Mining Conflict and Opposition – Page 83

Movie “Avatar” has few fans among mining execs – by Steve James (Reuters.com – March 11, 2010)

February 20, 2012February 20, 2012

The article is from the Reuters website: http://www.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – It’s enough to make a mining executive grit his teeth or his kids to give him the silent treatment. In a case of art imitating life — with perhaps a little poetic license — Oscar-winning movie “Avatar” paints big mining companies as the villains of the future.

But real-life executives are not entirely amused by their fictional colleagues being cast in evil roles in what is already the biggest-grossing Hollywood movie of all time.

“Let me put it this way, my kids saw the movie, and my kids know I’m a miner, and they didn’t say anything to me,” said Peter Kukielski, head of mining operations for ArcelorMittal (ISPA.AS) (MT.N), the world’s largest steelmaker.

Mine Your Own Business (Mining Documentary – 2006)

April 5, 2015February 19, 2012

This information is from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Mine Your Own Business is a documentary directed and produced by Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney in 2006 about the Roșia Montană mining project. The film asserts that environmentalists’ opposition to the mine is unsympathetic to the needs and desires of the locals, prevents industrial progress, and consequently locks the people of the area into lives of poverty.

The film claims that the majority of the people of the village support the mine, and the investment in their hometown.[2] The film presents foreign environmentalists as alien agents opposed to progress, while residents are depicted as eagerly awaiting the new opportunity.[3]

Film content

The documentary follows Gheorghe Lucian, a 23-year-old unemployed miner from the Roşia Montană in northern Romania, whose chance of a new job disappeared after an anti-mining campaign orchestrated by foreign environmentalists.

Stakeholders brace for sweeping changes on environmental protection laws – by Mike De Souza (Ottawa Citizen – February 15, 2012)

February 15, 2012

www.ottawacitizen.com

OTTAWA — Industry and conservation groups are bracing for the federal government to introduce sweeping changes this month to reduce Canada’s environmental protection laws in order to speed up reviews on proposed projects.

All stakeholders agree that certain changes would be welcome to improve the process, but some have also warned the government that it could cause more harm than good if it proposes a plan that ignores long-term benefits or consequences of projects.

“It’s all very well to say we need more mines, but how do we actually know that they are actually going to be sustainable or going to be of net benefit to Canada?” asked Stephen Hazell, an Ottawa-based environmental lawyer.

While he said some mines have clear benefits, he noted that a recent arsenic spill at an old gold mine near Yellowknife raises serious concerns, especially because of melting permafrost.

Molycorp’s $1 billion rare-earth gamble – by Richard Martin (Fortune Magazine – November 18, 2011)

February 15, 2012

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/

How an American company is trying to break China’s monopoly on high-tech minerals.

FORTUNE — Few weekenders making the four-hour run from L.A. to Vegas notice the big mill works overlooking Interstate 15 at Mountain Pass Summit in California, near the Nevada line. Even fewer realize that the pale-pink buildings, gone patchy with age, are the focus of an extraordinary business drama that involves national security, China’s monopolizing the strategic market in rare-earth metals, and one company’s attempt to restore American preeminence in a crucial mining sector it once dominated.

Those sprawling buildings are owned by a Denver mining company called Molycorp (MCP), which is now spending nearly $1 billion to restart rare-earth-mineral production at Mountain Pass Summit and in the process revive a moribund U.S. industry. It won’t be easy. A decade ago the U.S. was the world’s biggest supplier of lanthanides, scandium, and other rare earths, and the Mountain Pass mine was the world’s largest producer of the minerals.

Rare-earth elements enable the creation of super-magnets, which operate at high temperatures and are also used for a range of high-tech applications, from missile-guidance systems to compact fluorescent light bulbs to wind power turbines to motors in electric vehicles.

A hedge fund bets big on a Canadian mega quarry – by By Scott Cendrowski (Fortune Magazine – February 15, 2012)

February 15, 2012

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/

Superstar investor Seth Klarman’s controversial plan to develop a quarry in Ontario could pay off bigtime.

FORTUNE — Drive an hour northwest from Toronto along Highway 10 and you come across some of the best farmland in Canada. Folks here call it the Garden of Eden. Atop a 15,000-acre plateau sits a layer of dark dirt so perfectly balanced with clay and nutrients that it breaks apart in your hand like potting soil. “The stuff is like butter,” says a local potato farmer, David Vander Zaag, who sells his spuds to Frito-Lay. Even better: Below the rich topsoil lies a limestone deposit some 200 feet thick, creating an ideal natural drainage system. It once rained nine inches in a day, says Vander Zaag, and he didn’t lose a single potato from his crop.

It’s that limestone, though, that has brought the farming town of Melancthon, Ontario, pop. 2,900, the fight of its life. Last spring a Canadian firm called the Highland Cos. submitted an application to turn 2,300 acres of area farmland into one of the top-producing rock quarries in Canada. One of the principal owners of Highland is the Baupost Group, a $24 billion hedge fund based in Boston and run by a secretive investor named Seth Klarman.

Highland’s quarry proposal has ignited a firestorm of controversy in Melancthon. Residents have myriad concerns — from increased truck traffic to the impact on the water supply to the unsightliness of an enormous pit mine in the distance.

Mining companies, First Nations clashing over Ring of Fire, MPs told – by James Munson (iPolitics – February 15, 2012)

February 15, 2012

http://www.ipolitics.ca/

The conflict between mining companies hungry to exploit the vast riches of northern Ontario and the poverty-stricken First Nations that live there came to Parliament Hill on Tuesday.

The federal regulatory system is failing in the region’s mineral formation known as the Ring of Fire, First Nations representatives and mining executives told MPs at the House of Commons natural resources committee. One aboriginal group has even put one mega-project on hold through court action.

The legal obligations of miners to nearby First Nations are so difficult to discern, it’s denting Canada’s reputation as a politically stable place to do business, said one mining executive.

“The bar has been shifting to a point where I’m wondering what our legal rights are as an exploration company,” said Ronald Coombes, president of White Tiger Mining Corp., a junior exploration firm with assets in the region.

Ontario First Nation wins injunction to stop gold drilling – by Tanya Talaga (Toronto Star – February 12, 2012)

February 14, 2012February 12, 2012

The Toronto Star, has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

When members of Wahgoshig First Nation spotted a drilling crew on what they say is a sacred burial site, they demanded to know who the strangers were and what they were doing.

The Wahgoshig, whose Algonquin reserve of 19,239 acres is 113 km east of Timmins, running south from Lake Abitibi near the Quebec border, say they were met with silence. But what was happening on the land was anything but silent, according to court records.

The prospecting work involves clearing 25 sq. metre pads, clearing forest, bulldozing access routes to the drilling sites and the transportation and storage of fuel and equipment.

The workers were with Solid Gold Resources Inc., a junior mining firm that has a 200-square-kilometre prospect at Lake Abitibi near the Porcupine Fault zone. The land they were on, says Wahgoshig band chief David Babin, is not part of the reserve itself but does include the traditional lands the Algonquins have lived on for thousands of years.

How First Quantum recouped its seized mine – by Matthew McClearn (Canadian Business Magazine – January 19, 2012)

February 10, 2012

Founded in 1928, Canadian Business is the longest-publishing business magazine in Canada.

In 2007 the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo announced it would autocratically tear up and renegotiate contracts with foreign mining companies. The price Vancouver-based First Quantum Minerals paid for resisting: the forcible seizure and resale of its properties in the country, including two operating mines and another on which construction was nearly complete.

The DRC investigated First Quantum for what it called “suspected widescale misconduct.” Its courts, which are not independent, slapped a stinging US$12-billion judgment on the company. The government transferred the properties for nominal sums to close associates of DRC president Joseph Kabila, who promptly flipped them for significant profits; Eurasian Natural Resources Corp. (ENRC), a large London-based company dominated by Kazakh owners, paid just US$175 million for the Kolwezi project, which cost First Quantum nearly $800 million to purchase and construct.

First Quantum immediately sought redress, but its hand seemed weak. ENRC CEO Felix Vuilis had maintained his company owed nothing to the former owners. “Any dispute that First Quantum has is with the relevant DRC authorities,” he declared shortly after the purchase.

Africa: The Back Story to Cida-Mining Partnerships – by Catherine Coumans (All Africa.com/Mining Watch.com – February 9, 2012)

February 10, 2012

www.allafrica.com

Catherine Coumans is the research co-ordinator and Asia Pacific program co-ordinator for MiningWatch Canada. She is the author of Whose Development? Mining, Local Resistance, and Development Agendas.

Analysis

Mining companies’ branding of themselves as bringers of development needs to be critically examined against the burgeoning ‘resource curse’ literature that links mining to deepening national impoverishment in mining-dependent developing countries

The Canadian International Development Agency’s funding of Corporate Social Responsibility projects mostly near mine sites is intended to help Canadian mining companies compete for access to lucrative ore bodies in developing countries in the face of increasing local opposition to mining.

As I write this, thousands of Cajamarcans in Peru are protesting Newmont Mining Corp.’s proposed Conga mine that will destroy four lakes they depend on for their water supplies and livelihoods.

The Devastating Costs of the Amazon Gold Rush – by Donovan Webster (Smithsonian Magazine – February, 2012)

February 7, 2012

This article is from: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/?ref=home

Spurred by rising global demand for the metal, miners are destroying invaluable rainforest in Peru’s Amazon basin

It’s a few hours before dawn in the Peruvian rainforest, and five bare light bulbs hang from a wire above a 40-foot-deep pit. Gold miners, operating illegally, have worked in this chasm since 11 a.m. yesterday. Standing waist-deep in muddy water, they chew coca leaves to stave off exhaustion and hunger.

In the pit a minivan-size gasoline engine, set on a wooden cargo pallet, powers a pump, which siphons water from a nearby river. A man holding a flexible ribbed-plastic hose aims the water jet at the walls, tearing away chunks of earth and enlarging the pit every minute until it’s now about the size of six football fields laid side by side. The engine also drives an industrial vacuum pump. Another hose suctions the gold-fleck-laced soil torn loose by the water cannon.

At first light, workers hefting huge Stihl chain saws roar into action, cutting down trees that may be 1,200 years old. Red macaws and brilliant-feathered toucans take off, heading deeper into the rainforest. The chain saw crews also set fires, making way for more pits.

Congolese citizens will appeal to Supreme Court in suit against Canadian mining – by Sidhartha Banerjee (Winnipeg Free Press – February 2, 2012)

February 2, 2012

This ariticle came from: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/

The Canadian Press

MONTREAL – A coalition of human-rights groups say they will make a last-ditch plea to the Supreme Court of Canada in an effort to sue a Canadian mining company on behalf of the victims of a massacre in Congo.

The Canadian Association Against Impunity, a coalition of human-rights groups and non-governmental organizations acting on behalf of Congolese citizens, says it’s imperative that those people have access to justice in Canada. Quebec’s Court of Appeal last week overturned a lower-court ruling from April 2011 that had paved the way for a civil suit to be heard in Canada.

In their claim, the groups had argued that Anvil Mining Limited (TSX:AVM) provided logistical support to the Congolese military as it moved to crush a rebel uprising in 2004.

A Vast Canadian Wilderness Poised for a Uranium Boom – by Ed Struzik (Yale Environment 360.com – January 30, 20120

January 30, 2012

This article is from Yale Environment 360.com: http://e360.yale.edu/

Canadian author and photographer Ed Struzik has been writing on the Arctic for three decades.

Canada’s Nunavut Territory is the largest undisturbed wilderness in the Northern Hemisphere. It also contains large deposits of uranium, generating intense interest from mining companies and raising concerns that a mining boom could harm the caribou at the center of Inuit life.

Until her semi-nomadic family moved into the tiny Inuit community of Baker Lake in the 1950s, Joan Scottie never knew there was a wider world beyond her own on the tundra of the Nunavut Territory in the Canadian Arctic. She didn’t see the inside of a school until she was a teenager and didn’t venture south until she was an adult.

But that all changed in 1978, when a Soviet satellite carrying 100 pounds of enriched uranium for an onboard nuclear reactor crashed into the middle of the wilderness she knew so well, resulting in a military search that recovered some of the radioactive debris. Everything that Scottie learned about uranium after that convinced her she wanted nothing to do with a mineral that had the potential to cause such serious health problems or be used for military purposes.

Descendant of Jack London opposes [Northwest Territory] mine – by By Stephen Hume (Vancouver Sun – January 28, 2012)

January 28, 2012

The Vancouver Sun, a broadsheet daily paper first published in 1912, has the largest circulation in the province of British Columbia.

Aboriginal opposition to development of silver-zinc deposit in Nahanni National Park Reserve is supported by writer’s great-granddaughter

Celebrated writer Jack London’s great-granddaughter is supporting northern first nations and environmental groups challenging efforts by a Vancouver mining company to redevelop a rich silver-zinc deposit within the Nahanni National Park Reserve.

The park, surrounding the South Nahanni River where it carves through the Mackenzie Mountains about 1,300 kilometres north of Vancouver, has been called Canada’s Grand Canyon.

Last December, the Dehcho First Nations wrote to the federal government saying that a decision by the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board dismissing the need for an environmental impact review for the Canadian Zinc Corp.’s Prairie Creek mine was “troubling and disappointing” in its failure to adequately address their concerns about downstream water quality.

What miners should know about the injunction against Solid Gold Resources [Wahgoshig First Nation] – by Nalin Sahni & David Hunter (Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP – January 27, 2012)

January 27, 2012

Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP: http://www.fmc-law.com/Home.aspx

Ontario Court Halts Exploration After Mining Company Refused to Consult First Nation – Nalin Sahni & David Hunter

The Wahgoshig First Nation (“WFN”) in Northern Ontario has obtained an injunction to temporarily stop Solid Gold Resources Corp. (“Solid Gold”), a junior mining company, from drilling on their First Nation Treaty lands. In a decision released last week (2011 ONSC 7708 (CanLII)), Justice Brown of the Ontario Superior Court halted all exploration activities for at least 120 days after finding that Solid Gold had repeatedly failed to respond to consultation requests from both WFN and the Ontario Government.

While this decision should not come as a surprise to knowledgeable observers, it is important for three reasons:

1) It confirms that as yet there is no Aboriginal veto over mining exploration activities;

2) It highlights problems with the Crown’s practice of delegating the consultation to proponents and