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Mining Environmental Accidents, Pollution, Tailing Dams and Abandoned Mines

EPA awards $220 million for uranium mine cleanup on Navajo Nation – by Haleigh Kochanski (12news.com – February 16, 2021)

https://www.12news.com/

Cronkite News – WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday it will award contracts worth up to $220 million to three companies for the cleanup of some of the hundreds of abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation.

Work could start later this year following the completion of assessments for mining sites coordinated between the EPA and the Navajo Nation’s environmental agency, the federal agency said.

This week’s announcement is just the latest in years of efforts to clean up the mines, the toxic legacy of Cold War mining in the region. More than 30 million tons of uranium ore were mined in the region, according to the EPA, which said more than 500 mines were ultimately abandoned.

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Electric vehicles can drive more responsible mining – by Pius Ginting and Payal Sampat (China Dialogue Ocean – February 12, 2021)

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Pius Ginting is the coordinator of Aksi Ekologi dan Emansipasi Rakyat in Indonesia. Payal Sampat is the mining program director at Earthworks in the United States.

The ocean waters surrounding eastern Indonesia and Papua New Guinea lie within the biodiverse Coral Triangle, home to some of the world’s most highly concentrated – and endangered – coral reefs.

In addition to being globally significant ecological sites, the reefs supply habitat for several important commercial and subsistence fisheries central to local communities’ lives.

Meanwhile, the area’s nickel deposits are attracting the attention of electric vehicle manufacturers, which rely on batteries containing nickel and other minerals like lithium and cobalt. Nickel demand is expected to increase six-fold by 2030 and Indonesia, which is already the world’s largest nickel producer, is dramatically scaling up production to meet it.

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Is Johannesburg the most radioactive city in the world? – by Naledi Mashishi (Afica Check.org – February 15, 2021)

https://africacheck.org/

South African advocacy groups have claimed Johannesburg is the most radioactive city on Earth, because of the mining of uranium-rich gold fields. But uranium contamination and radioactivity aren’t the same thing.

The history of gold mining and the South African city of Johannesburg are intimately linked – the city was founded after the discovery of the precious metal on the Witwatersrand in 1884. Locals call it “the City of Gold”, but can it also claim the title of “most radioactive city on earth”?

“Joburg is the most radioactive city on the planet, thanks to its gold-mining past, says Earthlife Africa,” read an article on news website Independent Online in late 2020. It linked this startling claim to the dumping of uranium as a waste product of gold mining.

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Stunning NASA photo shows ‘gold’ Peruvian Amazon rivers, but there’s a dark backstory – by Jack Guy (CTV News – February 11, 2021)

https://www.ctvnews.ca/

All that glitters is not gold, the saying goes, as proven by a new photo taken from the International Space Station (ISS).

What appear to be rivers of gold running through the Amazon rainforest in Madre de Dios state in eastern Peru are in fact prospecting pits, likely left by independent miners, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory, which published the photo taken by one of its astronauts.

The pits are normally hidden from view to those on the ISS, but stand out in this shot due to reflected sunlight. The image shows the Inambari River and a number of pits surrounded by deforested areas of muddy spoil.

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Top coal scientist warns Albertans of contamination from mining – by Bob Weber (Canadian Press/CBC News Calgary – February 16, 2021)

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

One of North America’s top experts on pollution from coal mines is warning Albertans about the dangers of expanding the industry in the province’s Rocky Mountains.

“Expansion of coal-mining up the Alberta Rockies chain will absolutely produce an environmental disaster for fish and wildlife health in what are now pristine, high-quality watersheds,” Dennis Lemly wrote in an email to The Canadian Press.

Lemly is a retired U.S. government scientist who has published dozens of papers with hundreds of citations on coal-mining’s impact.

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Nornickel fined $2 billion for massive Arctic fuel spill – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – February 5, 2021)

https://www.mining.com/

Norilsk Nickel (MCX: GMKN), the world’s largest producer of palladium and nickel, will have to pay a record fine of 146 billion rubles ($1.94 billion) in compensation for a huge fuel spill in the Arctic last May, a Russian court ruled on Friday.

The amount, while in line with a demand by the nation’s environmental watchdog Rosprirodnadzor, more than doubles what Russia is seeking to get in mineral extraction tax from mining companies this year.

“We won!!!” Rosprirodnadzor head Svetlana Rodionova, who was in the courtroom on Friday, said in an Instagram post. “Ecology is everyone’s business!!!”

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Vale to Pay $7 Billion for One of Worst Ever Mine Disasters – by James Attwood (Yahoo Finance/Bloomberg – February 4, 2021)

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

(Bloomberg) — Vale SA reached a settlement agreement with Brazilian authorities for a dam collapse that killed 270 people and led to production cutbacks that stripped the company of the title of world’s biggest iron ore producer.

The deal comes two years after the Brumadinho disaster, giving affected communities a clear framework for compensation and reparations and removing a considerable legal overhang for Vale. Its shares were little changed in Sao Paulo.

Vale will pay 37.7 billion reais ($7.03 billion) including cash payments to affected people and investments in environmental projects, the Rio de Janeiro-based company said in a statement. Vale estimates it will book an additional expense of 19.8 billion reais in 2020 results.

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‘Permanent state of fear’: 2 years after disaster, mine tailings dams a big risk – by Taylor Kuykendall (S&P Global Market Intelligence – Janaury 2021)

https://www.spglobal.com/

On Jan. 25, 2019, a large dam full of mining waste from the Corrego do Feijao iron ore mine owned by Vale SA ruptured and sent a mudslide downstream toward Brumadinho, Brazil, killing at least 270 people. Two years later, some question if the mining industry has done enough to avert further disasters.

Vale has faced billions in costs due to the incident, and several employees and contractors were charged with homicide, including former Vale CEO Fabio Schvartsman. While new standards have been introduced, many people still fear other tailings dams could fail, putting communities around the world at risk.

Maria Teresa Corujo is with Janeiro Marrom, or Brown January, a campaign working to raise awareness about the disaster. Corujo described training drills with sirens in Brazilian communities near tailings dams, so that community members could rehearse running in case of another failure.

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Brumadinho dam collapse could have been predicted weeks in advance – study – by Valentina Ruiz Leotaud (Mining.com – January 24, 2021)

https://www.mining.com/

The dam collapse at Vale’s (NYSE: VALE) Córrego do Feijão mining complex in Brazil, which killed almost 300 people two years ago, could have been foreseen with the right monitoring technology.

This is according to a recent study by researchers at the University of Nottingham and Durham University, who collaborated with Terra Motion and discovered that by applying satellite radar imaging InSAR to check for small ground movements in and around dams, it is possible to predict a dam burst.

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Indonesia’s EV battery aspirations unearth mining waste problems – by Ursula Florene (Kr-asia.com – January 14, 2021)

https://kr-asia.com/

By catering to the global hunger for EVs and its domestic economic growth, Indonesia risks destroying its own environment.

Indonesia is one of the world’s top producers of battery minerals and the first global producer of nickel, an essential component to produce lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries. That places the country at the core of the electric vehicle (EV) revolution.

Home to 25% of the world’s nickel resources, Indonesia also has rich resources of cobalt and copper, other essential minerals for battery production. Based on its assets, the country is developing its own EV industry and has plans to become a global EV battery production hub.

Under President Joko Widodo’s administration, Indonesia is set to begin EV domestic production by 2021 or 2022 with the goal of exporting 200,000 EVs by 2025, or about 20% of the estimated total of exported cars.

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Cleaning up tailings standards: Why this time really is different – by Alisha Hiyate (Canadian Mining Journal – January 6, 2021)

http://www.canadianminingjournal.com/

A sustained effort needed to address tailings risks isn’t dissipating. Jan. 25 will mark two years since the Brumadinho tailings disaster in Brazil.

The tailings dam failure released 12 million cubic metres of tailings, killing 259, devastating the nearby town of Brumadinho, and polluting the Paraopeba River.

Incredibly, they’re still looking to recover the bodies of 11 presumed victims. (The search and rescue effort, interrupted by the pandemic in March 2020, resumed in August.)

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Alaska demands action on B.C.’s ‘lax’ mining oversight – by Quinn Bender (Abbotsford News – January 4, 2021)

https://www.abbynews.com/

The United States government has approved US$3.6 million in spending to help Alaska pressure the B.C. government into reforming mining regulations they claim are lax and present an imminent threat to fish and habitat in transboundary watersheds.

On Dec. 21, U.S. Congress approved the Consolidated Appropriations Act for 2021 that included US$3.1 million for the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to expand a 2019 baseline water-quality monitoring program on rivers downstream from B.C. mines.

An allocation of US$500,000 was also approved to shore up involvement of the U.S. Department of State to identify gaps in a memorandum of understanding between B.C. and Alaska, Washington, Idaho, and Montana relating to mining activity in transboundary watersheds.

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UK court blocks lawsuit against BHP over Brazil dam burst – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – November 9, 2020)

https://www.mining.com/

The High Court of Manchester, northwestern England, blocked on Monday a £5 billion ($6.6bn) lawsuit against BHP over a devastating dam collapse at an iron ore mine in Brazil in 2015, which killed 19 people and became the worst environmental disaster in the country’s history.

The suit, filed last year by 235,000 Brazilian people and groups including indigenous tribes and the Catholic Church, claims the world’s no. 1 miner was “woefully negligent” in the run-up to the Samarco dam failure.

The claimants were seeking compensation for physical and psychological injury, property damage, moving costs, loss of earnings, loss of water supply and lost fishing income.

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Silver particles in consumer goods found to harm fish in Ontario lake study – by Ivan Semeniuk (Globe and Mail – October 19, 2020)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Microscopic silver particles that are added as an antimicrobial agent to athletic clothing, condoms and yoga mats, among many other products, have been shown to harm fish and freshwater ecosystems when released in quantities that are similar to what is thought to be emerging from wastewater plants across Canada.

Researchers who laced a Northern Ontario lake with the material, known as nanosilver, as part of a multiyear experiment, say the adverse effects they measured in two species of fish were significant enough, both individually and at the population level, to warrant including the unregulated substance as part of Canada’s water safety guidelines for the metal.

“We found effects right down to the cellular level,” said Lauren Hayhurst, a fisheries biologist at the Experimental Lakes Area, near Kenora, Ont., where the work was conducted.

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Can mineral extraction ever be environmentally acceptable? – by David Jessop (Virgin Islands Daily News – October 4, 2020)

http://www.virginislandsdailynews.com/

In August, the price of gold reached a record high of $2,073 per ounce. It did so as investors concerned about the impact of COVID-19, global economic instability, and falling bond yields, decided it was a safe haven.

Coincidentally, the spike occurred as Guyana’s Stabroek News published an investigative report in collaboration with InfoAmazonia and media partners in Brazil and Venezuela which described how a significant part of the Republic’s informal gold production is trafficked abroad.

A few weeks later InfoAmazonia published a more detailed account. “Tracing Tainted Gold,” described how across the Guiana Shield, mercury trafficking networks are enabling gold produced by small miners to be laundered; how it is moving across uncontrolled borders and through the region’s ports; suggesting that it is entering legitimate global supply chains, and possibly ending up in products made by some of the world’s biggest corporations.

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