in these approaches is an explicit engagement with the role and consequences of negative emotions for a procedurally just deliberation process. Since this is the primary focus of this chapter, I only draw on work that explicitly engages with my core research questions. 62 3.2.1 What are emotions? What do they do? Emotions are often understood as our body's response to external stimuli/events (Bassi, Parkins, and Caine 2019). They include negative emotions, such as anger and frustration, and positive emotions such as pride and joy. Decades of research from neuroscience, psychology, economics, and sociology has shown that emotions guide individual practices, and that these decisions are often tethered to larger social and cultural structures (Bericat 2016; Davidson and Kecinski 2022; Hegtvedt and Parris 2014; Lerner et al. 2015; Peltola et al. 2018; Turner and Stets 2005, 2006) At the individual level, reflexivity16 allows people to make decisions about how emotions guide their practices (Bassi et al. 2019; Burkitt 2012; Weenink and Spaargaren 2016). Research on social movements has shown that feelings of anger in response to injustice can trigger protest participation (Buijs and Lawrence 2013; van Stekelenburg and Klandermans 2013). Individual practices are also informed by expected emotions – the anticipated responses associated with a particular behaviour. Gay and lesbian members of ACT UP continued to participate in militant activism because it promoted feelings of pride and a sense of community (Gould 2002). As such, behaviours that promote positive emotions are encouraged while those that activate negative emotions are typically avoided (Barclay and Kiefer 2014; Lerner et al. 2015). Although people do make behavioural decisions based on the emotions they experience and expect to feel, social and cultural forces have the potential of changing the emotional pathways of individual behaviour. 16 Reflexivity refers to an internal and continuous process in which we use knowledge and cues from our social context to inform our decisions and actions (Burkitt 2012). 63 Emotions operate as a communication system that structure social interactions by transmitting information about the beliefs, motives, and feelings of others (Lerner et al. 2015; Peltola et al. 2018). Sociologists have thus referred to emotions as “the ‘glue’ binding people together and generating commitments to large-scale social and cultural structures” (Turner and Stets 2005:1). The culture of a group regulates which emotions are to be expressed, by whom, and under what circumstances (Bassi et al. 2019; Turner and Stets 2005). Emotional regulation, or emotional management, is therefore critical for social cohesion and group solidarity (Davidson and Kecinski 2022). Consequently, individuals consider others when making decisions about their behaviours. Deliberative processes, which take into consideration social preferences, may override individual emotional responses (Loewenstein et al. 2015). Despite the powerful role of emotions in individual and social decision-making processes, few researchers examine emotional dynamics and their consequences in environmental deliberations (Bowden et al. 2020; Peltola et al. 2018). 3.2.2 Centering Emotions to Explain Environment Deliberation Outcomes Deliberations are often viewed as rational exercises in which multiple stakeholders convene to listen, learn, discuss, and make decisions about various issues. Positive outcomes associated with environmental deliberations include reduced levels of conflict, greater trust in decision-makers, and public acceptance of decisions. Conversely, common negative outcomes include nonparticipation, decreasing institutional trust, and increasing conflicts between stakeholders (Daley and Reames 2015; Dietz and Stern 2008; May 2012). A growing body of scholarship suggests that emotions also drive deliberative processes and outcomes (Barnes 2008; Komporozos-Athanasiou and Thompson 2015; MacKuen et al. 2010; Martin 2012; Morrell, 64 Johnson, and Black 2022). On one hand, emotions can improve deliberations by encouraging participants to develop more thoughtful arguments and opinions (Polletta and Gardner 2018). On the other hand, emotions can disrupt deliberations, challenge group norms, and facilitate disengagement (Komporozos-Athanasiou and Thompson 2015). However, the role of emotions in environmental deliberations and their associated outcomes remains underdeveloped (Buijs and Lawrence 2013; Kennedy and Vining 2007; Peltola et al. 2018). Two deliberative outcomes linked to emotions that warrant further investigation in the context of environmental issues include polarization and disengagement. Social scientists are increasingly considering the relationship between emotions, polarization and environmental practices (Bowden et al. 2020; Davidson and Kecinski 2022; Kennedy and Muzzerall 2022). Polarization generally refers to the organization of people into opposing factions predicated on differences in identities and worldviews (Baldassarri and Gelman 2008). It requires opinion alignment, not necessarily opinion radicalization, along divisive issues (Baldassarri and Gelman 2008). Polarization may have significant implications for environmental deliberations because it often encourages the crystallization of interests around divisive issues that threaten the social cohesion and stability required for meaningful public participation. Research in neuroscience and psychology indicates that group belonging, and the identities they cultivate, inspire boundary work where the categories of “us” and “them” are constructed and reinforced (Davidson and Kecinski 2022). If one group of participants in an environmental deliberation is outraged by the (in)action of an opposing group, they are likely to react aggressively and refrain from meaningfully engaging with different viewpoints (Kals and Müller 2012). 65 Research on climate change adaptation deliberations in Lake Macquarie, Australia illustrates this process (Bowden et al. 2020). The local council’s climate adaptation proposals fueled resident anger, prompting people to organize public meetings, rallies, and petitions to challenge the council’s position. The actions of residents incited frustration amongst local council members, with both groups describing meetings as hostile and polarizing affairs. Both groups of participants erected and secured what Hochschild (2016) describes as empathy walls. Empathy walls function as “an obstacle to deep understanding of another person, one that can make us feel indifferent or even hostile to those who hold different beliefs…” (Hochschild 2016:5). In the case of adaptation deliberations, empathy walls prevented opposing factions from constructing a mutual understanding of climate change science and its implications. To diffuse polarization and conflict, local councilors scaled the empathy wall by refocusing priorities and acceding to resident demands (Bowden et al. 2020). Disengagement (or withdrawal) is a second negative outcome of environmental deliberations that has received comparatively little attention (Caine 2013; Coleman and Stern 2018). Disengagement occurs when people who are already involved in environmental decision-making cease participating.17 Research on four collaborative forest management programs indicates that participants disengaged after feeling frustrated because their expectations about positive outcomes (rational trust) and fair decision-making processes (procedural trust) were not 17 Disengagement is distinct from nonparticipation. Nonparticipation refers to the refusal to participate in deliberations, and there is a small body of scholarship explaining this separate phenomenon (Jacquet 2017; May 2012). 66 met (Coleman and Stern 2018). Although the role of negative emotions (frustration in particular) appears central to the process of disengagement in this research, only distrust is concluded as a powerful predictor of disengagement. This is peculiar given that neuroscience research shows that “any decision to act (or not)… inevitably begins with emotional reactions to stimuli” (Davidson and Kecinski 2022:2). Emotions are thus critical for considering how people respond (or not) in environmental deliberations. Emotions also play an important role in explaining how and why people respond to injustices (Barclay and Kiefer 2014). 3.2.3 Centering Emotions to Explain Environmental and Procedural Justice A long tradition of sociological and psychological research has convincingly demonstrated that perceptions of injustice— unfairness in procedures and/or outcomes— evoke strong emotional reactions (Barclay and Kiefer 2014; Demarest 2021; Hegtvedt and Parris 2014; Kals and Müller 2012; Mikula et al. 1998; Turner and Stets 2005). Disadvantaged individuals or groups who experience injustice are most likely to feel negative emotions, with anger the most salient. In their research on 2,921 participants from 37 countries, Mikula et al. (1998) find that unjust events are perceived as immoral, harmful to social relationships, and elicit negative emotions that are intense and durable over time. Emotions are not only responses to our external environment; they also guide behaviours that help us deal with emotional triggers (Barclay and Kiefer 2014). Feelings of injustice have important implications for participation in environmental deliberations. Positive emotions such as joy foster adaptive practices that connect people to their environments while negative emotions are associated with maladaptive practices including 67 retaliation, avoidance and disengagement (Barclay and Kiefer 2014; Fredrickson 2001; Lazarus 1991; Norgaard 2011). Cross-sectional and longitudinal research on justice in work environments has provided strong support for this argument (Barclay and Kiefer 2014). Across both studies, positive emotions mediated the relationship between justice and workplace performance, and negative emotions mediated the relationship between injustice and workplace withdrawal (Barclay and Kiefer 2014). However, negative emotions more powerfully predict behavioural outcomes. This is because negative emotions narrow the options for behaviour, motivating decisive and protective actions, such as disengagement, that offer relief (Barclay and Kiefer 2014; Fredrickson 2001; Hegtvedt and Parris 2014). Injustices encourage avoidance-related behaviours as a means of protecting against emotional harm. Researchers are increasingly incorporating emotions to better understand how people respond to environmental justice issues (Kojola 2020; Kojola and Pellow 2020; Norgaard 2011; Norgaard and Reed 2017). However, Norgaard and Reed (2017) note that the literature on emotional harm, larger social structures, and environmental change remains underdeveloped in environmental justice scholarship. Yet, their research with Karuk Tribal members demonstrates that environmental decline has profound implications for the development of a diverse range of emotions (anger, grief, shame, hopelessness) and behaviours. Norgaard and Reed (2017) show how feelings of hopelessness prevented participation in traditional resource management (avoidance related behaviour) while fear and hope inspired participation in activities to resist colonialism including activism, deliberations, and cultural ceremonies. Exploring the link between environmental decline, emotions, and various behavioural outcomes provides new 68 directions for environmental justice research (Kojola and Pellow 2020; Norgaard and Reed 2017). One fruitful avenue for research includes examining the role of emotions in facilitating or constraining meaningful opportunities for shaping environmental decision-making – also known as procedural environmental justice (Roberts et al. 2018). Meaningful opportunities for shaping environmental decision-making are evident when participants are included, recognized, and respected (referred to as recognitional justice); when they are provided with scientific information; and when their contributions influence outcomes (Čapek 1993; Hunold and Young 1998; Schlosberg 2007; Whyte 2018). There are two reasons why emotions should be explored in the context of procedural environmental justice. First, research in policing and organizations indicates that a procedurally just process is met when people feel that they have sufficient opportunities to provide input and are treated with dignity and respect (Demarest 2021). As described above, this forms the basis of recognitional justice which is critical for procedural justice. When people feel unheard and neglected (a violation of recognitional justice), they are more likely to respond with anger (Buijs and Lawrence 2013). In this way, negative emotions tend to be associated with procedural injustice and positive emotions with procedural justice. Second, power (the ability to influence) and status (honor and respect) relations influence emotions in decision-making spaces. Both overlap with procedural justice; influence is key to meaningful participation, and respect is key to recognitional justice. The power-status model of emotions suggests that in cases where power is expected but not received, people will lose confidence in themselves and experience negative emotions (Bericat 2016; Kemper 2006; Turner 69 and Stets 2005). If people expect to gain but lose status (honor and respect), and they blame others for this outcome, the resulting negative emotions of anger in response to injustice will be intense (Bericat 2016; Kemper 2006; Turner and Stets 2005). Thus, negative emotions flowing from unequal power and status relations threaten solidarity between actors. My research on deliberative processes in the context of environmental change is one of the first to examine these dynamics and their implications for procedural environmental justice. 3.3 The Case: The Mount Polley Mine The Mount Polley Mine is in the Cariboo region of British Columbia, Canada (see Figure 3). The mine borders small clusters of homes near the West Basin of Quesnel Lake (Mitchell Bay and Winkley Creek) and the unincorporated rural community of Likely. The Mount Polley Mining Corporation (MPMC), a subsidiary of Imperial Metals Corporation, has owned and operated the copper and gold mine since June 13, 1997. When the mine was active, 21,000 tonnes of ore were crushed and processed per day (Hoffman 2015). The extraction process produces waste in the form of tailings—a mixture of sandy silt and trace clay particles—that are combined with water to become a slurry stored in a large tailings dam. The tailings dam is over four kilometers long and occupies 300 hectares of land (Hoffman 2015). 70 Figure 3 Study Area. Source: Author. The larger Landsat-8 image is courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey. The smaller light grey map is courtesy of Esri, HERE, Garmin, © OpenStreetMap contributors, and the GIS User Community. On August 4th, 2014, the tailings dam failed. Twenty-five million meters3 of tailings – equivalent to 10,000 Olympic swimming pools – rushed into Polley Lake, down Hazeltine Creek and into Quesnel Lake. Figure 4 shows a satellite image of the Mount Polley mine before the spill on July 29th, 2014. Figure 5 shows satellite image of the Mount Polley mine a day after the spill on August 4th, 2014. Notice how the emptying of the retention basin immediately affected the local environment: massive tracts of forest were uprooted from the mouth of the tailings pond, all the way down to Quesnel Lake. For perspective, the width of Hazeltine Creek changed from around 1 meter in Figure 4 to 150 meters in Figure 5. Publicly available National Pollutant Release Inventory data indicates that, among other substances, 216,150kg of arsenic and 27,608 71 tonnes of phosphorus were released into the environment (Canada 2018). The Mount Polley disaster is the largest environmental disaster in Canadian history, contaminating an important watershed for salmon and disrupting water supply for neighbouring rural communities. Figure 4 Satellite Image Prior to the Mount Polley Tailings Dam Failure (July 29th, 2014). Source: NASA Earth Observatory. “Dam Breach at Mount Polley Mine in British Columbia.” Retrieved November 5th, 2021 (https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/84202/dam-breach-at-mount-polley-mine-in-british-columbia). 72 Figure 5 Satellite Image Following the Mount Polley Tailings Dam Failure (August 5th, 2014). Source: NASA Earth Observatory. “Dam Breach at Mount Polley Mine in British Columbia.” Retrieved November 5th, 2021 (https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/84202/dam-breach-at-mount-polley-mine-in-british-columbia). The Mount Polley Mining Corporation (MPMC) organized over sixty public consultations throughout the Cariboo region in response to the disaster. Most of the consultations were organized in small rural communities such as Likely and larger cities like Quesnel and Williams Lake. Residents were also consulted through a public liaison committee (PLC). In addition to members of the public, the PLC was comprised of a diverse group of stakeholders, including regional politicians, nongovernmental organizations, MPMC staff, and representatives from various Provincial Ministries (most notably the Ministry of Environmental and Climate Change Strategy). Initially, the consultations and PLC meetings allowed members of the public to get information about the disaster, express their concerns, ask questions, provide input, and learn about the company’s remediation and reclamation plans. By 2015, the scope of the consultations expanded to include deliberations about MPMC’s short- and long-term water 73 management plan (STWMP and LTWMP, respectively). Both water management strategies, favoured by MPMC and opposed by the public, included discharging treated wastewater into Quesnel Lake via a seven-kilometer pipeline. Statutory decision-makers approved of the STWMP on November 30, 2015, and the LTWMP on April 7, 2017 (Ministry of Environment 2017). The Mount Polley case offers an opportunity to assess rural resource extraction issues that have been underexplored in environmental and procedural justice research (Kojola and Pellow 2020; Malin, Ryder, et al. 2019). 3.4 Methods, Data, and Analysis In this research, I draw on 42 semi-structured interviews, 208 newspaper articles, and 4,723 pages of meeting minutes, emails and letters acquired through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to make sense of rural resident responses to the worst environmental disaster in Canadian history. Personal narratives combined with public documents facilitate a rich account of the relationship between environmental disasters, emotions, and participation in decision-making. 3.4.1 Interviews All interviews for this research were conducted between June and October 2019. I invited participants if they had attended a minimum of two consultations and/or were members of the Public Liaison Committee (PLC). I adopted three recruitment strategies: (1) displaying posters in the rural communities of Likely and Horsefly; (2) emailing individuals I identified via meeting minutes or online searches; and (3) requesting that participants share my contact information with their networks (snowball sampling). Interviews occurred in public spaces such as 74 restaurants or in people’s homes, and a small token of appreciation was provided. Some participants provided permission to use their legal names while others requested a pseudonym to ensure confidentiality (see Appendix A). I adopted two strategies to improve recall and reliability given that the disaster occurred five years prior to this research. The first included providing participants with a timeline of the public consultations and associated meetings occurring in the first year of the disaster. The second included opening interviews with a broad question: “I’d love to hear the story of how you became involved in the meetings.” Most participants successfully recalled the memories and experiences that informed the days, months and years following the 2014 Mount Polley spill. Research with people affected by disasters indicates that personally salient events are associated with accurate recall (Wu 2020). Interview questions were primarily related to rural resident experiences in the process and outcomes of public consultations and PLC meetings. Questions related to agenda-setting, diversity and inclusion, and scientific communication are some of the process-related topics explored during interviews. Questions related to the perception of public influence in decisions, evaluations of meeting effectiveness, and changes in opinion tapped into the outcomes of deliberations. Participants completed a voluntary questionnaire at the end of each interview that noted socio-demographic details such as race, age, gender, and political ideology. The average interview took one hour and forty-eight minutes to complete. Appendix B includes a full interview guide. Table 3 provides descriptive statistics of research participants. Seventy-nine percent of participants live near the site of the disaster in the communities of Likely, Mitchell Bay, Winkley 75 Creek, Big Lake and Horsefly. The remaining participants live in the larger Cariboo Region, including Xatśūll First Nation, Williams Lake, Quesnel, and Prince George. The average person lived in their community or city for 29 years and was 65 years of age. All but one participant identified as white. The sample is quite diverse in terms of political ideology and gender (18 men and 24 women). All participants engaged in the public consultation process, and eight of the participants were also members of the PLC. Table 3 Descriptive Statistics of Participants (N=42) Characteristics Number of Participants Average Range Age 65 40-87 Length of Residence (years) 30 1-70 Place of Residence Quesnel Lake Area (Likely, Big Lake, Horsefly, Mitchell Bay, Winkley Creek) 33 Outside Quesnel Lake Area (Xatśūll First Nation, Williams Lake, Quesnel, Prince George) 9 Gender Men 18 Women 24 Race/Ethnicity* White 41 Indigenous 1 Education University Degree (BA, MA, PhD) 15 University, College, or Trade Certificate/Diploma** 18 High School Diploma or less 8 Did not answer 1 Total Household Income (CAD) Over $100,000 7 $50,000 - $99,999 17 Under $49,999 11 Did not answer 7 Political Ideology Liberal 16 Moderate 12 76 Characteristics Number of Participants Average Range Conservative 11 Indigenous Worldview 1 Did not answer 2 *This was an open-ended question, but these were the only two responses provided by participants. **Note: University certificates or diplomas do not require a bachelor’s degree and are often connected to professional associations in accounting, public administration, etc. 3.4.2 Freedom of Information (FOI) Documents FOI requests are a very useful way to triangulate data and uncover decision-making processes over time (Greenberg 2016; Walby and Larsen 2012; Walby and Luscombe 2017). Despite their utility, Sociologists conducting qualitative case studies infrequently draw on these documents. I requested documents from the Cariboo Regional District (CRD) and the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy to compliment interview data. 18 The first set of documents included community updates, letters and communications associated with the email account of an elected CRD official, PLC member, and study participant. The second set of documents included all email communications and associated documents (meeting minutes, presentations, etc.) connected to government representatives of the PLC. Combined, I received 4, 723 pages of data from 2014-2019. FOI data provides unfettered access to environmental deliberations over time, revealing how issues, concerns, and questions are dealt with and whose interests and input shape the course of historical events. 18 The Cariboo Regional District includes 12 electoral areas and 4 incorporated municipalities in the Central Interior of British Columbia. Rural area voters elect a representative for each of these 16 positions. The CRD delivers local government services such as emergency and land-use planning and provides access to libraries and recreational facilities. 77 3.4.3 News Articles I used Factiva to search for all articles containing “Mount Polley” that were published in The Williams Lake Tribune between August 4, 2014, and August 5, 2019 (N=333). With the goal of data reduction, I only included articles that: (1) quoted affected residents; (2) described consultations or meetings related to the mine; (3) featured opposite editorials (op-eds); (4) discussed events organized by local communities and (5) mentioned political mobilizations related to the mine. The sample was reduced to 172 articles. However, after coding the articles, I noticed that some news articles referenced op-eds or letters to the editor that were not included in my initial search results. Using The Williams Lake Tribune website, I performed two searches - “Mount Polley and Opinion” and “Mount Polley and Letters” – to add 36 articles to my sample. The final sample includes 208 articles that provide additional information about public responses to the Mount Polley disaster. 3.4.4 Analysis Interview transcripts were imported into NVivo for a two-step flexible coding process (Deterding and Waters 2021). I began by indexing transcripts. Indexing refers to coding large chunks of text for main topics associated with the interview guide. An example of an index code includes “meeting participation over time.” The second round of analytic coding assists with data reduction by applying thematic codes to the index codes. Drawing on the same example, an analytic code includes “meeting participation over time – disengagement.” This two-step process is associated with the generation of more valid and reliable codes (Deterding and Waters 2021). 78 Inductive codes were also generated to capture emerging themes. Analytic and inductive codes were applied to newspaper articles in NVivo and FOI documents in Adobe Reader.19 3.5 Results Consultations are often viewed as effective ways of getting the public involved in democratic deliberations in which competing values, beliefs and knowledge claims are negotiated. Missing in most accounts of procedural justice in environmental deliberations is the role of emotions. My findings indicate that public participation is an emotional exercise with profound consequences. Both the disaster and the experience of participating in consultations sparked intense negative emotions—anger, animosity, fear, and frustration—that in turn shaped two outcomes.20 The first outcome includes polarization, as opposing factions became crystallized and empathy walls between stakeholders were created. The second outcome is widespread disengagement, as participants sought to avoid negative emotions and/or the divisions emerging from the consultation process (see Figure 6).21 The omnipresent nature of emotions and their consequences threaten the prospects for procedural justice by reducing opportunities for meaningful engagement in deliberative decision-making. I begin by describing negative emotions emerging in response to the disaster. Next, I discuss the consequences of experiencing and expecting negative emotions in the deliberative process. I show how people’s 19 FOI documents are scanned PDFs that are image-based and cannot be marked up in NVivo. After coding, they were exported to Excel. 20 The results in this study indicate that emotions are tied to participants feeling ignored or powerless. Both are indicators of procedural injustice and are explored in more detail in Chapter 1. Feelings of injustice influence emotional responses, and a rich literature shows that emotions shape social practices. 21 The model presented here is a heuristic intended to visualize the findings of this research and does not represent a general model. 79 experiences at consultations (feeling unheard and powerless) encouraged the development of negative emotions, which in turn organized participants into opposing factions and secured empathy walls between stakeholders. I then highlight how negative emotions influence disengagement either as a strategy of avoiding negative emotions and/or divisions between stakeholders. Figure 6 Model of Negative Emotions and Deliberative Outcomes 3.5.1 Emotions in the Aftermath of Disaster The 2014 Mount Polley disaster incited a diverse range of negative emotions (fear, sadness, anger) in rural communities bordering the mine as well as the Cariboo region writ large. Reflecting on the news cycle of 2014, a Williams Lake Tribune editorial notes that people …were filled with shock, sadness, and anger as everyone tried to comprehend the scope of the breach and come to terms with the reality that their lives would never be the same… our area, and in particular Likely residents, will feel the impacts of this tragic story for many generations to come (Anon 2014). Study participants described fear and anger as strong emotions emerging in response to the tailings spill. Fear was linked to pervasive concerns about the substances in the tailings, impacts of the spill on the local economy, and the effects of the tailings on water quality and wildlife. Likely resident Bill Whitmer described concerns about the substances in the tailings when he explained that “people were concerned about lead, arsenic, mercury, wondering ‘what are they 80 using in the process [of extraction] that went into the pond?’ Those were the biggest fears.” Bev Sellars, Xatśūll First Nation Chief at the time of the disaster, described fears about the impacts of the spill on fish, “I was horrified when the spill first happened. I was thinking of all the fries swimming around in Quesnel Lake and the salmon coming up to the spawning grounds. Everybody was worried about the salmon.” Participants did not only express fear related to the spill and its impacts but also anger towards the Mount Polley mine and the Government of British Columbia. Many in the community were enraged because they believed the disaster could have been avoided. Engineering consulting company Knight Piésold had warned both the mine and government in 2011 about the size of the tailings dam (Hoekstra and Penner 2014). Likely resident Gerald MacBurney, a former MPMC tailings dam foreman, also expressed numerous concerns about a possible dam failure months before the spill (Hoekstra and Penner 2014). This was the talk of the town and fostered intense anger towards the mine and decision-makers. Bill Whitmer explained “Gerald knew it was going to go. They didn’t keep up with the specs of the dam. It just pisses me off because they’re working up there, but when shit happened, they were ducking and dodging.” The perceived lack of accountability on the part of the mine was a source of anger, but the lack of government regulation was an issue as well. Richard Rujanschi, a Likely resident, explained that …everybody felt that the government wasn't doing enough anyways because they let the mine look after themselves. So, there was a lot of anger towards the government that if the government had been in there earlier, this may not have happened. Negative emotions emerging from the disaster were durable, affecting resident’s years after the initial event. Community coordinator Lisa Kraus explained to The Williams Lake Tribune in 81 2016 that “people are still angry and are asking why is the water still that colour? And why are we getting heavy sediments in our water filter systems?” (Lamb-Yorski 2016a). Anger was not limited to the disaster itself, but also in relation to deliberations regarding short- and long-term water management plans. The decision to discharge wastewater into Quesnel Lake was met with widespread anger. Likely resident Megan explained that …we didn't want anything else coming into the lake and didn't trust that it would be clean water. There was a lot of anger about that. That was a big, red flag. "No, we don't want any more in the lake. It's had enough." And so people were angry again that that occurred. The Mount Polley disaster sparked negative emotions that were socially experienced and long-lasting. As Megan notes, they were not only a response to the disaster but also people’s experiences in environmental deliberations. The presence of negative emotions within meetings fostered divisions between community members (which I refer to as horizontal polarization) and between community members on one end and mine and government representatives on the other (which I refer to as vertical polarization). 3.5.2 From Scaling to Securing Empathy Walls: Emotions and Polarization All participants recounted negative emotions as pervasive, structuring interactions between the community, MPMC and the Ministry of Environment during public consultations and PLC meetings. Likely resident Marlene Watt described typical meetings as unpleasant and controversial: I didn't enjoy them. I really didn't like them. Very controversial. There were representatives for the mine. They'd get up and tell you a nice, fluffy, good story about what they're doing and everything like that. And people would have questions and they were never answered. And then it would get frustrating. And when people get frustrated, their voices raise and then the people representing the mine, their voices raise. And so the meetings are never really fun - very, very controversial. 82 Marlene’s illustration of meetings indicates two opposing factions—everyday people and the mine—caught in a cycle of frustrating exchanges as residents felt ignored. Participants frequently referenced the link between emotional dynamics and polarization during the consultations. For instance, Likely resident Lori Lockyer recounted how “there was a real us and them mentality on both sides. It was really a lot of animosity. The community of Likely, no matter what they said, some of the members felt that it wouldn't impact what Mount Polley did.” In these instances, emotional dynamics presented a challenge for meaningful public participation—for procedural justice— as residents did not feel that their concerns, questions, and input were valued by decision-makers. Consequently, stakeholders were organized into opposing factions: us (the community) and them (the mine and government). The negative emotions of anger, animosity, fear, and frustration furthered polarization as empathy walls between stakeholders were erected and solidified. Empathy walls operate as barriers to developing a “deep understanding of another person” and promote hostility and indifference to people with different beliefs (Hochschild 2016:5). Residents lamented the inability of decision-makers to acknowledge the pain inflicted by the Mount Polley disaster or to consider resident perspectives on how the mine continues to manage its wastewater. In doing so, the mine and government were moving away from a strategy of scaling empathy walls to one of securing them. The first few consultations reportedly included MPMC and Ministry of Environment staff that were willing to scale empathy walls by listening to, and recognizing, the emotional consequences of the disaster. Likely resident Pohney Whitmer 83 described the first meeting where a Ministry of Environment staff member, “with tears in her eyes”, demonstrated a commitment to understanding community residents: She would sit down and talk to you, and she seemed to – she cared. She cared about the community, and she tried to answer your questions the best she could, and you could tell that she just really, really, wanted to try to help us the best she could. Pohney also found this to be the case for an MPMC representative who was absent after “the first three or four meetings.” Pohney described him as “…very upset, and [said] he was going to fix this problem and help us as much as he could. He was quite emotional about the whole thing … he wasn’t there very long.” Participants explained how the company and the government were able to scale the empathy wall by acknowledging their pain, concerns, and questions. But this soon changed. Pohney described the shift to securing empathy walls as a polarizing project, where the goal is to “stand up to the community”: It was always someone else coming in to make sure that you can stand up to the community. And it got to where people on both sides were getting angry and yelling. The mine people were getting angry and yelling. I mean, it wasn't just the frustrated community. It ended up that they [MPMC] were frustrated because people wouldn't let it [the disaster] go. In standing up to the community by meeting anger with anger, empathy walls were actively being secured instead of scaled. What residents hoped for was an acknowledgement and understanding of the significant impacts of the disaster on the community. Reflecting on this, Likely resident Venta Rutkauskas stated, I was instantly put off by Mount Polley's official stance because they were not allowed or allowing themselves to be empathic to a very significant impact on the community. And so right off the bat, they alienated themselves… they never wanted to address the emotional or difficult places that people were in, still angry after a year or two. They just did that to themselves by not addressing emphatically the sociocultural importance that people put on their place versus the mine, [who instead say] like “this is a technical report on the water” and “this a technical report on our progress.” It was like oil and water. 84 The use of idioms like oil and water is profoundly illustrative of the relationship between negative emotions and empathy walls. The mine did not appear to be interested in scaling the empathy wall by considering the emotional harm and anger inflicted by the disaster or by recognizing the social and cultural significance of Quesnel Lake to the community of Likely. Instead, it appeared to participants as if the mine wanted to focus on the scientific components of the spill’s impact on Quesnel Lake. The opposing factions organized around competing concerns made public consultations like oil and water. Opposing factions were apparent in both the public consultations as well as the PLC. Committee member Agatha described the PLC as rife with friction and animosity, It had gotten to the point where it was no longer a functioning body. It was factioned... it was no different than going to the public meetings. You're not going to accomplish anything. And I think it was just because of the animosity that got created from the two factions, and both sides got to the point they didn't respect the other, didn't respect their opinions or even felt that they shouldn’t have a voice anymore. And, once you get to that point where you want to shut somebody down, and it was happening from both sides, then you would just get to the point where it’s a dysfunctional unit that needs to be dissolved. The anger and animosity at the meetings created an environment in which empathy walls were being secured on both sides, with drastic measures taken to silence oppositional voices. Numerous emails between February and May 2018 provide an example of the animosity, polarization and silencing described by Agatha. The emails concern the mine’s response to PLC member Doug Watt’s participation in an Amnesty International Delegation to Duluth, Minnesota on February 12th, 2018. Duluth for Clean Water, a non-profit organization opposing a copper-nickel mine proposal, invited Doug Watt to speak at a press conference and a City Council meeting about his experience as a Likely resident following the Mount Polley disaster. Angered 85 by Doug Watt’s involvement in the delegation, MPMC prevented him from phoning into a February 15th PLC meeting. The mine increased its censorship of community residents when an email on March 20th, 2018, notified members that Doug allegedly made …Numerous misleading and totally false statements about MPMC while referring to both pre-breach conditions as well as post-breach conditions and the remedial efforts undertaken by MPMC… By his actions, MPMC believes that Mr. Watt has subverted the stated purpose of the PLC to suit his own agenda and by doing so has demonstrated a distinct lack of honesty, integrity, professionalism, and good faith. MPMC will not tolerate Mr. Watt’s statements and deportment and therefore, MPMC wishes to remove Mr. Watt from the PLC. MPMC feels that the statements made by Mr. Watt during this Workshop are sufficiently egregious in nature… As such, Mr. Watt will no longer be invited to participate in the PLC. The attempt by MPMC to “shut down”, in Agatha’s words, Doug’s voice had significant implications for the PLC committee. The action amplified existing negative emotions and polarization as committee members joined two opposing factions: one in support of Doug Watt and the other in support of MPMC. Responding to MPMC’s March 20th email on the same day, Cariboo Regional District representative Joan Sorley wrote, I am more appalled yet to read accusations of dishonesty and lack of integrity – no, actual name-calling!... I don’t believe that membership on this committee is limited to those who are Mount Polley cheerleaders, or that any of us are prohibited from talking about our experiences in order to help others to make good decisions… while I found the workshop in question, I found nothing that was untrue or even controversial – certainly nothing to warrant such vitriolic accusations. As with Joan’s input, most emails opposed the anger demonstrated by MPMC and the harsh action of removing people with opposing opinions from the committee. Mitchell Bay resident Christine McLean wrote on March 20th that “if you [MPMC] muzzle Doug, you muzzle all of us who disagree with MPMC’s science and MPMC’s methods! This action is intimidating and very aggressive.” Also writing that day, Likely resident Richard Holmes relates the censorship of Doug at the February 15th meeting to his own experiences on the PLC, 86 I have felt that lack of decorum and integrity in a previous PLC meeting as well as being censored for the remainder of the meeting to the tone of laughter in the background when I attempted to point out an error by the MPMC’s consultants… If the MPMC seeks to have any meaningful dialogue with local residents, they should start listening to our concerns and quit treating the locals and the local landscape as collateral damage in their efforts to carry on their operation as guests in our backyards. They should not expect respect by demanding it, but by earning it… I fully hope that the MPMC will reconsider their decision to ban Doug from this committee without due process, otherwise their efforts speak volumes on their agenda and the mandate of the PLC will become meaningless. Richard describes how the continuation of nonrecognition— securing empathy walls— will lead to a meaningless participatory process. Intervening on April 19th, 2018, the Ministry of Environment declared that MPMC cannot “unilaterally determine the membership of the committee”, and Doug’s status as a member was reinstated at a special meeting later in the year. But as interviews and PLC emails indicate, negative emotions provided fuel for polarization as empathy walls were secured across opposing factions. The attempt to arbitrarily remove participants with opposing viewpoints demonstrates a missed opportunity to scale the empathy wall, reinforces polarization, and threatens the prospects for procedural justice. 3.5.3 Emotions, Polarization, and Disengagement The prevalence of negative emotions not only entrenched polarization but also contributed to widespread disengagement from the consultation process. Over three-quarters of participants stopped attending the consultations. The most frequently cited reason included wanting to avoid negative emotions, and this was often linked to polarization. Reflecting on why she stopped attending the meetings, Likely resident Elma Sol stated, I was so mad. And that's why I didn't go to the last meetings because all that would happen to me, was I’d go there, I'd get bent, I'd come home, I'd be crying [and] I'd be upset for four days. Like, I'd want to move. I was just furious. 87 Elma’s statement indicates the emotional toll the consultations had on participants. It also reveals that disengagement operated as a strategy to avoid emotional harm. Many other participants, including Jennifer, confirmed disengagement as a strategy to avoid emotional harm. Recalling a conversation with a Likely community member, Jennifer said And then after you just - like [my friend] says - "Jennifer, you just get so sick you can't be bothered going." She said, people get sick, and people not holding their temper back - it kind of gets to you. You think “why bother?” Anger and frustration caused people to feel “so sick” that they disengaged to avoid such feelings. But disengagement was often linked to both negative emotions and polarization. Sometimes this was a result of horizontal polarization (between community members) which became much more prominent following the disaster. Likely Chamber of Commerce President Robin Hood commented about this in an open letter to the community when he stated, “since that day, every person who calls Likely their home, has witnessed every emotion known to man… and I fear our town is dividing.” (Hood 2014). Speaking to this, participants described how the emotions brought about by the disaster amplified the pro and anti-mine sentiments in the community, prompting Robin to end his letter with a call for unity, “Please be willing to listen to other opinions. Everyone has one. We can agree to disagree, but all we have is each other.” (Hood 2014). Negative emotions and polarization, not unity, spread to the public consultations. Reflecting on the link between horizontal polarization, negative emotions and disengagement, Likely resident Kathleen stated: I didn't participate in too many of them. I stayed away. I just couldn't cope mentally with the divide between best friends that I'd known for 50 years in this town, the divide 88 between them over this… To go to those meetings, with the yelling and the screaming… I couldn't deal with it, so I didn't… Everybody was just running on emotion. To avoid negative emotions and horizontal polarization, some residents disengaged from the consultation process entirely. Although horizontal polarization was evident, a much more common explanation linked negative emotions with vertical polarization—the us (community) and them (the mine and government) dynamic described earlier—to disengagement. Likely resident Richard Rujanschi made this clear when he told me that It was a lot of accusations, and the mine defending [its position] rather than a back and forth… someone was always being angry about something. We actually stopped going to the meetings after about a year or so. It became a battlefield and we lost interest in it. Richard’s invocation of the battlefield metaphor shows how two competing factions (the mine and residents) were unable to scale the empathy wall (“defending…rather than a back and forth”). This polarization, in addition to the persistence of negative emotions (“someone was always angry”), led Richard and his wife Pohney Whitmer to disengage. Pohney confirmed the sentiments expressed by Richard when I asked why she stopped attending the consultations. Recalling heated exchanges between meeting organizers and participants (one a Quesnel resident and the other a Greenpeace member), Pohney explained that there was so much anger and yelling, on both sides, it just got out of control. The people from the mine and government didn't want them asking questions. They tried to keep them quiet all the time. Pohney’s decision to disengage from the consultation process was a function of both negative emotions and polarization, as empathy walls were secured and hostility towards participants with different views increased. The combination of negative emotions and polarization was shared by many participants, with some drawing parallels to the way corporate power works within Indigenous communities. As Likely resident, Skeed Burkowski explained, 89 I stopped going because it's not healthy for the ticker. I was just so angry all the time and I saw it for what it was. It was a farce. It was a lost cause. And they're going to do what they're going to do. A multimillion-dollar corporation is not going to pay attention to what the locals say. It's like having a copper deposit near a reservation. They don't care about the reservation. They don't care about the hillbillies. The intense and protracted anger experienced by Skeed, alongside feelings of powerlessness and images of us (“hillbillies”; “the reservation”) and them (“a multimillion-dollar corporation”), is emblematic of community sentiments as residents attempt to shape environmental decision-making in the aftermath of the Mount Polley disaster. The enduring and intense negative emotions emerging from both the disaster and feelings of powerlessness from participation in deliberations influenced two deleterious outcomes. The first includes widening gaps between stakeholders, as polarization organized participants into opposing factions and secured empathy walls. The second, and often linked, is disengagement as residents sought to avoid emotional harm and community conflict. 3.6 Discussion and Conclusion Drawing on rich and unique data related to the aftermath of the 2014 Mount Polley disaster, I find that anger, animosity, frustration, and fear, were the most salient social emotions experienced by study participants and emphasized in news articles and emails between members of the PLC. Negative emotions were evident as people came to terms with environmental change due to the disaster. Negative emotions also permeated throughout the consultation process. Weaving through people’s emotional accounts of deliberations is the common experience of feeling powerless and unheard. In other words, negative emotions emerged as residents reacted to procedural environmental injustice. Procedural environmental injustice is often attributed to violations of recognitional justice (a lack of inclusion and respect) as well as the inability of 90 everyday people to influence the decisions that affect their community and local environment (Hunold and Young 1998; Whyte 2018). My data shows that residents frequently felt powerless and unheard during deliberations, the latter of which indicates disrespect for community concerns and issues. By tracing the emergence of negative emotions to injustice, my research confirms findings and expectations from research in psychology and sociology on the relationship between injustice, power, status and emotions (Hegtvedt and Parris 2014; Kals and Müller 2012; Kemper 2006; Mikula et al. 1998; Turner and Stets 2005). Classic work in psychology, for example, finds strong evidence indicating that experiences of injustice spark intense negative emotions that are durable over time (Mikula et al. 1998). In sociology, this is often traced to inequalities in the distribution of power and status (Kemper 2006; Turner and Stets 2005). Status deficits in particular produce feelings that a person is not receiving a suitable level of respect, appreciation or approval which contributes to the emergence of negative emotions such as anger (Kemper 2006). In my data, participants frequently described how the concerns and issues they raised at public consultations or PLC meetings were not respected, resulting in a loss in status and feelings of anger and frustration. My findings suggest that procedural environmental justice hinges, in part, on participants feeling that their concerns are heard and respected. We can expect that increasing the status and power of participants in deliberations promotes positive emotions that may encourage meaningful public engagement in environmental decision-making. Future research on procedural environmental justice research is required to investigate this hypothesis on the relationship between status, power, emotions, and participation. 91 My research also finds that emotions in response to environmental decline and experiences of procedural injustice are significant for shaping social relations (polarization) and social practices (participation). The first outcome, polarization, became evident as opposing factions (“us and them”) were established and empathy walls between stakeholders were secured. Interviews, news articles, and PLC emails detail how negative emotions fueled conflict and a belief among residents that company and government representatives were unable to scale the empathy wall and manage hostilities. The negative emotions expressed by residents were matched, instead of managed, by those of company officials. Consequently, empathy walls were secured and opposing factions solidified. This indicates that although emotions are the glue that bind people together and motivate sustained engagement (Turner and Stets 2005), emotional management is critical to this process (Davidson and Kecinski 2022). When negative emotions are not managed, as my data indicates, they can entrench polarization, threaten social cohesion, and thus a functional deliberative process. Bowden et al.'s (2020) study on climate adaptation deliberations provides evidence for the importance of emotional management and the recognition of public issues for procedural environmental justice. They show how emotional management, and the scaling of empathy walls by addressing public concerns, decreases polarization and encourages consensus, although at the expense of dealing with the reality of climate change and its impacts (Bowden et al. 2020). My research contributes to this scholarship by suggesting that unequal status relations in deliberative processes spark negative emotions that in turn fuel polarization and secure empathy walls. However, more research is needed to better understand the relationship between environmental change, emotions, and polarization in the context of environmental deliberations. 92 The second outcome I found is rooted in social practices. It is well established in neuroscience, psychology, and sociology that emotions powerfully and predictably shape social practices (Bericat 2016; Davidson and Kecinski 2022; Lerner et al. 2015; Turner and Stets 2005). My research demonstrates the enduring importance of emotions for influencing behaviour. I argue that unchecked negative emotions, which are often linked to polarization, discourage participation and influence disengagement. Participants frequently disclosed how disengagement was a strategy to avoid the emotional harm resulting from participation in hostile and emotionally charged meetings. Consistent exposure to intense and ubiquitous anger and frustration was an unpleasant experience with emotional consequences that lingered beyond the two-hour meetings. Horizontal and vertical polarization—divisions between residents and widening gaps between community members and decision-makers, respectively—sparked by negative emotions were additional painful experiences that many participants sought to avoid. The relationship between environmental change, emotional harm, and social practices is seldomly addressed in environmental justice research (Norgaard and Reed 2017), and my research underscores the importance of emotional harm in undermining meaningful participation in deliberations. My findings on disengagement also support existing research which indicates that experiences and expectations of negative emotions encourage avoidance-related behaviours (Barclay and Kiefer 2014; Hegtvedt and Parris 2014; Norgaard 2011). Given my findings and the expectations outlined in existing research, emotions are a significant pathway guiding social practices (Davidson and Kecinski 2022). When negative emotions are strong and durable, and polarization is rampant, the prospects for a procedurally just deliberative process are threatened. 93 In these moments, uneven power and status relations are exposed, fueling conflict, and increasing the likelihood of public disengagement. Emotions play an important role in structuring deliberations and creating the conditions that help or hinder meaningful engagement in environmental decision-making. The findings and insights of this research are not specific to deliberations responding to focal events such as disasters and their aftermath. The necessary ingredient is contentious topics in which a plurality of perspectives, each with its own definition of the problem and proposed solutions, emerges during deliberations. This incorporates deliberations on other environmental and natural resource issues, including climate adaptation, collaborative forest management, or proposals related to the development and management of oil and gas. But it can also extend to deliberations on other value-laden and potentially contentious issues such as urban and regional planning, electoral reform, social security issues, and immigration. Each of these issues areas includes a diverse range of people gathering to listen, discuss, and provide input on the decisions affecting their lives. Centering emotional dynamics provides an opportunity for future researchers to assess the processes and outcomes associated with procedurally just deliberations. 94 Chapter 4: Rural Mobilization in the Face of Mounting Environmental Risks 4.1 Introduction Disasters can be catalysts for collective action and conflict (Bergstrand and Mayer 2017; Edelstein 2004; Peek, Wachtendorf, and Meyer 2021; Picou et al. 2004; Stallings and Quarantelli 1985; Tierney 2014, 2019). A rich literature exists to explain the emergence of collective action in communities impacted by disasters, its consequences on community relationships, and patterns of participation and disengagement from movement mobilization (Blocker et al. 1991; Cable and Degutis 1991; Edelstein 2004; Korzeniewicz and Casullo 2009; Kroll-Smith and Couch 1990; Luft 2009, 2012; Rochford and Blocker 1991; Shriver and Kennedy 2005; Walsh 1981; Walsh and Warland 1983; Wolensky 1983). However, not all disasters prompt the emergence of contentious collective action. Why does collective action sometimes fail to materialize? How do residents mobilize in response to environmental risks? How does mobilization change over time? These questions have not received sufficient empirical attention because most disaster researchers tend to adhere to two methodological conventions identified in the larger social movement literature. First, researchers select on the dependent variable; that is, they use instances of successful collective action to explain movement emergence (Bell 2016; Wright and Boudet 2012). However, this practice compromises explanations of emergence because visible and sustained movements are exceptionally rare (McAdam and Boudet 2012). To better understand emergence, the empirical focus should shift to populations at risk for mobilization or counterfactual cases – those who have not mobilized. Second, researchers typically focus on contentious, oppositional, and noninstitutionalized forms of mobilization (Jerolmack and Walker 2018). By only counting 95 protest, direct action, and other contentious tactics as evidence of mobilization, researchers run the risk of categorizing quiet forms of mobilization as nonmobilization. Quiet mobilization refers to political practices that include conventional forms of civic engagement such as participation in town hall meetings, public consultations, or the formation of interest groups (Jerolmack and Walker 2018). To consider quiet mobilization as nonmobilization may gloss over the individual and collective actions that typify political participation in rural, working class and/or conservative communities (Jerolmack and Walker 2018; Kojola 2020). I draw on the insights from social movement scholarship to break with the methodological conventions in disaster research that select on the dependent variable and tend to focus on oppositional mobilization. I use interviews, newspaper articles, and freedom of information documents (emails, meetings minutes, etc.) related to two critical environmental periods to assess why contentious action failed to materialize, the types of mobilization that took its place, and how tactics changed in the face of mounting environmental risks. The first period (2014-2015) is associated with the fallout from the largest environmental disaster the Canadian history: the 2014 Mount Polley tailings dam failure. The Mount Polley disaster involved the release of twenty-five million meters3 of tailings into the near-pristine Quesnel Lake in rural British Columbia, Canada. Grievances and threat appraisals were high among residents located at the epicenter of the disaster but were insufficient motivators for the emergence of contentious collective action. I argue that cultural/community context conditions (attitudes towards activism) as well as mobilizing structures (social networks and formal organizations) represent the motivational and capacity requirements for the emergence of oppositional mobilization. Specifically, I show how a disavowal of contentious collective action, the presence of 96 community corrosion (a breakdown in social relationships), and the absence of formal organizations and resources impeded social movement mobilization. Instead, I show how rural residents engaged in individual forms of quiet mobilization (participation in public consultations, writing emails/letters, and publishing opposite the editorial, or op-ed, articles) both in support for and against the mine and government’s approach to disaster recovery. The second critical environmental period (2016-2019) is marked by the time leading up to, and following, the approval of the company’s long-term water management plan in April 2017 (amendments to permit 11678). Beginning in late 2016, rural residents united in opposition to the contamination of a significant local water source, expanding the tactical repertoire associated with quiet mobilization following the Mount Polley spill. Locals engaged in blended action, combining individual and collective tactics to challenge status quo company practices and government permits. Residents who were economically independent of the mine and/or still politically engaged with disaster response continued writing op-eds, and the stance towards both the mining company and the provincial government became more critical and unified. This same group of residents also adopted more collective and institutional forms of advocacy. Residents mobilized for a community vote against the permit to discharge wastewater into Quesnel Lake, and others formed a grassroots interest group that launched collective letter-writing initiatives, public awareness campaigns, and engaged in institutional forms of advocacy such as environmental permit appeals. Disasters and mounting environmental risks may not spur protest, but assessments of community responses over a five-year time frame reveal that quiet forms of mobilization, ranging from individual to collective, typify political participation in communities affected by the Mount Polley spill. 97 I begin by reviewing research on emergent collective action in response to disasters and the lessons learned from social movement scholarship on nonmobilization and quiet mobilization. Next, I describe the two critical environmental periods informing this study and the data, methods and analysis strategy used to answer my research questions. I then turn to the results where I show how a lack of motivation (cultural context) and capacity (mobilizing structures) prevent the emergence of collective action before charting the individual and quiet forms of mobilization that emerged in the face of mounting environmental risks. In the final section, I review key findings, contributions to the literature, limitations, and propose future areas of research. 4.2 Literature Review 4.2.1 Disasters and Emergent Collective Action Disasters can be catalysts for collective action (Picou et al. 2004; Stallings and Quarantelli 1985). A typical vehicle for community collective action is the emergent group. After disaster strikes, emergent groups form to either respond to immediate community needs or to organize in pursuit of collective goals (Stallings and Quarantelli 1985; Tierney 2014). Emergent groups range from ephemeral search and rescue teams, for example, to sustained interest groups pressuring government action to address new environmental risks. The focus on emergent groups in the latter category has produced a diverse body of scholarship on community mobilization in the aftermath of natural and technological disasters (Aldrich 2012; Bergstrand and Mayer 2017; Blocker et al. 1991; Cable and Degutis 1991; Couch and Kroll-Smith 1985; Edelstein 2004; Korzeniewicz and Casullo 2009; Kroll-Smith and Couch 1990; Luft 2009, 2012; Rochford and Blocker 1991; Shriver and Kennedy 2005; Walsh 1981; Walsh and Warland 1983; 98 Wolensky 1983). This research has largely focused on explaining the emergence of mobilization, its consequences on community relationships, and patterns of participation and disengagement in disaster mobilization. The emergence of grassroots groups is a common response to contamination from a technological disaster (Edelstein 2004). Three frequently cited factors contributing to the emergence of collective action following disaster include the presence of mobilizing structures or social capital, grievances, and threat appraisals. 22 Mobilizing structures refer to the capacities (formal organizations, leaders, and/or informal networks) that facilitate or constrain the development of collective action (McAdam 2003; McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald 1996). Mobilizing structures can be pre-existing (Aldrich 2012; Korzeniewicz and Casullo 2009; Walsh 1981; Wolensky 1983) or emergent (Cable and Degutis 1991; Edelstein 2004). Evidence from the March 28, 1979 Three Mile Island (TMI) accident in Pennsylvania confirms the importance of pre-existing mobilizing structures (local and national anti-nuclear organizations), grievances and threat appraisals in initiating collective action (Walsh 1981:10).23 One of two pre-existing local protest organizations, Three Mile Island Alert (TMIA), organized local residents to attend rallies, both at the state’s capital the weekend following the disaster and a month later, on May 6, 1979, when thirty busloads of residents were sent to participate in the national anti-nuclear rally 22 Scholars typically use either social capital or mobilizing structures to refer to similar phenomena. Social capital is often adopted by disaster researchers and refers to the social networks and formal organizations that facilitate the flow of information and norms (Aldrich 2012). Social movement scholars prefer the term mobilizing structures which include the social networks, groups and organizations that facilitate or constrain the emergence of collective action (McAdam 2003; McAdam et al. 1996). Both focus on meso-level structures, namely networks and organizations, that make collective action more likely. I use them interchangeably. 23 The accident included the release of radioactive material into the environment due to the partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor. 99 in Washington, DC. Resident appraisals of threat, political grievances, pre-existing mobilization structures and an active anti-nuclear movement in America contributed to protest mobilization as well as the emergence of community-led grassroots groups such as ANGRY (Anti-Nuclear Group Representing York). If there are no pre-existing protest groups in a community, researchers have found that a prerequisite to mounting emergent collective action is the availability of community leaders (Cable and Degutis 1991; Edelstein 2004). The Yellow Creek Concerned Citizens (YCCC), for example, emerged because of the availability of local leaders who were willing to challenge Middlesboro Tanning Company’s dumping of toxic chemicals into Yellow Creek in Kentucky (Cable and Degutis 1991). It was the availability of community leaders, in addition to widespread threat appraisals and grievances, that helped initiate marches, pickets and petition drives (Cable and Degutis 1991). Indirectly influencing the formation of collective action is the fact that tannery workers were not from Kentucky, but neighboring states (Cable and Degutis 1991). Earlier work by Couch and Kroll-Smith (1985), drawing on the infamous toxic landfill in Love Canal, New York suggests that economic dependence on such industries can inhibit the development of mobilizing structures to mount collective action. Mobilizing structures also include social networks. It is often argued that high levels of social capital, such as strong social networks, increase the likelihood of collective action (Aldrich 2012; Tierney 2014). It is hypothesized that in these scenarios, interpersonal trust, expectations about community responsibility and behaviours, and the diffusion of information and knowledge make cooperation and collective action more probable (Aldrich 2012). Research 100 comparing two adjacent neighborhoods affected by the 1995 Kobe earthquake in Japan indicates the importance of social capital for the development of post-disaster collective action (Aldrich 2012). Since the 1960s, the community of Mano, unlike neighboring community Mikura, featured strong social ties plus a rich history of community mobilization on campaigns ranging from antipollution to neighborhood development. The presence of both strong social networks and previous experience with collective action allowed Mano residents to launch a series of interest groups and non-profits that lobbied city officials on issues related to housing and community infrastructure. In such cases, pre-existing social capital strengthened post-disaster community cohesion through the formation of new social relationships (interest groups) and behaviors (lobbying city officials). Other research has found the opposite to be true as well: low levels of social capital prior to disaster can facilitate contentious collective action with varying effects on community relationships (Cable and Degutis 1991; Kroll-Smith and Couch 1990). A case in point is the community responses to the coalmine fire that has been burning underneath Centralia, Pennsylvania since 1962 (Kroll-Smith and Couch 1990). Centralia featured weak social networks, but a near tragedy in 1981 prompted the emergence of The Concerned Citizens Against the Centralia Mine Fire, a grassroots group engaging in confrontational tactics such as protest in response to the threats posed by the fire and government inaction. 24 The emergence of the group polarized the community, with many locals disavowing the group’s use of contentious 24 On February 14th, 1981 “a twelve year old boy fell into a cave-in caused by the mine fire and escaped death only by grasping onto an exposed tree root.” (Kroll-Smith and Couch 1990:3) 101 collective action and threat framing because it meant “sacrificing the interests of the community” (Kroll-Smith and Couch 1990:76). Between 1981-1983, the small community of a thousand residents witnessed widespread social conflict (including death threats, tire slashings and even a fire bombing) due to fundamental disagreements related to threat appraisals and blame attribution. Although weak social networks did not affect the emergence of collective action in Centralia, the emergence of oppositional mobilization depleted social capital by encouraging conflict and polarization. The dissolution of community cohesion in Centralia can, retrospectively, be considered a case of community corrosion. The term community corrosion, or corrosive community, refers to the negative and enduring effects of technological disasters including inducing social conflict, opinion polarization, and a breakdown in social relationships (Freudenburg 1997; Gill et al. 2016; Mayer et al. 2015). Community corrosion is often a result of differences in blame attribution, uncertainty about environmental risks, and/or protracted litigation and compensation issues. And as the case of Centralia shows, protest and collective action can spark corrosive communities (Kroll-Smith and Couch 1990). Despite the rich literature on community corrosion, few have considered the implications of community corrosion for the emergence of mobilization and collective action. Bergstrand and Mayer (2017) use survey data gathered five years after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to show that a decline in social cohesion (or community corrosion) is associated with a small but significant increase in political action ranging from letter writing to protest participation. However, their research is based on a sample drawn from communities 102 outside the epicenter of the disaster.25 This leaves the relationship between community corrosion and the emergence (or not) of contentious collective action in directly impacted communities underexplored. Overall, there is a dearth of research to explain why collective action fails to materialize in the aftermath of technological disaster. The literature on nonmobilization in response to environmental risk may offer insights into this process. 4.2.2 Nonmobilization, Quiet Mobilization and Environmental Risks Disaster scholarship on emergent groups, such as grassroots protest organizations, typically selects on the dependent variable by focusing on successful cases of collective action (McAdam and Boudet 2012). This bias is also found in environmental justice and social movement scholarship concerned with explaining the emergence of not in my backyard (NIMBY) mobilizations against locally unwanted land uses (Bullard 2000; McAdam and Boudet 2012; Wright and Boudet 2012). The problem with this methodological convention is that visible social movements may be “…so wildly atypical of mobilization attempts that our understanding of emergence is critically compromised by focusing only on them” (McAdam and Boudet 2012:23). Researchers argue that better explanations for social movement emergence would consider assessments of populations at risk instead of mature and successful social movements (McAdam and Boudet 2012; Wright and Boudet 2012). This shift has contributed to a growing body of scholarship concerned with explaining why collective action fails to materialize in the 25 It is also unclear when, over the five-year period, respondents participated in political action or first witnessed a breakdown in social cohesion (or community corrosion). Although disasters tend to be compressed in time, the political and social consequences of technological disasters tend to be durable. The cause-and-effect relationships between these variables is unclear. 103 face of environmental risk (Boudet 2011; Eaton and Kinchy 2016; Malin, Mayer, and Roeser 2022; McAdam and Boudet 2012; Messer et al. 2015; Wright and Boudet 2012). Researchers often point to the absence of capacity (structural conditions) and motivation (cultural/community context) to explain nonmobilization. The absence of capacity for collective action emergence is frequently linked to weak mobilizing structures and a lack of political opportunities/threats (McAdam 2003; McAdam and Boudet 2012; McAdam et al. 1996).26 Cultural/community contexts, typically rooted in economic concerns, influence how people respond to environmental risk and are indicative of a lack of motivation to mobilize (Wright and Boudet 2012). In some cases, a combination of these two factors precludes the emergence of collective action. Comparative studies of 20 U.S. communities facing the prospect of hosting energy facilities in their area are particularly instructive (McAdam and Boudet 2012; Wright and Boudet 2012). Wright and Boudet (2012) show that community context (the presence of a similar industry and an economic interest in the project) and a lack of capacity (including mobilizing structures and political opportunities) powerfully influence nonmobilization in nine of the ten communities. In other cases, researchers have focused on one of these two dimensions to explain nonmobilization. 26 Both political opportunities and threats represent changes in the political landscape that may incite mobilization. Political opportunities and threats include: sites of power that are vulnerable to movement claims-making; “the openness of the regime to new actors”; “the instability of current political alignments”; “the availability of influential allies or supporters”; and “the extent to which the regime represses or facilitates collective claim-making.” (Tilly 2006:44). 104 Community context may also include cultural factors related to collective memory and identity. For example, cultural context significantly explains collective inaction in Blackwell, Oklahoma, where a decommissioned zinc smelter facility polluted the area. Messer et al. (2015) show that collective memories of Blackwell Zinc as key to community growth and prosperity, in addition to a collective identity centering an image of strong, loyal workers, prevented the emergence of protest and collective action in the face of environmental risk. In addition to cultural context, a lack of capacity (political and economic opportunities) may prevent the emergence of collective action. For example, Malin et al. (2022) argues that larger political-economic forces informed by neoliberal norms and policy measures explain nonmobilization in Greeley and Windsor, two communities in northern Colorado facing unconventional oil and gas development. First, community residents resigned to unconventional oil and gas development because it was viewed as inevitable and economically necessary despite environmental and public health concerns. Second, residents viewed regulators as unresponsive to their concerns and supportive of industry which discouraged collective action. Research has consistently demonstrated, in a myriad of ways, that capacity and motivation are critical elements in nonmobilization processes. Research on nonmobilization has focused on contentious, oppositional, and noninstitutionalized forms of collective action. There are theoretical and methodological reasons explaining this academic bias. Theoretically, social movement mobilization is often conceptualized as sustained efforts to promote social change through noninstitutionalized tactics such as protest, direct action and rallies (Jerolmack and Walker 2018; McAdam and Boudet 2012). Methodologically, scholars have relied on noninstitutionalized tactics such as protest as 105 either the unit of analysis for social movement activity or as a requirement for oppositional mobilization. It has been noted that one of the largest areas of research within social movement studies focuses on large N studies of protest events (McAdam and Boudet 2012). Given this, protest and other forms of oppositional mobilization are popularly conceived as synonymous with collective action. Additionally, researchers frequently use noninstitutionalized tactics as the core criteria to distinguish a mobilized community from a nonmobilized one (Jerolmack and Walker 2018; McAdam and Boudet 2012; Wright and Boudet 2012). As a result of these theoretical and methodological choices, tactics that are individual or institutional are rarely counted as evidence of mobilization. There is growing concern that a focus on contentious, oppositional, and noninstitutionalized tactics unnecessarily narrows the scope of what counts as mobilization (Eaton and Kinchy 2016; Jerolmack and Walker 2018; Kojola 2020). Jerolmack and Walker (2018) have introduced the concept of quiet mobilization to capture the style of political participation that may better reflect the practices of people living in small, rural and/or conservative communities. Quiet mobilization refers to individual and collective practices that are political in nature and are either in support or against new economic, political, or cultural initiatives. Practices and tactics include conventional forms of civic engagement such as attendance and participation in public consultations, conversations with neighbours, and the formation of interest groups. A key characteristic of quiet mobilization is a disavowal of 106 contentious collective action and tactics which may be associated with the liberal left and contrary to rural values of civility and neighborliness.27 Quiet mobilization is similar to the politics of small things, which include the everyday social interactions that influence problem definition and the capacity to act (Goldfarb 2006). The politics of small things have been critical for garnering support for Howard Dean’s candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. Dean supporters met in person to write supportive letters to caucus participants in Iowa and New Mexico and wrote hundreds of blog posts across different websites to debate Dean’s suitability as a nominee (Goldfarb 2006). Letter writing campaigns and blog posts exemplify struggles over meaning-making that are a key component of political and quiet forms of mobilization. To interpret quiet mobilization, or the politics of small things, as nonmobilization may be “a fundamental misreading of the situation” (Jerolmack and Walker 2018:510). Current research drawing on quiet mobilization has predominantly examined support for new environmental risks, known as a please in my backyard (PIMBY) response to resource development (Jerolmack and Walker 2018; Kojola 2020). In the Iron Range region of Minnesota, rural, white and working-class residents quietly mobilized support for the development of copper 27 The disavowal of contentious collective action is distinct from, although related to, the disavowal of politics (Bennett et al. 2013). The disavowal of politics refers to the “active process of defining, categorizing, and distancing from the unsavory aspects of public life” that include “political processes of voicing preferences (what citizens do) and creating policy (what politicians and bureaucrats do)” (Bennett et al. 2013:530). Both concepts of disavowal include a distancing from certain political practices. However, a disavowal of politics tends towards institutional political processes whereas the disavowal of contentious collective action is in reference to noninstitutional political processes. The disavowal of politics also focuses on identity formation, whereas my use of a disavowal of contentious collective action focuses on distancing. 107 mines in the area. Kojola (2020: 690) finds that rural residents attended and participated in public hearings to express their support for resource development, drawing on the importance of industry to their rural livelihoods and living “the good life.” Quiet mobilization is not only found in communities supportive of industry. Work pre-dating the concept has shown that quiet mobilization in opposition to oil and gas development in Saskatchewan and Pennsylvania occurred through individual actions in the absence of an oppositional protest movement (Eaton and Kinchy 2016). In both places some community residents would individually call the police about a variety of issues associated with extraction or share photographs of rural road damage caused by company trucks for local news stories. Whether supportive or oppositional, quiet mobilization provides a new lens through which to assess environmental politics. Given the thin literature on the tactical repertoires associated with quiet mobilization (Eaton and Kinchy 2016; Jerolmack and Walker 2018), this study extends our understanding of rural political participation in the face of mounting environmental risks. 4.3 Mounting Environmental Risks After Disaster Strikes The Mount Polley Mine is operated by the Mount Polley Mining Corporation (MPMC), a subsidiary of Imperial Metals. It is a copper and gold mine that has been active in the Cariboo region of British Columbia, Canada since June 13, 1997. The Mount Polley Mine is in a rural area adjacent to several communities (Likely, Mitchell Bay, Winkley Creek) scattered along Quesnel Lake (Figure 7). During peak periods of production, the mine processed 21, 000 tonnes of ore per day (Hoffman 2015). Waste produced through the extraction process—tailings—includes trace clay particles, sandy silt, and water that is stored in a tailings dam encompassing 300 hectares of land (Hoffman 2015). The first critical environmental period (2014-2015) 108 informing this study includes the catastrophic failure of the Mount Polley tailings dam and its aftermath. Figure 7 Study Area. Source: Author. The Landsat-8 image is courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey. The light grey map is courtesy of Esri, HERE, Garmin, © OpenStreetMap contributors, and the GIS User Community. In the early hours of August 4th, 2014, tailings approximating the volume of 10,000 Olympic swimming pools made its way into three bodies of water: Polley Lake, followed by Hazeltine Creek before finally polluting Quesnel Lake. Consequently, a variety of toxic substances and other contaminants were released into the environment, including 259,050kg of arsenic, 134, 235kg of lead and 20, 724 tonnes of copper (Canada 2018). Scientific data from 2014-2019 indicates the periodic resuspension of tailings from the bottom of Quesnel Lake. The periodic resuspension of tailings often produces an abnormally bright green water colour in 109 Quesnel Lake, higher levels of turbidity (a measure of the cloudiness of water), and the seasonal mobilization of contaminants such as copper in the water column (see Hamilton et al. 2020). The second critical environmental period (2016-2019) involves the time before and following the approval of an amendment to permit 11678 on April 7, 2017 (Ministry of Environment 2017). 28 The 2017 permit amendment concerns MPMC’s long term water management plan (LTWMP) which allowed the mine to continue the practices associated with the 2015 short-term water management plan: using a seven-kilometer pipeline to discharge its wastewater directly into Quesnel Lake. The permit amendment authorized the mine to discharge an annual average of 29, 000 m3/day of wastewater into the lake. The effluent includes contaminants such as arsenic, copper, and ammonia with water quality guidelines only met at the edge of a 100m initial dilution zone (IDZ). The plan effectively relies on Quesnel Lake to dilute wastewater contaminants. Across both critical environmental periods, Quesnel Lake residents were provided with opportunities to engage in environmental politics. One popular avenue for participation in environmental politics included attending public consultations either at open house meetings or through membership in a public liaison committee (PLC) convened by the mine. Between 2014-2019 over sixty public consultations were organized by MPMC, most frequently occurring in 28 Permit 11678 outlines the mine’s management of tailings and wastewater. Pre-disaster, and in accordance with the original permit 11678, mine wastewater and tailings were stored in either a tailings dam or open pits. The post-disaster period included two amendments to the permit: one in 2015 for a short-term water management plan and the second in 2017 for the long-term water management plan. Both allowed for the discharge of wastewater into Quesnel Lake. 110 rural communities at the epicenter of the disaster (Likely). Both consultations and PLC meetings included members of the public, various government ministries (e.g., Ministry of Environment personnel), and company representatives. Public consultations and PLC meetings in the first critical environmental period offered residents an opportunity to learn about, and provide input on, disaster response and recovery. Public participation processes during the second critical environmental period expanded the scope of concerns to also incorporate public input on the mine’s LTWMP. Social movement scholars suggest that “public participation processes—instead of dampening conflict—may create political opportunities” that incite a sustained social movement (Boudet, Gaustad, and Tran 2018:251). Despite the presence of political opportunities, the public consultation process did not spur contentious mobilization among Quesnel Lake residents.29 4.4 Methods, Data, and Analysis In this study, I use 42 semi-structured interviews, 4, 723 pages of emails, letters and meeting minutes acquired through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, and 208 newspaper articles to make sense of community responses to mounting environmental risks over time. Combined, these data provide a textured account of rural political participation in the face of environmental change. 29 It should be noted here that a vibrant and sustained Indigenous led social movement emerged immediately following the disaster with the first protest taking place in Vancouver on August 11th, 2014. Between 2014-2018, Indigenous activists and their allies staged national days of action, a disaster monitoring encampment at the Mount Polley mine, and protests at annual Imperial Metals shareholder meetings. 111 4.4.1 Interviews Interviews for this study were collected between June and October 2019 as part of a larger project on political participation following disasters. Participants selected for interviews attended at least two public consultations following the 2014 Mount Polley spill and/or were members of the public liaison committee (PLC). I recruited participants via posters I displayed in the rural communities of Horsefly and Likely; email (identified through news articles, meeting minutes, and web searches); and snowball sampling (asking participants to share study details with their networks). I conducted interviews in people’s homes or in public spaces and provided a small token of appreciation at the conclusion of the interview. Appendix A includes a list of participants organized by full name or pseudonym. To improve memory recall and reliability, I provided participant with a timeline of meetings occurring within the first year or the disaster and started interviews with the following open-ended question: “I’d love to hear the story of how you became involved in the meetings.” A vast majority of participants were able to recall their experiences in the days and months following the disaster, and disaster research indicates that memories associated with personally salient events are typically accurate (Wu 2020). Participants also frequently spoke about the disaster in reference to the past, which ranged from childhood memories of Quesnel Lake, their previous experiences working in the resource extraction industry, and changes to the community over time. Interview questions were related to people’s motivations and experiences of political participation in the five-year period following the 2014 Mount Polley spill. I asked questions related to the public consultation process, people’s risk perceptions, and about community conversations and meetings that took place as people made sense of the dam failure and the plan 112 to discharge into Quesnel Lake. Interviews averaged to an hour and 48 minutes, and Appendix B includes the interview guide. Following the interview, I asked participants to complete a voluntary questionnaire requesting socio-demographic details (Table 4). A vast majority (79 per cent) live in rural communities surrounding Quesnel Lake including Big Lake, Horsefly, Likely, Mitchell Bay and Winkley Creek. The average participant was 65 years of age and lived in their community for 29 years. Forty-one participants identified as white and one as Indigenous. About a third of participants earned a university degree, and the sample is diverse both in terms of gender and political ideology. Table 4 Descriptive Statistics of Participants (N=42) Characteristics Number of Participants Average Range Age 65 40-87 Length of Residence (years) 30 1-70 Place of Residence Quesnel Lake Area (Likely, Big Lake, Horsefly, Mitchell Bay, Winkley Creek) 33 Outside Quesnel Lake Area (Xatśūll First Nation, Williams Lake, Quesnel, Prince George) 9 Gender Men 18 Women 24 Race/Ethnicity* White 41 Indigenous 1 Education University Degree (BA, MA, PhD) 15 University, College, or Trade Certificate/Diploma** 18 High School Diploma or less 8 Did not answer 1 Total Household Income (CAD) Over $100,000 7 $50,000 - $99,999 17 Under $49,999 11 113 Characteristics Number of Participants Average Range Did not answer 7 Political Ideology Liberal 16 Moderate 12 Conservative 11 Indigenous Worldview 1 Did not answer 2 *This was an open-ended question, but these were the only two responses provided by participants. **Note: University certificates or diplomas do not require a bachelor’s degree and are often connected to professional associations in accounting, public administration, etc. 4.4.2 Freedom of Information (FOI) Documents FOI requests help triangulate data and uncover political processes over time, but they are infrequently utilized in qualitative case studies (Greenberg 2016; Walby and Larsen 2012; Walby and Luscombe 2017). I requested documents from two sources to compliment interview data: the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy and the Cariboo Regional District (CRD).30 The first request included all email communications and documents (meeting minutes, presentations, etc.) connected to Ministry representative and statutory decision-makers. The second request included email communications and attachments associated with the email account of a former CRD official and study participant. Both sets of FOI data cover the five-year period of this study and include 4, 723 pages of data. FOI data provide unprecedented access to the forms of quiet mobilization (emails and letters) that typify rural political participation. 30 The Cariboo Regional District includes 12 electoral areas and 4 incorporated municipalities in the Central Interior of British Columbia. Rural area voters elect a representative for each of these 16 positions. The CRD delivers local government services such as emergency and land-use planning and provides access to libraries and recreational facilities. 114 4.4.3 News Articles A final data source includes 208 articles from a local newspaper, The Williams Lake Tribune. I collected newspaper data in a two-step process. First, I searched for all articles published between August 4, 2014, and August 5, 2019, containing “Mount Polley” (N=333). I reduced the sample to 172 articles by only including those that: (1) quoted residents living in the Quesnel Lake area; (2) described consultations or community meetings related to the mine; (3) were op-eds or letters to the editor; (4) mentioned larger community events in the Quesnel Lake area and (5) referenced political mobilizations related to the mine. After noticing that some op-eds or letters to the editor were not included in my initial search results, I searched “Mount Polley and Opinion” and “Mount Polley and Letters” on The Williams Lake Tribune. Consequently, an additional 36 articles were added for a final sample of 205 articles. 4.4.4 Analysis I imported interview transcripts into NVivo for a two-step flexible coding process (Deterding and Waters 2021). The first step includes indexing transcripts – coding large sections of text associated with each interview question. An example of an index code includes “resident concerns.” The second step includes applying thematic codes to the index codes. Drawing on the same example, an analytic code includes “resident concerns – water quality.” Deterding and Waters (2021) argue that this flexible coding process is generates more reliable and valid codes. I also developed inductive codes when new themes emerged. The analytic and inductive codes derived from the interview transcripts were then applied to newspaper and FOI documents. 115 I supplemented the coding of op-eds and letters to the editor with codes related to the overall stance of the article towards both the mine and the government. An article was coded supportive if the overall tone was favourable towards the mine or government. In these articles, authors commended the government or mine for its response to the disaster or efforts to protect the environment. Neutral articles did not take a position on the mine or government and often simply presented information. Critical articles took an explicitly oppositional stance on the mine or government. In these articles, authors expressed concerns about contamination, disaster response and environmental protection. 4.5 Results Technological disasters are often thought to be catalysts for community protest because of their clear links to human culpability. Yet, the 2014 Mount Polley tailings dam failure did not result in protest by rural communities neighboring the mine. Why did contentious collective action fail to materialize? How do rural residents mobilize in response to environmental risks? How did mobilization change over time? I explore these questions across two critical environmental periods affecting Quesnel Lake. The first includes the initial disaster and its aftermath (2014-2015). The second includes the period leading up to, and following, the 2017 permit approving the mine to discharge wastewater into the environment (2016-2019). First, I argue that cultural contexts and structural conditions, irrespective of the presence of threat and grievances, operated as key barriers to contentious collective action. This finding indicates that motivation, in addition to capacity, is required for oppositional mobilization. Second, I argue that the absence of oppositional mobilization is not a sign of nonmobilization. Instead, I show how residents engaged in individual actions to quietly mobilize support for and against government 116 and company practices. I also argue that the introduction of, and widespread community opposition to, new environmental risks in 2016 expanded the tactical repertoire associated with quiet mobilization. Environmental risks may not always spur protest, but they can often incite individual and collective forms of quiet mobilization that may typify small, rural communities. 4.5.1 Barriers to Contentious Collective Action Threat appraisals and grievances are often considered key factors explaining the emergence of collective action. Nearly all Quesnel Lake area participants expressed deep concerns about the contamination of Quesnel Lake and over two-thirds of participants recalled engaging in community conversations blaming the government or company for the disaster. However, shared concerns about environmental threats and perceptions of culpability (grievances) did not motivate community protest. In the following sections I show how other forms of motivation rooted in cultural contexts (a disavowal of contentious collective action) in addition to two features of mobilizing structures (community corrosion and a lack of formal organization) prevented the emergence of contentious collective action. I argue that key elements to mobilization are culturally rooted community context conditions and the structural capacities to act. 4.5.1.1 Cultural Context: Disavowal of Contentious Collective Action Tactics such as protest are inherently contentious, oppositional, and typically collective forms of action. The use of contentious collective action did not resonate with the lives of rural residents in this study, many of whom rely on resource extraction activities. Following the disaster, former Likely Chamber of Commerce President Robin Hood captured the crucial role of 117 the mine in the community when he wrote, “It doesn’t matter who you are, in the town of Likely, most people are receiving some sort of benefit from Mount Polley Mine, directly or indirectly. This community is here because of resource extraction.” (Hood 2014). Likely resident Kathleen linked economic ties to resource extraction to a lack of contentious collective action when she explained, People can't fight big business… People still want jobs. They want to be able to live here. They got homes here - they can't sell them. The mine closed and they want those jobs [back]. They don't care anymore. It's every man for themselves. Open again, give us that paycheck. The dependence on mining, driven by individual concerns, supports a please in my backyard response that prevents the emergence of contentious collective action. However, not all Quesnel Lake area residents are economically dependent on the mine. Another popular argument disavowing collective action and the use of contentious tactics is that it prevents residents from enjoying their rural livelihoods. Many participants expressed that they chose to live in the Quesnel Lake area both because of its natural beauty and because it promotes a slower pace of life. Speaking to this, Likely resident Robert stated that, As critical as I was, I didn't do anything [in response to the spill]. I don't think anyone did anything. We just didn’t know what to do. The community was starting to divide with mine employees, and I was not wanting to get into that with any of them. We are here just for our lifestyle. Robert expressed that his lifestyle in Likely promotes relaxation and engagement in leisurely activities including hiking the Cariboo mountains, boating, and fishing. Many other residents expressed similar sentiments. Likely resident Pohney Whitmer said that she and her husband did not want to engage in any forms of collective action because “we've made a choice to make peace with this lake, and because we love to live here. I just don't need to bring it [the spill] up over, and over, and over, and over again.” Speaking to this, Richard Rujanschi added that “we 118 want to enjoy our life, so we no longer waste a lot of energy to be out there fighting.” As with Robert, Pohney and Richard expressed the natural environment and their recreational use of Quesnel Lake as encouraging a light, calm, and quiet lifestyle that is at odds with contentious tactics such as protest. Residents also disavowed contentious collective action and tactics because they were viewed as too risky and ineffective when enacted by non-Indigenous people. Likely resident Lucas had multiple conversations with other locals about protesting, revealing the thought process that prevented the use of this contentious tactic (emphasis added), What action can we take? Protest? The First Nations protested out there, and they can stop things. A couple of us talked, "We should go up there. We can protest." We knew damn-well if we went up there and blocked the highway into Mount Polley we would be arrested. A bunch of us thought of it, just fully blocking the Mount Polley road, “we'll take all our trucks up there, and pile them five deep, and we'll find out what is that shit they're hauling in there. We'll take one of the tarps off, and we'll find out what they're hauling in there.” This is a couple of conversations. Oh yeah, we'd be off to jail so quick, it wouldn't be funny. As Lucas indicated, some residents disavowed contentious collective action and tactics because of the perceived risk of arrest. Indirectly, Lucas also indicates that protest is more likely to be effective if it is carried out by Indigenous groups because “they can stop things.” Likely resident Mary made a similar comment when she said, The natives should go in, they've got all the clout. And I've talked to native people in town about that. Go to your elders and you go back there on that road, because they can't stop you, and you go in there and you shut that power off. I mean, they seem to be able to get things done. They're good stewards of the environment, the native people. They don't put up with this. Mary linked local disavowal of contentious tactics to effectiveness by suggesting that Indigenous people— not locals— have more power and influence “to get things done.” The belief that 119 Indigenous people have more power is likely because most of the territory of British Columbia is unceded, meaning that Indigenous people’s title to the land was never surrendered or relinquished to the government via a treaty process.31 Overall, participants explained the lack of contentious collective action and tactics in response to the disaster by employing arguments related to economics, lifestyle choices, and perceptions of efficacy. Informing all three explanations is a consideration of community context. Another important barrier to oppositional mobilization can be traced to the mobilizing structures (social relationships and formal organization) that provide the capacity for collective action. 4.5.1.2 Mobilizing Structures: Community Corrosion Mobilizing structures include social networks and relationships that facilitate the development of social movements. Technological disasters often produce corrosive communities characterized by polarization, conflict, and a deterioration of social relationships (Gill et al. 2016; Kroll-Smith and Couch 1990). The substitution of community cohesion with community corrosion presents an obstacle to collective action. In the aftermath of the Mount Polley disaster, community corrosion was evident as residents organized themselves into two camps – those who support and are economically dependent on the mine and those who are economically independent and critical of the mine. Mitchell Bay resident Christine McLean captured this sentiment when she explained that rural communities are “…splintered as in that family works for the mine and that family does not. That family is here because of the mine and this family is 31 The claims expressed by participants that Indigenous protestors “cannot be stopped” because it is their land is unfortunately not entirely true. Recent resource conflicts in British Columbia, including opposition to the Coastal Gaslink pipeline by Hereditary Chiefs and members of the Wet’suwet’en First Nation, have been met with police violence and arrests. 120 here because of the trees or the water.” Likely resident Agatha described the corrosion the spill produced when she stated that It's definitely done fragmentation because there are two strong viewpoints. Well, it's only one really strong viewpoint, the anti-mine who want to hold onto it, and then you've got those that want to let it go and move on. That is a fragmentation. The spill produced community corrosion—splintering, fragmentation—that was mediated by strong negative emotions. Likely resident Carole Whitmer described the role of emotions in community corrosion when she stated that, I think in the beginning there was lots of anger and some hard feelings because the people who did work at Mount Polley didn't speak up. And I think there may have been some thought that they should be speaking up. So, do you put the mine first or your community first if you're an employee of the mine? And if you're a community member and not a mine employee, you very much feel that there should be some of that… So I'm not sure the Mount Polley spill made the community any stronger. Community corrosion and negative emotions produced avoidance-related behaviours as locals withdrew from community organizations, social groups, and conversations related to the disaster. In our conversation about the effects of the spill on community life, Likely residents Travis and Catherine explained that The frustration may have caused some ruffles in the community with different groups fighting against each other. But there again, we try and stay away from that. I used to belong to a lot of the organizations [in Likely], and I've sort of stepped back from some of them because I don't want to get the frustration anymore. I don't want to do that. While some, like Travis and Catherine, withdrew from community organizations, others withdrew from social groups to avoid entrenching polarization. Likely resident Doug Watt explained the consequences of community corrosion on social relationships when he stated I think in some cases it's caused separations within some of the social groups. There are some people that would participate in a group, and this includes myself, who no longer wants to do that because of possibilities of coming head-to-head with disagreements regarding Mount Polley. And some things you don't feel comfortable talking about either 121 with certain people when you know that somebody's son and daughter-in-law and grandson all work at the mine. You're a little reticent to speak your piece, right? The spill incited polarization by creating divisions between those who are supportive and economically dependent on the mine and those who are economically independent and more critical of the mine’s response to the disaster. As a result, some even avoided conversations about the spill altogether. Mitchell Bay resident Kim Goforth stated that the disaster …divided communities, it divided Likely, it divided relationships. And you can see it, it's still there today. You can feel it, people don't want to talk because it's just going to cause a big fight with your neighbor since he's employed. The Mount Polley spill activated negative emotions such as anger and community corrosion that led to the deterioration of social relationships. Divisions in the community can be traced to conflicts between those with ties to the mine and those drawn to the area for the natural environment and slower pace of life. The lack of unity in opposition to the mine, in combination with avoidance-related behaviours, prevented the emergence of community protest. In addition to community corrosion, a second mobilizing structure that may prevent the emergence of contentious collective action is the absence of formal organizations. 4.5.1.3 Mobilizing Structures: Formal Organizations and Leaders As the previous section illustrated, social networks were frayed in the aftermath of the disaster due to community corrosion. But mobilizing structures also include formal organizations and leaders that have the capacity to organize for collective action. The status of a community, such as whether it is unincorporated or incorporated as a municipality, affects the availability of mobilizing structures. The communities surrounding Quesnel Lake (Likely, Mitchell Bay, Winkley Creek, Big Lake, and Horsefly) are all unincorporated. Unincorporated communities 122 typically have a small population size, lack political infrastructure (a mayor and council) to address local issues and needs, and include few non-governmental or volunteer organizations. Unincorporated communities are thus more likely to lack the in situ mobilizing structures that increase the capacity for protest. Participants frequently described a lack of mobilizing structures in unincorporated communities as a key barrier to mobilization. Prior to deciding on a specific tactic, such as protest, concerned residents need to come together to share their concerns and discuss strategies for action. Big Lake resident and former Cariboo Regional District representative for the Quesnel Lake area, Joan Sorley, explained the absence of meetings as a function of “the community – it’s an unincorporated community…They have different non-profits but they're not a municipal government. They're not organized to do that kind of thing” (emphasis added). Joan Sorley indicates that although there are several non-profits in the community, including the Likely Chamber of Commerce, Likely Fire/Rescue, and Likely Community Forest Society, they do not have the capacity to mobilize residents. Likely resident Lucas echoed the lack of organizational capacity that makes mobilization possible: We're a small community. We don't have a representative, except maybe Joan Sorely. We had Robin Hood at the time, whom we called our unofficial mayor. Lisa is now kind of our unofficial mayor, even though she's not the mayor, but represents the community in a lot of facets. So, I guess because we don't have a mayor, we don't have a council, we don't have this and that, I guess we would rely on somebody like that, that you would think would have those meetings, but we don't have that. Participants frequently described how opportunities for contentious collective action, such as protest, were hindered because mobilizing structures were simply not present within the community. The lack of organizations, leaders, and political representatives that would facilitate 123 collective action, in addition to weakened social bonds because of community corrosion, operated as a barrier to protest emergence. However, the absence of oppositional mobilization is not a sign of nonmobilization. Quesnel Lake residents participated in environmental politics through individual and quiet forms of mobilization. 4.5.2 Quiet Mobilization After Disaster Strikes (August 2014-December 2015) Quiet mobilization refers to forms of politics that include everyday conversations between neighbours, family, and friends, the formation of interest groups, and conventional forms of civic engagement such as participation in public consultations and community meetings. Quiet mobilization emerged as a concept to describe how communities support or oppose the development of new environmentally risky industries (Jerolmack and Walker 2018). The research presented here is some of the first to apply the concept to environmental risks associated with existing resource extraction activities and the environmental problems they may incur. I draw on insights from Goldfarb's (2006) work on the politics of small things to show that contests over problem definition through letter-writing and op-eds help capture other political practices that may typify quiet mobilization. In the first 16 months following the Mount Polley disaster, study participants engaged in quiet mobilization by attending public consultations, writing letters and emails, and writing op-eds in regional newspapers. All participants in this study attended public consultations to shape decisions related to disaster response and recovery. This is not surprising given that participation in public consultations is a common form of quiet mobilization. What is surprising is the popularity of the written word as a tactic for expressing individual grievances, threat appraisals, 124 and shaping narratives about environmental protection. Over half of research participants wrote letters or emails to politicians, government staff, and MPMC representatives. All but one was related to concerns about the environment and/or critical of the disaster response. Mitchell Bay resident Kim Goforth explained that Right from the start I was heavily engaged in communication, writing letters to different government officials, like the Ministry of Environment. I would copy the mine as well, so they know full well what my feelings are... I was trying to improve a relationship. Like, you're our corporate neighbor, you know? You're not treating us very well. You're not listening to us. Kim quietly mobilized in opposition to the mine and government’s approach to disaster response and recovery because he, along with most participants, did not believe resident input was meaningfully considered. His letters were particularly critical of clean-up efforts related to the tailings that encrusted Hazeltine Creek. Likely resident Robert said that he went on a “letter writing flurry” in the first year of the disaster, especially in response to Provincial authorization for a restricted re-start of mining operations. Robert thought that the decision was rushed, prioritizing economic over environmental concerns I didn't think they were ready to reopen that mine yet; it was such a huge rush how they got that approval. So, I had sent lots of letters to the government, and realizing that we’re pipsqueaks, most were ignored. [Premier of British Columbia] Christy Clark did not respond to my letter. Coralee Oakes, MLA [for Cariboo North] did not respond to my letter. Those who did were somewhere down the chain of command, but it was just lip service, just basically following Liberal party line. And that was distressing; that all these other values besides money and industry are of no value to the government. Robert went on to say that he did not think that the decision to restart the mine was based on a balance between economic development and environmental protection. Although most letters and emails written by participants quietly mobilized concern about the environment and/or criticism of disaster response, op-eds written between 2014-2015 indicate a greater diversity of views. 125 Table 5 below shows the distribution of op-eds by author identity and the stance of each article towards the mine.32 Overall, most op-eds are supportive. However, articles written by locals point to a polarization of opinion, quietly mobilizing both support for and criticism towards the mine. This suggests that residents were competing over the cultural construction of reality related to disaster response and recovery. Table 5 Op-ed Authors' Stance Towards the Mount Polley Mine (2014-2015) MINE STANCE Number of Op-eds (08/04/2014 – 12/31/2015) Supportive Neutral Critical Local Resident 2 1 3 6 Indigenous Resident 0 1 0 1 Cariboo Region Resident 9 2 4 15 British Columbia Resident 1 0 0 1 Government Representative 5 1 0 6 Contributing Columnist 4 9 1 14 Williams Lake Tribune Staff 1 3 0 4 TOTAL 22 17 8 47 For example, on October 30th, 2014, Likely resident Catherine Wright explicitly criticized the mine’s clean-up efforts when she wrote, I listen to the words, but I look at the end result, and what I see is that no clean-up has happened in the Hazeltine Creek Valley where the deep layers of sludge are, and the only evidence of any kind of clean-up is a series of little piles of sticks along the lakeshore 32 All tables in this chapter follow the same colour scheme. Dark yellow cells indicate the highest value for each row. Light yellow cells indicate a 1–2-point difference from the highest value (excluding 0) in a specific row. In other words, rows with both dark and light yellow values indicate greater heterogeneity and less homogeneity in op-ed author stance. 126 A week and a half later, Likely resident and Mount Polley employee Bonnie Rolston wrote an op-ed indirectly responding to and challenging the “self-made conclusions… that no one is doing anything.” Lamenting the community corrosion evident in Likely in response to the disaster (“I see families that used to be great friends fighting on Facebook.”), Bonnie mobilized support for the mine by highlighting “the endless hours that Imperial Metals put in to clean up this incident.” She also counters fears about environmental impacts by pointing to scientific experts who have demonstrated “the water is safe to drink [and] that the fish are doing well.” As these examples illustrate, local residents had conflicting interpretations of disaster response and recovery and used op-eds to advance their differing claims. Residents with ties to the mine were supportive while those economically independent of the mine tended to be critical. Table 6 below shows the distribution of op-eds by author identity and the stance of each article towards the government. A different pattern emerges, indicating less support for the government with a large share of articles either critical or neutral of the government’s response to the disaster. Focusing again on local residents, we see that half were neutral while a third were critical of the government. One supportive article written by Horsefly resident Bruce MacLeod expressed appreciation towards the Ministry of Environment “for taking the time and trouble to come to our community and keep us posted on their progress to date.” Critical articles, including one written by Likely resident Doug Watt, expressed disappointment in the Ministry of Environment because weekly reports “… have been exceedingly short on hard data, facts, and interpretation.” 127 Table 6 Op-ed Authors' Stance Towards the Government (2014-2015) GOVERNMENT STANCE Number of Op-eds (08/04/2014 – 12/31/2015) Supportive Neutral Critical Local Resident 1 3 2 6 Indigenous Resident 0 1 0 1 Cariboo Region Resident 1 8 6 15 British Columbia Resident 0 1 0 1 Government Representative 5 1 0 6 Contributing Columnist 1 5 8 14 Williams Lake Tribune Staff 0 1 3 4 TOTAL 8 20 19 47 In the aftermath of disaster, rural residents quietly mobilized their support for, and criticism of, institutional responses to the tailing dam failure. All participants attended public consultations, and over half combined this with emails and letters to the government and mine. Some residents used op-eds to shape public opinion about disaster response and recovery by either reinforcing criticisms (if they were economically independent of the mine) or expressing support (if they worked for the Mount Polley mine). Common to all three forms of quiet mobilization is the focus on individual actions. However, the discharge of mine wastewater into Quesnel Lake sparked a blended form of quiet mobilization that includes both individual and collective action. 128 4.5.3 Quiet Mobilization in the Face of Mounting Environmental Risks (January 2016-August 2019) The second critical environmental period began in 2016 in anticipation of government approval of an amendment to permit 11678 (the long-term water management plan) which allowed the mine to continue discharging wastewater, or effluent, into Quesnel Lake. The amendment permits an annual average of 29, 000 m3/day of wastewater to be released into the lake. Wastewater released into Quesnel Lake includes contaminants such as arsenic, copper, and ammonia that meet acceptable water quality guidelines at the edge of a 100m initial dilution zone (IDZ). The long-term water management plan essentially relies on the receiving environment to dilute wastewater contaminants. The practice is widely opposed by locals, with several participants describing it as adding “insult to injury.” Quesnel Lake residents responded to these new environmental risks by blending individual and collective forms of action that characterize quiet mobilization. As with the first period, the second critical environmental period included individual forms of quiet mobilization such as writing emails/letters as well as op-eds in The Williams Lake Tribune. Considering op-eds specifically, tables 7 and 8 show that most articles written in this period converged towards criticism of both the mine and the government. Unlike the first period, all ten of the local op-ed authors were economically independent of the mine and continued attending public consultations or PLC meetings or were one of the founders of the interest group Concerned Citizens of Quesnel Lake. Of the ten articles written by locals, all were critical of the mine with seven also expressing criticism of the government. Locals writing op-eds were thus more likely to be critical but active in environmental politics related to the disaster. Likely 129 resident Richard Holmes and Xatśūll First Nation member Jacinda Mack criticized both the mine (“It continues to use an under-performing water treatment plant that discharges mine effluent to Quesnel Lake…”) and the government (“B.C. has not fined nor penalized the company for this disaster. Instead, it granted hydro tax breaks…”) in a co-authored op-ed on the eve of the second anniversary of the disaster. The remaining articles criticize and challenge the approval of the discharge plans as well as company claims that the original tailings deposited into Quesnel Lake are not resuspending. Table 7 Op-ed Authors’ Stance Towards the Mount Polley Mine (2016-2019) Mine Stance Number of Op-eds (01/01/2016 – 08/05/2019) Supportive Neutral Critical Local Resident 0 0 10 10 Indigenous Resident 0 2 1 3 Cariboo Region Resident 3 1 7 11 Mine Representative 2 0 0 2 Contributing Columnist 4 0 0 4 TOTAL 9 3 18 30* *One article includes co-authors (1 local resident and 1 Indigenous resident). It counts towards each category. Table 8 Op-ed Authors’ Stance Towards the Government (2016-2019) Government Stance Number of Op-eds (01/01/2016 – 08/05/2019) Supportive Neutral Critical Local Resident 0 3 7 10 Indigenous Resident 0 0 3 3 Cariboo Region Resident 1 3 7 11 130 Government Stance Number of Op-eds (01/01/2016 – 08/05/2019) Supportive Neutral Critical Mine Representative 0 2 0 2 Contributing Columnist 0 1 3 4 TOTAL 1 9 20 30* *One article includes co-authors (1 local resident and 1 Indigenous resident). It counts towards each category. Residents critical of the mine and government decided to diversify their approach to claims-making. Following the approval of the short-term water management plan, Mitchell Bay neighbours Kim Goforth and Christine McLean, along with friend Judith Pringle, put together an email distribution list that formed the interest group Concerned Citizens of Quesnel Lake (CCQL). The group’s work blends individual and collective action with a focus on mobilizing information, public awareness campaigns, and institutional advocacy. When I asked Kim why he co-founded the group, he explained (emphasis added) Because I didn't want to be the only one writing letters. I didn't want the government to think that I am the only one. So, I would inform all my neighbors, all over Winkley Creek, and here [in Mitchell Bay], let's get them all, we need power, we need people power, you know? And I'd ask them to write letters. And that I can help them do it. So, that's why I just got more people. I started talking with them, I said, "You know, I can’t just be a lone complainer. We've all got to do this; we've got to write some letters. Otherwise, we're going to have little or no impact" Kim, Christine, and Judith quietly mobilized Quesnel Lake residents to either sign letters written by CCQL or write their own letters using templates supplied by the group. One specific example includes a letter-writing and public awareness campaign (Figure 8) that was launched as the Mount Polley mine was conducting consultations about its long-term water management plan. The billboard in Figure 8 was located on a busy highway (Highway 97) leading into the city of Williams Lake. As Christine explained, 131 During the 30-day consultation period we wanted to get as many people writing to the government as possible. And I was like, “how are we going to get these people motivated or mobilized? Here's the letter, you know how everybody does it, here's the letter, just send it to your government official and tell them no.” And I don't know, one day we were driving into Williams Lake, and I thought "let's get a billboard. How much money does that cost?" Judith and I got on the phone and Pattison said, “well, I'll give you a billboard for a month for $1,200.” I emailed everybody in the group, I said, “we need $1,200.” We got $1,200 and we put up a billboard that said, “Save Quesnel Lake” and we got 250 letters sent in opposition to that. Figure 8 Billboard Sponsored by CCQL. Source: Save Quesnel Lake by Concerned Citizens of Quesnel Lake, retrieved from https://www.ccql.ca/single-post/2017/01/16/media-coverage-of-mining-watch-legal-action In addition to letter writing and public awareness campaigns, core organizers Christine and Judith collated and shared information about mine activities with group members, attended public consultation and Public Liaison Committee meetings, wrote petitions, and launched an appeal of the 2017 amendment to permit 11678. Most of these tactics are forms of institutional advocacy. Emails between Ministry of Environment and CCQL members show how the group 132 used collectively written letters to advance their grievances through institutional channels. On January 18th, 2017, core CCQL organizers submitted a group letter outlining concerns about water quality reporting frequencies and public access to discharge data. A staff member of the Ministry responded on January 23rd, 2017, noting that their concerns “…will be considered in the pending amendment to Permit 11678.” More significantly, core organizers of the group launched an appeal of the 2017 amendment to permit 11678. As part of the appeal, CCQL would like to end the practice of discharging wastewater into Quesnel Lake in favour of exploring other strategies that follow best available technology. It is still being reviewed by British Columbia’s Environmental Appeal Board. Other forms of collective, institutional, and quiet forms of mobilization have been organized by Likely residents. Residents pressured the Likely Chamber of Commerce to hold a vote to determine the community’s position towards the second permit amendment at the same time the CCQL launched its letter writing campaign and billboard. Knowing that the vote would be taking place, Likely resident Skeed Burkowski, owner of a Fly-Fishing Lodge, explained that, I arranged a coup. I emailed as many people as I could. We all joined the Chamber, went to the meeting, and we opposed. That's what it was. We opposed rather than endorsed Mount Polley. But yeah, people that had cabins on the lake from Horsefly, they joined the Chamber. We just joined, we signed up. The Chamber of Commerce vote took place on December 6th, 2016, asking members to state whether the mine should be allowed to continue discharging effluent into Quesnel Lake. A vast majority—80 per cent— of members voted no (Lamb-Yorski 2016b). Present at the meeting were some members of the CCQL, who read out a letter endorsed by the group, stating, 133 In terms of benefit to risk, the receiving environmental water users are being asked to absorb all the risk while Mount Polley Mine Corporation and their shareholders and the province of B.C. will reap the benefits (Lamb-Yorski 2016b). The mounting environmental risks posed by Mount Polley’s wastewater practices may not have spurred protest, but it expanded the tactical repertoire associated with quiet mobilization. In this wave of mobilization, residents blended the individual actions associated with disaster response to include more decidedly collective, oppositional, and institutional forms of advocacy. 4.6 Discussion and Conclusion The 2014 Mount Polley tailings dam failure is the largest environmental disaster in Canadian history. The spill polluted Quesnel Lake, a near-pristine body of water, critical salmon habitat, and main water source for rural communities scattered along the lake. The disaster sparked a vibrant Indigenous-led social movement in the greater Cariboo Region, but not in the epicenter of the disaster despite widespread grievances and high levels of threat appraisals. This is surprising given theoretical expectations that culpability tends to result in the emergence of collective action in the aftermath of technological disasters (Cable and Degutis 1991; Edelstein 2004; Picou et al. 2004). Why did contentious collective action fail to materialize? How do rural residents respond to environmental risks over time? I argue that the absence of motivation (cultural context) and capacity (mobilizing structures) channels rural residents away from contentious collective action to more quiet forms of mobilization. The introduction of mounting environmental risks reinforces quiet forms of mobilization but expands the tactical repertoire used by rural residents. 134 A key cultural context condition, partly attributable to economic concerns, that prevented the emergence of oppositional mobilization included a disavowal of contentious collective action. Participants explained a lack of contentious collective action because of economic ties to the mine, lifestyle choices, and evaluations of political inefficacy. This is consistent with findings from research on disasters, contaminated communities, and social movements which suggests that such context conditions may be a barrier to oppositional mobilization (Couch and Kroll-Smith 1985; Messer et al. 2015; Wright and Boudet 2012). In addition to motivation, communities require the capacity to engage in contentious mobilization. Quesnel Lake area residents lacked the in situ mobilizing structures—strong social networks (due to the presence of community corrosion) and formal organizations/leaders—that may initiate oppositional mobilization. Community corrosion has been heavily researched as a consequence of technological disasters and is characterized by deteriorating social relationships and polarization within affected communities (Freudenburg 1997; Gill et al. 2016; Kroll-Smith and Couch 1990). However, researchers have shown that community corrosion can be reinforced by contentious collective action, as the case of the Centralia underground mine fire demonstrated (Kroll-Smith and Couch 1990). Others argue that contentious individual actions such as litigation (Picou et al. 2004) and compensation (Mayer et al. 2015) processes associated with technological disasters lead to the persistence of community corrosion. Yet, it is unclear how community corrosion shapes the emergence of collective action in the immediate aftermath of disaster. I contribute to this body of scholarship by showing that community corrosion is an important barrier to oppositional mobilization in the immediate aftermath of the Mount Polley spill. 135 The prevalence of negative emotions such as anger led to avoidance-related behaviours including a withdrawal from community associations, social networks, and general conversations relating to the spill. In other words, it facilitated community corrosion. Again, community corrosion is organized around divisions related to economic concerns: those who are critical and economically independent of the mine versus those who are supportive and economically dependent on the mine. My finding is inconsistent with research following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill which shows community corrosion to positively influence collective action (Bergstrand and Mayer 2017). There are two reasons that may explain these discrepancies. The first may be due to research design; survey questions do not ask about the timing of either community corrosion or political action within the five year period, limiting the “ability to speak to processes or connections across the variables” (Bergstrand and Mayer 2017:356). The second may be attributed to the unit of analysis, as Bergstrand and Mayer (2017) examine communities located outside, instead of at the epicenter, of the spill. The second dimension of capacity includes the absence of formal organizations and leaders. Quesnel Lake area residents reside in unincorporated communities that lack the political infrastructure that can support oppositional mobilization. Participants frequently explained that there was an absence of leadership and organizational resources to coordinate the meetings required to bring community members together to discuss issues and possible lines of action. This finding confirms research that highlights the importance of mobilizing structures in facilitating collective action in response to disasters or other environmental risks (Bell 2016; Edelstein 2004; Walsh 1981; Wright and Boudet 2012). Mobilizing structures, in addition to the 136 cultural contexts of a community, help explain why collective action failed to emerge after the catastrophic Mount Polley tailings dam failure. Echoing the work of Jerolmack and Walker (2018), this research cautions against interpretations of the absence of contentious collective action as a sign of nonmobilization. I suggest that this is a misreading of the situation, arguing that rural residents engage in quiet mobilization that mirrors more conventional forms of civic participation. Although quiet mobilization has been explicitly applied to populations at risk of new resource development (Jerolmack and Walker 2018; Kojola 2020), I show the utility of this concept for understanding mobilization in communities facing mounting environmental risks over time. First, environmental risks posed by the 2014 Mount Polley disaster incited community conversations about culpability and threat as well as widespread public participation in consultations – two key forms of quiet mobilization. Everyday conversations and social interactions are important for defining social reality and participating in the politics of small things (Goldfarb 2006). Drawing on Goldfarb's (2006) insights, I highlight the importance of the written word as a political practice concerned with contesting or reinforcing existing definitions of a problem. Over half of study participants wrote letters and emails to corporate and government actors expressing their grievances, and a smaller number wrote op-eds in local newspapers to engage in framing contests. The latter tactic links quiet mobilization to the cultural construction of reality as the meaning of environmental risk and protection are debated. Consequently, rural residents and those in the greater Cariboo region either mobilized their support for, or criticism towards, government and company responses to the disaster. Second, mounting environmental 137 risks posed by the company’s long-term wastewater plan beginning in 2016 facilitated greater levels of quiet mobilization as residents united in opposition to the decision and blended individual and collective actions to express their grievances. Many residents continued attending public consultations, writing letters/emails, and some continued publishing op-eds. While the first critical environmental period featured a mix of support and criticism towards government and company practices, there was widespread opposition to the approval of an amendment to permit 11678 which allowed the mine to discharge wastewater into Quesnel Lake over the long-term. This was evident in the stance of op-eds as well as the quiet forms of collective and institutional action that emerged. Residents along Quesnel Lake mobilized in opposition to the wastewater management strategy, culminating in an overwhelming majority of Likely Chamber of Commerce members voting against the practice. As this was happening, the Concerned Citizens of Quesnel Lake emerged to coordinate public awareness campaigns, collective letter writing efforts, and introduced institutional forms of advocacy including an appeal of 2017 amendments to permit 11678. The disaster and subsequent environmental risks may not have spurred local collective action predicated on noninstitutionalized tactics, but it did result in the proliferation of a diverse range of tactics associated with quiet mobilization. It is important to consider the generalizability of the results of this study. It is difficult to assess whether the findings are unique to this research, or if they may speak to broader processes evident in community responses to disaster and other forms of environmental risk. This research breaks with methodological conventions in disaster research that select on the dependent variable 138 and focus extensively on contentious tactics. In doing so, I provide three hypotheses on the conditions that prevent the emergence of oppositional mobilization which can be tested in future qualitative or quantitative studies. These hypotheses include the following expectations: that a disavowal of contentious collective action, the presence of community corrosion, and the absence of mobilizing structure inhibit social movement mobilization. I also draw attention to the different types of quiet mobilization that define rural participation in the face of mounting environmental risks. It would be interesting to see how other rural communities affected by technological disasters or contamination engage in quiet mobilization and how this changes, and under what conditions, over time. Future research would also benefit from a comparative assessment of mobilized and “nonmobilized” communities to strengthen existing explanations of the emergence of collective action after disaster strikes. 139 Chapter 5: Conclusion I met Doug Gook in late August 2019 at a cooperative farm located along the Fraser River in between the cities of Quesnel and Williams Lake. When I arrived at the farm, I immediately apologized for being 30 minutes late for our interview. Despite budgeting enough time to make the two-hour trip from Likely, my reliance on Google Maps in an area with spotty reception was a rookie mistake. Smiling, hands covered in dirt from tending to the garden, Doug made me feel as if he had not even noticed. We decided to sit on the farm porch and soak in the elusive sunshine. It was a wonderful reprieve from the otherwise wet and chilly weather that marked my time in the Cariboo that summer. With a symphony of insects trilling in the background, Doug began to tell me about his family history, his reverence for the environment, and his participation in environmental politics following the 2014 Mount Polley spill. Doug revealed that he is a third-generation settler living in Quesnel who has spent much of his life in the Quesnel Lake area and expressed fond memories of hiking the nearby Cariboo Mountains. Doug’s deep connection to this place facilitated his participation in approximately 20 public consultations in Likely and a handful in both Quesnel and Williams Lake. Doug was enthusiastic about discussing his experience attending the consultations. He began describing how they brought rural and Indigenous communities together, but quickly devolved into a sharp critique of the deliberations. He became more animated, explaining (emphasis added), 140 Doug: I always left very frustrated with Imperial Metals and the provincial government. I got to say, I was just so captured by the dynamic of [the government] supporting mining and getting things back up and running as fast as possible. That seemed to be the key focus of the behind-the-scenes dynamic between the provincial government and Imperial Metals. Max: So, what are the reasons for you leaving frustrated? What led to that every time? Doug: It was such a kind of diversion… just the regular three Ps of public participation. Pablum: just feeding us stuff that we didn't really ask for [that were] just part of their agenda, not ours, in terms of getting to answers.33 Pulp: just lots of paper, stacks, and stacks of all these different things that were not really what we're asking for anyway. Pacification: just this whole thing of having a meeting for the sake of a meeting and getting away with not answering questions or you know, just trying to control the agenda, control the whole process that way. They were very skilled at it in many respects. I think they took some heat at times because people got pissed that their questions weren't being answered. There were some hot times. As Doug’s experience makes clear, public consultations were an opportunity for community building in the face of tragedy. However, the deliberations often fell short of public expectations. Doug’s recollection of the public consultations, shared by most participants in this research and corroborated by PLC emails and news articles, reveals the important role of cultural dynamics in shaping people’s participation in environmental politics and generating inequalities in decision-making processes. Doug’s illustration of the “three Ps of public participation” captures some of the main findings from Chapter 2 and 3. 5.1 Summary of Dissertation Findings In Chapter 2, I focused on the cultural strategies and conditions that produce procedural environmental injustice. I found that strategies of agenda denial, which include nonrecognition 33 Pablum is a bland and easily digestible cereal for infants. 141 (“not answering questions”) and symbolic placation (“feeding us stuff that we didn't really ask for”), permeated people’s experiences of public consultations in the face of mounting environmental risks. Agenda denial strategies revealed striking inequalities in the public’s ability to define environmental problems (water quality in Quesnel Lake) and their proposed solutions (wastewater management). Coupled with agenda denial is a condition I termed manufactured confusion. Manufactured confusion emerged through three habitual practices within the deliberations: (1) the provision and reliance on large volumes of scientific data (“lots of paper, stacks, and stacks of all these different things…”); (2) a lack of resources provided to interpret complex scientific data; and (3) insufficient opportunities to engage with environmental data. Manufactured confusion resulted in inequalities in both the ability to make meaning out of environmental data and the resources to competently engage in decision-making processes. The presence of agenda denial and manufactured confusion highlight the importance of cultural dynamics in facilitating or constraining meaningful opportunities to shape decision-making. A cultural lens is also useful for procedural justice issues because it magnifies the bundles of “emotions that are woven into environmental decision-making” (Kennedy and Johnston 2019:595). Chapter 3 centers the role of emotions in environmental deliberations and its implications for procedural environmental justice. I found that both the disaster and experiences of injustice at the deliberations sparked intense and durable negative emotions including anger, animosity, fear, and frustration. Participants described feeling powerless (“behind-the-scenes dynamic between the provincial government and Imperial Metals”) and ignored (“people got pissed that their questions weren't being answered”), which developed or intensified the presence of negative emotions. I showed how negative emotions can have 142 deleterious outcomes on the social relations and practices that structure environmental deliberations. First, negative emotions facilitated polarization as participants were organized into opposing factions and empathy walls (barriers to deep understanding) were secured instead of scaled. Polarization was horizontal (between community members), but more often vertical (between community members and political-economic actors). Empathy walls resulted from the nonrecognition of emotional harm, which made public consultations, in the words of one participant, “like oil and water.” Second, but linked to the first, negative emotions encouraged widespread disengagement. This finding is consistent with research that shows that negative emotions tend to be associated with avoidance-related behaviours (Barclay and Kiefer 2014; Lazarus 1991). Unchecked negative emotions and a widening gulf between participants threatens meaningful opportunities to shape decision-making by encouraging disengagement. Emotions thus play an important role in people’s choice to participate (or not) in environmental politics. Cultural dynamics shape participation and inequalities in environmental deliberations, but they also inform other forms of political engagement. Chapter 4 focused on explaining why contentious collective action failed to materialize despite theoretical expectations to the contrary (Cable and Degutis 1991; Edelstein 2004; Picou et al. 2004). I show that the absence of motivation (cultural context) and capacity (mobilizing structures) help explain why oppositional mobilization did not emerge in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. Cultural context includes a disavowal of contentious collective action, which is rooted in economic dependence on mining, feelings of powerlessness, and lifestyle choices that are at odds with oppositional mobilization. 143 The absence of mobilizing structures such as formal organizations and leaders, in addition to the presence of community corrosion, prevented the use of noninstitutionalized tactics such as protest. Yet, social movement scholars typically rely on the presence of noninstitutionalized tactics as a key criterion for adjudicating whether a community mobilizes or not in response to environmental risks (McAdam and Boudet 2012; Wright and Boudet 2012). Echoing the work of Jerolmack and Walker (2018), I suggest that it would be a misreading of the situation to describe the lack of social movement mobilization as evidence of nonmobilization. Instead, a lack of motivation and capacity for social movement mobilization channeled residents towards quiet forms of public participation in environmental politics. Quiet mobilization is rooted in more civic practices such as deliberations, but also includes the formation of interest groups and everyday conversations with friends, family, and neighbours. I showed how quiet mobilization evolved over two critical environmental periods associated with the Mount Polley mine: the initial disaster (2014-2015) and subsequent water management planning (2016-2019). In the first period, Quesnel Lake area residents quietly mobilized support for, or opposition to, disaster recovery by writing letters/emails to corporate and political actors or writing op-eds in local newspapers. The latter tactic is fundamentally concerned about meaning making as op-eds allow residents to define environmental problems and risks or challenge existing interpretations. The second environmental period, between 2016 and 2019, changed both the character and tactics associated with quiet mobilization. The plans to continue the daily practice of discharging Mount Polley’s wastewater into Quesnel Lake added insult to injury. Residents in 144 the Quesnel Lake area unified in opposition to this practice, and the voices of those who were critical of both Mount Polley and the government dominated op-eds in The Williams Lake Tribune. The tactics associated with quiet mobilization were not limited to these individual practices. Collective forms of quiet mobilization emerged, including the formation of the Concerned Citizens of Quesnel Lake (CCQL). The CCQL facilitated collective letter-writing initiatives, public awareness campaigns, and institutional forms of advocacy including an appeal of the environmental permit associated with Mount Polley’s long-term water management plan. Quesnel Lake area residents also mobilized to join Likely’s Chamber of Commerce when news broke that the Chamber would be voting in support or against the water management plan. Quiet mobilization resulted in 80 per cent of Chamber members voting against Mount Polley’s discharge plan. Mounting environmental risks may not spur contentious collective action, but they do incite culturally inflected and quiet forms of mobilization. 5.2 Contributions, Limitations, and Future Directions My dissertation research provides critical insights into the cultural dynamics that influence environmental politics and inequalities in decision-making. In this section I begin with an overview of three key contributions from my dissertation research. Next, I review two additional limitations to my research that have not been mentioned in previous chapters. The first is related to the cultural identities and experiences that are missing in this study. The second is related to the scale of analysis. Weaving through my discussion of contributions and limitations are considerations for future research. 145 My research advances our understanding of the cultural dynamics informing procedural environmental justice in two ways. First, by highlighting the cultural strategies and conditions associated with deliberations, I contribute to recent work that focuses on creating a more robust procedural environmental justice framework (Bell and Carrick 2018; Bustos et al. 2017; Jalbert et al. 2019; Malin, Opsal, et al. 2019). A more robust framework investigates the inequalities in capabilities and resources that contribute to procedural environmental justice (Bell and Carrick 2018). I show how agenda denial strategies and manufactured confusion deprive residents of both the resources to make meaning out of complex science and thus the ability to meaningfully participate in deliberations. And by introducing the agenda denial strategy of nonrecognition (Cobb and Ross 1997b), I highlight the multivalent character of nonrecognition in producing procedural injustice. I argue that nonrecognition, or a lack of acknowledgement, is only the first of several possible outcomes including outright denial, a dispute over facts, and admitting problems exist but minimizing their importance (Cobb and Ross 1997b). Incorporating agenda denial strategies and tactics expands the empirical scope of what counts as nonrecognition in relation to procedural environmental justice. Second, my research contributes to a growing body of literature on the role of emotions in shaping responses to environmental justice issues (Kojola 2020; Kojola and Pellow 2020; Norgaard 2011; Norgaard and Reed 2017). Researchers have found that negative emotions, including helplessness and guilt, contribute to the avoidance of environmental justice issues by people in positions of privilege (Norgaard 2011). However, few have examined negative emotions in the context of procedural environmental justice. Norgaard and Reed (2017) offered clues as to the implications of emotions for procedural justice when they found that feelings of 146 hopelessness among Karuk Tribal members prevented meaningful participation in traditional management practices. I contribute to procedural environmental justice scholarship by showing that unmanaged negative emotions promote polarization and disengagement. Future research can expand on these insights by considering a more diverse range of emotions, outcomes, and their implications for meaningful public participation in environmental decision-making. Finally, my focus on rural communities directly impacted by disaster provides a thick description of the cultural dynamics that shape environmental politics. In doing so, I advance disaster scholarship by explaining the barriers that may prevent the formation of collective action. Much of the literature in this area has selected on the dependent variable by focusing on successful examples to explain mobilization processes (Edelstein 2004; Kroll-Smith and Couch 1990; Walsh 1981). I break with this methodological convention by drawing on a case in which collective action did not emerge in the immediate aftermath of disaster and show how cultural context and capacity prevent oppositional mobilization. Future research can explore the applicability of these findings to other technological disasters and investigate how other cultural contexts shape environmental (in)action. My research findings also contribute to a new body of scholarship on quiet mobilization (Jerolmack and Walker 2018; Kojola 2020). Quiet mobilization was originally conceptualized to explain political participation in response to new economic or political developments, but I show its utility in capturing the politics associated with existing resource extractions projects. My findings provide additional evidence to support the argument that civic practices may be more typical of political participation in rural communities (Jerolmack and Walker 2018). 147 Due to the racial composition of rural residents in the Quesnel Lake area, my sample mostly includes white participants. One important limitation to my dissertation research is a lack of Indigenous perspectives on the relationship between culture, inequality, and environmental politics in the context of the Mount Polley disaster and subsequent water management plans. Separate consultations were organized with the Williams Lake First Nation and the Xatśūll First Nation. The extent to which my findings reflect the experiences of Indigenous people’s participation in each of these communities is uncertain. It is likely that critical contextual differences informed by colonialism and current treaty negotiations distinctively shape Indigenous people’s experiences with institutional modes of participation. Cultural worldviews may also play an important role in the public consultation process. My interview with Bev Sellars, Chief of Xatśūll First Nation at the time of the disaster, revealed the emotional and cultural importance of salmon and land to her community’s well-being and livelihood. It is likely that these cultural dynamics uniquely shape the public consultation process and interactions between First Nations, Mount Polley, and the government. Indeed, research with Karuk Tribal members indicates that the emotions tied to changes in the natural environmental mattered for Indigenous social action (Norgaard and Reed 2017). Future research might consider these relationships to explain Indigenous people’s participation in environmental deliberations. Indigenous people are often at the frontlines of environmental politics, injustice, and providing solutions to complex environmental problems. An Indigenous-centered approach to environmental politics might also focus on contentious collective action. Analyses of the social movement response to the disaster, led by the Secwépemc Women’s Warrior Society, would provide valuable insights on the relationship between gender, Indigeneity, colonialism, and the 148 emergence of contentious collective action. This presents an opportunity to refine theories of social movement emergence which tend to be based on non-indigenous social groups. A second limitation relates to the scale at which I examined the cultural dynamics that shape environmental politics after disaster strikes. My analysis relied on the experiences of rural residents in the Quesnel Lake area, but environmental politics also occur at larger scales (e.g., provincial) which involve a different set of actors and political processes. For example, research indicates that disasters often influence policy change (Baumgartner and Jones 1993; Birkland 1997, 2016). This is particularly true for focusing events, which are large, sudden and rare events that become known to the media, the public, environmental organizations, and politicians simultaneously (Birkland 1997). Focusing events make policy change more likely because they initiate an agenda-setting process whereby different actors debate the causes of a disaster and propose different policy solutions (Birkland 2016). The Mount Polley disaster became a flashpoint for debates about environmental regulation. The disaster immediately captured the attention of numerous environmental non-governmental organizations (e.g., MiningWatch Canada), industry associations (e.g., Mining Association of Canada) and even facilitated, in part, the emergence of new coalitions (e.g., the B.C. Mining Law Reform Network). Over time, the Government of British Columbia introduced legislative changes in response to the spill such as limits to the steepness of tailings dams and the requirement that all mines include an independent review panel of engineers. Future research on the cultural dynamics of environmental politics might focus on the diverse actors involved in agenda-setting and their relative influence on policymaking processes and outcomes. 149 5.3 Policy Implications My research findings provide important lessons for how policymakers can meaningfully include the public in deliberations related to environmental risks. The first lesson is related to the mode of public engagement. Researchers have used a ladder metaphor to classify different modes of participation, with higher rungs of the ladder representing more democratic and equitable forms of engagement. Lower rung models are described as tokenistic because they do not offer any assurance that public concerns will be taken into account while higher rungs are described as collaborative because decision-making power is shared (Arnstein 1969; Parkins and Mitchell 2005). The public consultations and PLC meetings organized during the five-year period associated with this research represent lower rung forms of engagement. Consequently, most participants viewed the consultations as a smoke screen for decisions that had already been made and this encouraged the belief that consultations were ineffective. A public engagement model that involves and collaborates with members of the public can facilitate better outcomes. For example, research indicates that fair processes marked by adequate opportunities to provide influential input strongly predicts evaluations of effectiveness (Nenko et al. 2019). A second lesson is related to the use of science in environmental deliberations. Participants were unable to meaningfully engage within public consultations because the meetings relied on high volumes of complex data that were unintelligible to the average participant. If the goal of public consultations is to promote good decision-making processes that are based on mutual understanding, then communities should have equal access to knowledge and its interpretations (Webler 1995; Webler and Tuler 2021). This may include the provision of scientific assistance to communities and/or the provision of information before meetings. By 150 providing the necessary resources for making sense of environmental data, members of the public can meaningfully engage in deliberations. Communicative competence (the ability to make sense of the claims made by others), has been shown to be an important influence on perceptions of process legitimacy (O’Connor et al. 2019). A final lesson is related to facilitation. Many participants expressed dissatisfaction with the consultations because they were facilitated by Mount Polley instead of a neutral third-party. A neutral third-party facilitator was desired because of the belief that this practice would: prevent a top-down mode of communication; increase the likelihood that all voices will be heard with equal value; increase trust in the process; and effectively manage negative emotions. Researchers argue that poor management is a major reason why public engagement processes result in poor outcomes. Good facilitation can reduce and resolve conflicts between stakeholders and ensure that everyone’s contributions are recognized (Reed et al. 2018). Taken together, my research indicates that collaborative and independently facilitated meetings that equalize access to scientific information and its interpretations contribute to more meaningful decision-making processes. 5.4 Final Remarks The Mount Polley disaster had cascading effects on the social, economic, and political life of rural residents living in the Quesnel Lake area. Friendships between mining and non-mining families were strained, and small businesses that relied on tourism suffered in the immediate aftermath of the event. The spill also sparked public participation in environmental politics. My dissertation research has shown how cultural dynamics shape public engagement in 151 deliberations and the inequalities that structure interactions between stakeholders. These experiences incite quiet forms of mobilization as people seek other avenues to define environmental problems, propose solutions, and shape decision-making. 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Full Name Pseudonym Bev Sellars Venta Rutkauskas Agatha Bill Whitmer Walt Cobb Amelia Carole Whitmer Wayne Henke Catherine Christine McLean William (Bill) Lloyd Daria Denise Carlson Jennifer Doug Gook Jonathan Doug Watt Kathleen Ellen Petticrew Lucas Elma Sol Mary Geraldine Kovach Megan Joan Sorley Robert Judy Hillaby Tabitha Kim Goforth Travis Lori Lockyer Will Louise Danskin Marlene Watt Matthew McCracken Phil Owens Pohney Whitmer Richard Rujanschi Richard Holmes Sharon Borkowski Skeed Borkowski Steve Forseth 173 Appendix B Interview Guide Introduction Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to speak with me about the Mount Polley mine. The findings from my research will be used for publications and to write a policy brief for the Government of B.C. Policy briefs are simply short reports that offer advice based on research findings. In the context of this study, I will write a policy brief on best practices for including communities and facilitating public participation in resource and disaster management. Before we begin discussing your participation in the (public consultations or PLC meetings), do you have any questions for me? (Go over consent form with respondent) Public Participation in Environmental Deliberations 1. I’d love to hear the story of how you became involved in the meetings (Probe: when did you first become involved? Why?) 2. What stands out as the most positive experience you had at the meetings? 3. What about the opposite? What stands out as the most negative experience you had on at these meetings? 4. Generally, did you feel like you were able to participate as freely or as much as you’d like? Can you recall an example of (feeling free to participate / limited in participating)? 5. Did your opinion on mining or the spill change as a result of your involvement in these meetings? How so? 6. If you were to reflect on your level of engagement in the meetings over the years, how do you think this has changed over time, if at all? (Probe: Specifically with regards to the spill, did you find that you were attending more meetings, or perhaps more active during them?) 7. Thinking now about the meetings more specifically, can you think of an example when company or government personnel provided information (such as a report or research results)? I’d love to hear whether you thought everyone understood the material and about how much debate or discussion there was. I’d like to wrap up this section with a few questions about how effective you think the (PLC was/consultations were). 8. Did you find the meetings effectively dealt with responding to the spill? Why or why not? 9. And switching to the basic set-up of the (PLC/consultations), when you think about who was (on the PLC/at the consultations), do you think it’s generally a good mix of people, in terms of different viewpoints? Can you explain why or why not? 174 10. There were a lot of groups involved in the (PLC/consultations) – who do you think benefitted most from it? Least? – your community, the government, the company, all of them? 11. If you were asked to participate in (a committee/consultation) like this again, what would you like to be done differently (Probe: What do you wish was different about the set up? What would you personally have done differently?) For participants speaking above about PLC meetings: In addition to the PLC meetings, Mount Polley representatives organized public consultations regarding the spill. 12. Did you attend any of these public consultations? If YES: Thinking about our conversation about PLC meetings…. 13. What were some of the main differences between the two? 14. What were some of the main similarities between the two? If NO: 15. Is there a particular reason why you were unable to attend? 16. Reflecting on it now, what would have encouraged you to attend? Community Responses to the Spill We’ve talked about your participation in meetings related to the Mount Polley Mine. I’d like to change tracks and talk about your experience with the tailings spill in 2014. 1. What do you remember about the day of the spill? Probe: How did you react when you found out about the spill? What sort of things were you worried about? Do you think that other people were worried about the same things? 2. How have these concerns changed since the spill happened? Why might that be? 3. Thinking back to the spill, what information did you get about the spill in the days and weeks following the spill? Where did this information come from? 4. Many non-profit organizations were involved after the spill, such as Amnesty International. Did any of these groups contact you? Or did you hear about any of these groups getting involved? a. Do you remember which organizations? b. Do you remember how they were involved? c. What sort of support did they offer to the community? 5. How did the local government respond to the spill? At the time, did you hear about meetings in the community to discuss the spill? Did you attend any of those meetings? If yes: 6. Can you tell me about a typical meeting that you remember? 175 7. Do you remember how often these meetings occurred? 8. What sorts of topics were discussed at the meetings? 9. Did any plans of action emerge from these meetings? Why or why not? Can you think of any examples? If no: 10. Why do you suppose there weren’t any meetings organized? 11. What was a typical conversation like in the days following the spill? Probe: Did you discuss the spill informally – with family, friends, and other community members? 12. What about more informally. Can you recall what a typical conversation was like in the days following the spill? 13. Did these conversations lead you to take action in any way? Why or why not? Can you provide a few examples? I’ve heard that some residents around Quesnel Lake have joined to form the group Concerned Citizens of Quesnel Lake. CCQL launched an environmental appeal against a permit from the BC government allowing Imperial Metals to discharge treated mine waste into Quesnel Lake. Have you become involved in this group, or another similar group? If yes: 14. I’d love to hear the story of how you became involved in (CCQL or other orgs established in response to the spill)? Probe: Why did you get involved in this organization? 15. How do you think people in your community feel about the work of (CCQL/other org)? Probe: Do you generally find them supportive or not of your work? Why or why not? 16. How do you think the activities of (CCQL/other org) has affected, if at all, relationships within and between different communities in the region? Why might this be the case? If no: 17. Why not? 18. How do you feel about the work of (CCQL/other org), and do you think this is shared by other community members? 19. How do you think the activities of (CCQL/other org) has affected, if at all, relationships within and between different communities in the region? Why might this be the case? Environmental Engagement and Sense of Place We’ve been talking about how the community responded to the spill, but I’d like to learn more about your relationship with nature. 1. What is your happiest memory or favourite thing to do in nature around here? 2. Do you see the environment differently, in any way, since the spill? How so? 3. Do you feel like the spill changed how you spend time in nature around here? How so? 176 4. Is there a physical place in this region that is very significant for you? Probe: Places can be parks (Cedar Point Park), lakes (Quesnel Lake), etc. 5. Why did you think of place X? Can you tell me why it’s important to you? Probe: physical characteristics, social characteristics? 6. What words come to mind when you think of Place X? 7. How do you feel when you are at Place X? 8. Has the spill had an impact on how you think and feel about Place X? How so? Conclusion 9. One final question - thinking more generally now, how has the spill changed life in Likely/Horsefly? 10. That’s all the questions I have for today. Is there something you wanted me to ask or thought I would ask? Or do you perhaps have any questions for me? Thank you so much for your participation in this project. If I needed to clarify some comments you made, or if I had any follow up questions, is it possible for me to contact you?
Thesis/Dissertation
eng
Sociology
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
Graduate
Corrigall-Brown, Catherine
Environmental politics after disaster strikes : the cultural dynamics of public participation and mobilization
Text