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Mining Environmental Accidents, Pollution, Tailing Dams and Abandoned Mines

POLLUTION: Indonesia has a long way to go to produce nickel sustainably – by Ian Morse (China Dialogue – May 28, 2021)

China Dialogue

When Indonesian officials said they were meeting with Tesla representatives at the end of last year, they had already spent years wooing the company toward the metals locked in their rainforest soils.

The abundance of metals like nickel and cobalt on Indonesia’s islands could calm worries that the electric vehicle (EV) industry would confront resource bottlenecks in building millions of batteries.

But earlier this year, Tesla seemed to have other interests. The US company advanced deals in nickel from the Pacific islands of New Caledonia as well as in manufacturing its cars in India, suggesting to market observers that Indonesia’s nickel industry had become too risky. A company branded on clean products may be particularly sensitive to increased scrutiny on the environmental impacts of its supply chain.

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The story of Rum Jungle: a Cold War-era uranium mine that’s spewed acid into the environment for decades – by Gavin Mudd (The Conversation – May 18, 2021)

https://theconversation.com/

Gavin Mudd is the Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering, RMIT University.

Buried in last week’s budget was money for rehabilitating the Rum Jungle uranium mine near Darwin. The exact sum was not disclosed.

Rum Jungle used to be a household name. It was Australia’s first large-scale uranium mine and supplied the US and British nuclear weapons programs during the Cold War.

Today, the mine is better known for extensively polluting the Finniss River after it closed in 1971. Despite a major rehabilitation project by the Commonwealth in the 1980s, the damage to the local environment is ongoing.

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Moab uranium tailing cleanup still going after 13 years – by Max Roth (Fox 13 Salt Lake City – May 12, 2021)

https://www.fox13now.com/

MOAB, Utah — Before Moab was a Mecca for outdoor recreation in Utah, it was the hub of cold war uranium mining; and in the rush to process the ore for nuclear weapons, officials made a terrible decision we’re still paying for.

That decision made in 1956 was to build a uranium processing mill along the banks of the most important river in the American Southwest: the Colorado River.

“When they established a mill, there wasn’t very much thought given to protecting the river,” said Russell McCallister, the director of the federal cleanup.

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Interview – CEMI CEO Doug Morrison: “The delay in getting approval for mining projects is almost all related to environmental impact” (Global Business Report/Mining.com – April 28, 2021)

https://www.mining.com/

The industry response to the Brumadinho dam disaster, including the Global Tailings Standard, will hopefully prevent such tragic events in the future. However, it is important to examine how a catastrophe of this scale, at a facility owned by one of the five biggest mining companies in the world, could reoccur after a similar failure — Samarco, in 2015.

Doug Morrison, CEO of the Centre of Excellence for Mining Innovation (CEMI), said the industry must recognize that the increasing delay in getting approval for mining projects is almost all related to environmental impact.

Moreover, the failings at Brumadinho and Samarco were the result of a flawed approach to tailings management, Morrision said in an interview with the Global Business Reports:

GBR: What led CEMI to consider a new approach to the issue of tailings management?

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Toxic legacy of uranium mines on Navajo Nation confronts Interior nominee Deb Haaland – by Mary F. Calvert and Andrew Romano (Yahoo Finance – February 23, 2021)

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/

If, as widely expected, New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland survives her U.S. Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday and is sworn in as secretary of the interior, she will make history as the first Native American ever to serve in a presidential Cabinet.

But representation is only half the battle. From day one, Haaland will also be expected to address a festering backlog of problems left behind by predecessors who lacked her perspective as a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo, one of America’s 574 federally recognized tribes.

Among the most daunting: how to finally help shield indigenous people from the hundreds of inactive yet still toxic uranium mines that have been scarring their lands and poisoning them for decades.

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Phosphate mine collapse ‘imminent’ as DeSantis issues state of emergency in Florida county – by Mark Young and Ryan Callihan (Miami Herald – April 21, 2021)

https://www.msn.com/en-us/

PALMETTO, Fla. — Less than a day after Manatee County issued an emergency evacuation order for nearby residents of the troubled Piney Point industrial site, public safety officials have announced new and immediate evacuations around the phosphate mine, declaring the collapse of the gypsum stack is “imminent.”

Several hours later, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a State of Emergency for the county. “Due to a possible breach of mixed saltwater from the south reservoir at the Piney Point facility, I have declared a State of Emergency for Manatee County to ensure resources are allocated for necessary response & recovery.”

The public safety alert told residents: “Evacuate the area NOW. Collapse of Piney Point Stack is imminent. Immediate evacuation of Chapman Road to Airport Road and US 41 to O’Neill Road. Leave area IMMEDIATELY.”

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Cleanup of Rayrock, the ‘Tłı̨chǫ Giant,’ to receive public scrutiny – by Ollie Williams (Cabin Radio – April 22, 2021)

https://cabinradio.ca/

Federal plans to clean up the former Rayrock uranium mine and its surroundings will be examined at a three-day public hearing to be broadcast live by Cabin Radio next week.

The area around the mine, known as Kwetıı̨ɂ̨aà to the Tłı̨chǫ people, is in some ways the Tłı̨chǫ equivalent of Yellowknife’s Giant Mine. Both left a toxic legacy that’s complex, time-consuming and expensive to deal with.

The Rayrock mine, around 60 km northeast of Whatì, only operated from 1957 to 1959. “The Tłı̨chǫ were never informed of the dangers of uranium mining before the mine was built, or soon after it was closed,” the Tłı̨chǫ Government has said.

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Laurentian University cuts could put groundbreaking mine waste research in jeopardy – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – April 17, 2021)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Insolvency proceeding put acclaimed biomining project and pilot plant on the brink of extinction

One of the world’s top experts in mine waste cleanup was one of the casualties of the massive and deep program and job cuts at Laurentian University this week.

Dr. Nadia Mykytczuk, highly regarded as a microbiologist in bioleaching and mine remediation, was among more than 100 faculty and staff who received virtual pink slips on April 16 as part of the ongoing insolvency proceedings at the Sudbury university.

Laurentian’s School of Environment and staff and faculty at its Vale Living with Lakes Centre took a major hit among the 58 undergraduate and 11 graduate programs cut.

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NEWS RELEASE: MAC Updates Tailings Management Guidance to Align with Global Standard (Mining Association of Canada – April 7, 2021)

TSM Tailings Standard Now Meets or Exceeds the Majority of the Standard’s Requirements

OTTAWA, ON, April 7, 2021 /CNW/ – Today, the Mining Association of Canada (MAC) announced updates to its world leading guidance on responsible tailings management.

The Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM) standard, first developed by MAC in 2004, is a globally recognized sustainability program that supports mining companies in managing key environmental and social risks. TSM was the first mining sustainability standard in the world to require site-level assessments and is mandatory for all companies that are members of implementing associations. Through TSM, eight critical aspects of social and environmental performance are evaluated, independently validated, and publicly reported against 30 distinct performance indicators.

For over 20 years MAC has led the way in responsible tailings management, a significant focus of the association’s work, including through TSM, specifically the Tailings Management Protocol and supporting guidance documents. TSM provides an established system for credible performance measurement and reporting, including rigorous standards to help ensure that tailings facilities are being responsibly managed.

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Washington lawmakers, conservationists push B.C. on mining regulations – by Derrick Penner (Victoria Times Colonist/Vancouver Sun – April 10, 2021)

https://www.timescolonist.com/

A group of Washington state legislators is calling on Premier John Horgan to better protect the headwaters of cross-­border rivers from the threat of ­pollution from mining in B.C.

The 25 state senators and house representatives, led by Senator Jesse Salomon, sent a letter to Horgan last week urging the premier to “undertake needed reforms to improve British Columbia’s financial assurance system,” related to mine reclamation and cleanup.

“We’re just concerned that there could be a tailings spill,” upstream of his state on critical salmon rivers such as the Skagit, Similkameen and Columbia, said Salomon, who represents Shoreline in suburban Seattle.

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‘Imminent’ Collapse of Wastewater Reservoir in Florida Forces Evacuations – by Bryan Pietsch and Marie Fazio (New York Times – April 3, 2021)

https://www.nytimes.com/

A reservoir in Florida that holds nearly 400 million gallons of wastewater from a former phosphate mine was leaking on Saturday, prompting hundreds of evacuations, the authorities said.

Crews were “doing their best to control the outflow” of contaminated water into a creek at Piney Point in Florida, the site of a former phosphate mine that is south of Tampa, said Vanessa Baugh, the chairwoman of the Manatee County Commission.

The spillage was an “imminent hazard” that posed “an immediate and substantial danger to human health, safety, welfare and the environment,” said Gov. Ron DeSantis, who issued an executive order declaring a state of emergency.

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Mining giant’s historic penalty prompts environmentalists to call for stricter coal-mining rules – by Mike Hager (Globe and Mail – March 28, 2021)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

A $60-million penalty to Teck Coal underscores the urgent need for B.C. to adopt stricter coal-mining regulations in line with American states downstream of the same valley where four large projects have been proposed, according to the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre and a binational coalition of environmental groups.

Last Friday, a Federal Court judge approved the largest Fisheries Act penalty ever for the subsidiary of Teck Resources after the mining giant put forward a joint submission with Environment and Climate Change Canada stating it contaminated waterways in southeastern B.C.’s Elk Valley with selenium – a natural element that washes out of piles of waste rock and moves up the food chain to cause deformities in fish and ruin their ability to reproduce.

The judge commended Teck as a good corporate citizen for spending $1-billion since the pollution was first uncovered by federal inspectors in 2012 and for co-operating to avoid a costly court case that would likely become the longest environmental lawsuit in Canadian history.

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Giant Mine contamination apology discussions underway, says Yellowknives Dene First Nation – by Hannah Paulson (CBC News North – March 4, 2021)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/

‘The destruction of the ecosystem that we have always enjoyed is a very painful history,’ chief says

A First Nation in the Northwest Territories is expecting to receive an apology from the federal government for the contamination of its land.

That’s according to Ed Sangris, chief of Dettah, N.W.T., who says the Yellowknives Dene First Nation (YKDFN) are expecting the process for an apology from the federal government, for the harms caused by contamination from the former Giant Mine, to begin in June.

A spokesperson for Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada confirmed that the federal government has never apologized for the harm suffered by Indigenous people following the development and contamination of land caused by mining in the North.

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Alaska-B.C. mine rivers generally healthy: state-province joint report – by Jeremy Hainsworth (Business In Vancouver – February 25, 2021)

https://biv.com/

A four-year study of Alaska-B.C. rivers associated with mining activity – spurred by U.S. and Canadian complaints about environmental threats – has concluded there aren’t risks to marine habitat.

People on both sides in the Alaska Panhandle region, including at least one U.S. senator, had complained to then U.S. President Barack Obama’s secretary of state John Kerry that discharges associated with B.C. mines such as the Red Chris, KSM and New Polaris Mine were leaching materials into ocean waters and threatening fisheries.

While the concerns date back many years, it was the 2014 collapse of the Mount Polley mine tailings dam, which sent a torrent of 25 million cubic metres of water and mine slurry into nearby creeks, that intensified calls for border mine discharges to be examined.

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From Brazil to Bulgaria: the giants we ignore at our peril – by Marco Ranocchiari (Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa.org – February 9, 2021)

https://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/

25 January 2019 had seemed like a normal enough day for the iron mine workers in Brumadinho, in Brazil’s Minas Gerais province. Many were taking their lunch break when, at 12:28 surveillance cameras showed the almost 90 metre high earthen dam instantaneously pulverised.

In just a few seconds 12 million cubic metres of water and waste from mineral processing submerged everything within seven kilometres: trees, homes, animals, railway tracks.

Looking at drone-footage of the devastation, millions of people recognised, perhaps for the first time in decades, the dark side of a sector fundamental to our era but nearly invisible: mining.

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