There is a little known clause in BC's Environmental Assessment Act that can allow a company to make significant physical changes to their natural resource extraction projects after the conclusion of an environmental assessment (EA). This process is known as an 'amendment,' and often occurs with less scientific and public scrutiny than the original EA. We used mining projects as an example to investigate how often amendments were occurring and what types of predicted effects they could be having on freshwater resources throughout BC. This involved digging through hundreds of pages of documents posted on BC's project registry. 

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Of the 23 mines that were approved via the environmental assessment process in BC between 2002 and 2020:

• 14 (61%) of mines received amendments after-the-fact

• 20 (out of 48 total) amendments were approved that were likely to have impacts on freshwater ecosystems. 

• some of the changes allowed by amendments included increased discharge of effluent into river systems, destruction of wetlands, and extraction of groundwater supplies.​​