Pope Francis will install the first cardinal of Brazil’s Amazon region this month in a sign of his concern for the rainforest and its indigenous inhabitants, the man whom he picked for the role said.
Dom Leonardo Steiner, archbishop of the Brazilian city of Manaus, said in an interview that Francis, the first pope from Latin America, is worried about deforestation, threats to indigenous cultures and pollution of rivers with mercury used by gold miners in the Amazon.
(Bloomberg) — Quebec’s public health director took aim at Glencore Plc for toxic emissions at a copper smelter in the province’s northwest, saying the level of pollution must be brought down quickly because of evidence it’s causing increased risk of cancer and other health problems.
The Horne Smelter in Rouyn-Noranda, a remote city about 600 kilometers (373 miles) northwest of Montreal, is emitting 165 nanograms of arsenic per cubic meter of air on site, according to a recent study by public health authorities in the Canadian province. That’s 55 times the standard safe level of 3 nanograms.
(CNN)With rolling hills, forests and hiking trails, Southeast Ohio is a haven for lovers of the outdoors. Yet cutting through the landscape are countless orange-stained streams, colored by the iron oxide pollution that has seeped into them from abandoned coal mines.
These streams are contaminated with a toxic sludge known as acid mine drainage (AMD) — the overflow of highly acidic wastewater from underground mines, created when water comes into contact with exposed mining rocks.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Any Canadian who grew up in a mining town knows of the trade-offs that come with relying on a single major employer involved in the metals business. For residents of Rouyn-Noranda, Que., the ups and downs of the commodities cycle have defined their town’s existence since prospector Edmund Horne staked the first copper claims in the region a century ago, leading to the 1922 founding of Noranda Inc.
The mining colossus, whose rise was intricately tied to Canada’s economic development, was eventually absorbed by Swiss-based multinational Glencore in 2013. But its name lives on in the town where it got its start.
https://www.tucsonsentinel.com/
More than 20 states and the Navajo Nation can now apply for $725 million in funding for abandoned mine lands projects to help communities that have suffered environmental hazards and pollution caused by coal mining.
“Through this program, we are investing in coal communities through job creation — including for current and former coal workers — and economic revitalization, all while addressing harmful environmental impacts from these legacy developments,” Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland said in a press release.
Environmental groups want tailings ponds in B.C. banned
American environmental groups are taking aim at B.C.’s “industrial gold rush” and calling on President Joe Biden to call on the Canadian government to ban tailings dams.
Four American environmental groups are pointing to a report commissioned by the BC Mining Law Reform and SkeenaWild Conservation Trust that analyzes the risks of tailings pond failures in B.C. They are zeroing in on two mines in particular – one already in operation, Copper Mountain in southern B.C., and one proposed, the KSM mine in northwestern B.C.
BHP (ASX: BHP) said on Friday it had lost an appeal in a London court seeking to block an over £5 billion ($6bn-plus) lawsuit by 200,000 Brazilians over a deadly dam failure in Brazil seven years ago.
The group claim, one of the largest in British legal history, alleged that BHP, the world’s largest miner by market value, ignored safety warnings as the dam’s capacity was repeatedly increased by raising its height – and disregarded cracks that pointed to early signs of rupture.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/
Most of the sites with the highest risk scores are former gold mining sites
The province has released its risk ranking of potentially contaminated historical mine sites — a year and a half after it said it would.
The list includes 69 sites strewn across the province that were once home to a range of mining operations dating back to the 1800s. The CBC requested the ranking under freedom-of-information rules.
Toronto-headquartered Barrick Gold Corp. is once again facing accusations that its high-altitude Veladero mine in Argentina is releasing toxins into the local water supply — after similar incidents years ago spurred the country to pass legislation and forced the mine to temporarily close.
Located in the Argentinian Andes, Veladero is operated by Barrick but it is jointly owned on a 50-50 basis with China’s Shandong Gold. The mine has faced criticism related to toxic spills in water dating back to at least 2015.
To go green, the world will need vast quantities of critical minerals such as manganese, lithium, cobalt and rare earth elements. But to some environmentalists, mining to save the planet is a hard pill to swallow if it leads to damage to pristine areas.
The good news is that in many cases, the mining for these minerals has already been done. After Australia’s major miners dig up iron ore, billions of tonnes of earth and rock are left over. Hidden in these rock piles and tailing dams are minerals vital to high tech industries of today and tomorrow.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/
Research shows higher levels of metals in invertebrates taken from Polley and Quesnel lakes
A newly published scientific study confirms the deep ecological impact of the Mount Polley mine disaster in B.C.’s Cariboo region nearly eight years ago.
The study, published last week in the academic journal Environmental Science and Pollution Research, shows small invertebrates taken from lake water affected by the tailings spill disaster had a higher concentration of copper and other metals than those taken from unaffected lake water.
Lithium mining is having a devastating impact on local and indigenous communities as well as ecosystems around the globe, and reducing dependence on automobiles must be a key part of our strategy to curb the damage, a new report says.
According to a new analysis from the Natural Resources Defense Council, the rapid expansion of the electric vehicle battery market is driving a boom in demand for lithium carbonate, a synthesized compound whose key component — lithium itself — is derived from just a tiny handful of natural deposits located throughout the world.
CHURCH ROCK, N.M. — On April 22, Navajo uranium and contamination victims voiced concerns to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission over the devastating health and environmental impacts caused by federal uranium mining.
Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez and Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency Executive Director Valinda Shirley were on hand for the meeting along with U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Christopher T. Hanson, Commissioner Jeff Baran, and Commissioner David Wright who met at the Redwater Pond Road community, located within the Church Rock Chapter on the Navajo Nation.
https://www.indcatholicnews.com/
A delegation from Latin America, including a Catholic bishop, has travelled to Europe to raise awareness and urge support for communities suffering from destructive mining. It called for disinvestment from mining.
The members of the delegation met with European parliamentarians in Brussels on 24 March to denounce the relationship between dispossession and extractive impacts in Latin America.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/
Nearly eight years after the largest environmental mining disaster in Canadian history, B.C.’s engineering regulatory and licensing body has wrapped up its investigation into three engineers who were involved.
Engineers and Geoscientists British Columbia (EGBC) brought a collective $226,500 in fines against two engineers involved in the Mount Polley mine disaster who are no longer working in the industry and a brief suspension and required training for a third engineer.
