Nature's powerful sense of irony

We all know that living without mining would result in a drastic change in lifestyle. I happened to be in Vancouver when media reported a mine's tailings pond near Mount Polley had burst. It held the waste from the Imperial Metals copper and gold mine. Over 4.5 million cubic metres of arsenic-and mercury-polluted tailings were swept into Hazeltine Creek and Quesnel Lake.
This is most definitely a tragic event. But the story gets even more frightening. Every four years, the sockeye salmon runs hit a peak. This year, the number of sockeye returning to this watershed was the highest since they began counting in 1913. It is bad enough the dam breached and its poisonous chemicals and hazardous silt flowed forward. At the same time, millions of salmon were retiring from their time at sea, looking for the waters where they themselves were spawned four years previously. This was not just irony, it was devastating irony. At present, they are not certain what effect the dam breaching will have on future salmon stocks.
http://www.thestarphoenix.com/sports/Natures+powerful+sense+irony/10269142/story.html