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Mining Environmental Accidents, Pollution, Tailing Dams and Abandoned Mines

Rising temperatures leave Russia’s Arctic ambitions on thin ice – by Toby Woodall (S&P Global Market Intelligence – September 7, 2020)

https://www.spglobal.com/

The Arctic provides almost 25% of Russia’s GDP, according to a
July U.S. Air Force report on Arctic Strategy, which describes
the area as “a region of immense geostrategic significance and a key location for global power projection.”

Rising temperatures and several environmental catastrophes over summer have revealed the underlying risks to Moscow’s ambitious plans to develop everything from military bases to mines and associated infrastructure in Russia’s far-flung eastern and northern regions, including the increasingly strategically important Arctic.

Record temperatures and wildfires in Siberia this summer — following Russia’s mildest winter yet — were accompanied by a series of highly polluting incidents in the High North, including one of the worst oil spills ever seen in the rapidly warming region.

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Opinion: Mine cleanup plan is encouraging, but there’s still work to be done – by Cynthia Wallesz (Juneau Empire – September 7, 2020)

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Cynthia Wallesz is an Alaska seafood advocate who fishes commercially for salmon in Southeast Alaska.

Good news for the Taku River and for those, like myself, who sell and eat Southeast Alaska seafood.

Last month, the British Columbia government released a permanent closure and cleanup plan for its long-abandoned and polluting Tulsequah Chief mine. When releasing the plan, B.C. committed almost $1.6 million to start the process.

In tracking this issue for the last five years, I’ve learned that making strides in transboundary waters takes having prominent elected officials on your side.

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ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS MOUNT OVER USE OF NICKEL IN EVS – by Kieran Ahuja (Sunday Times Driving – September 7, 2020)

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OF COURSE, as something that has been widely touted as a more environmentally-friendly alternative to traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) cars, the green credentials of pure-electric vehicles have often been called into question.

A large amount of the conversation around this has revolved around the use of cobalt, which is used to aid conductivity and structural stability in lithium-ion batteries, enabling them to last for as long as they do.

However, production of cobalt is sometimes conducted in territories where a blind eye is turned to ethical mining practices, in places such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which produces around 60% of the world supply.

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Tesla’s nickel quest highlights metal’s environmental burden – by Henry Sanderson (Financial Times – September 1, 2020)

https://www.ft.com/

Waste linked to mining of key EV battery component threatens marine life

Elon Musk’s call for miners to dig more nickel for Tesla’s batteries faces its biggest test in Indonesia, where companies in the world’s top producing nation are planning to dump millions of tonnes of waste into the sea.

Mr Musk said on an earnings call last month that Tesla would give a “giant contract” to companies that could mine nickel “efficiently and in an environmentally sensitive way,” in response to a question about the biggest constraint on the electric car maker he runs.

The chief executive’s remarks reflect a growing anxiety in the electric car industry over supplies of the industrial metal, which is vital for boosting the range of electric car batteries. Demand for nickel, which is also used in stainless steel, is expected to increase six-fold by 2030.

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Venezuela Fuels Amazon Gold Rush With Petrodollars Drying Up – by Fabiola Zerpa (Bloomberg News – August 31, 2020)

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

(Bloomberg) — U.S. sanctions and a collapsing oil industry are prompting Venezuela to step up its push into gold mining, including in protected areas of the Amazon.

The amount of land used for mining has more than tripled since March last year, according to a study by local non-profit Wataniba. Activity is poised to accelerate further after the authorization in April of new lots in five rivers.

Venezuela already has a thriving illegal gold industry that devastates waterways, forests and indigenous communities and funds violent armed groups.

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With its mining boom past, Australia deals with the job of cleaning up – by Manuela Callari (Mongabay.com – August 20, 2020)

https://news.mongabay.com/

About 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Darwin and 14 km (9 mi) northeast of the town of Batchelor lies Woodcutters, an open-cut lead and zinc mine that shut in 1999. Here, at the top end of Australia, live the Kungarakay and the Warai peoples.

Not many Aboriginal people were employed at Woodcutters, nor were they involved in the rehabilitation and closure plan. At the end of operations, the company left 700 hectares (1,730 acres) of denuded land.

In Australia, the mining industry has had an essential role in the country’s economy for the past few decades. But as the mining boom dwindles, more plants are shutting down, leaving behind environmental disasters and social legacies.

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A dam big problem – by Warren Cornwall (Science Magazine – August 21, 2020)

https://science.sciencemag.org/

A string of catastrophic failures has raised alarm about dams meant to contain muddy mine wastes.

The dam, a 40-meter wall of rocks and dirt, gave way without warning, unleashing a torrent of mud. Within a day, some 21 million cubic meters of gray goo and water—the tailings waste left behind by 16 years of copper and gold mining at the Mount Polley mine in western Canada—escaped from a holding pond behind the dam, buried a creek, and poured into Quesnel Lake, home to one-third of British Columbia’s legendary Fraser River sockeye salmon.

The 2014 Mount Polley disaster shocked mining engineers around the world. Many considered Canada a leader in developing rules aimed at preventing the failure of such tailings dams, and respected the mine’s owner, Imperial Metals.

“That wasn’t supposed to be able to happen,” Jim Kuipers, an engineer and former tailings dam manager who now consults for environmental groups, recalls a colleague telling him.

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World-first mining standard must protect people and hold powerful companies to account – by Deanna Kemp, John Own and Nick Bainton (The Conversation – August 17, 2020)

https://theconversation.com/

This month, the first global standard to prevent mining catastrophes was released, following the tragic collapse of a tailings dam in Brazil last year which killed 270 people.

People living near or downstream from a mine deserve to know they’ll be safe. While the standard requires mining operators to act transparently, it’s being rolled out without independent oversight. And it’s not clear how communities – many of them vulnerable – will be supported to understand mining projects and their implications.

The standard comes at a time when public visibility of the mining industry is at a low. The COVID-19 pandemic has restricted movement globally, making it harder for outside experts, journalists, investors and regulators to monitor what’s happening on the ground.

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Legacy of Canada’s role in atomic bomb is felt by northern Indigenous community – by Geoffrey Bird (The Conversation – August 9, 2020)

https://theconversation.com/

Geoffrey Bird is Professor of heritage, culture, and tourism at Royal Roads University.

As the world marks the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a little known part of the legacy is the impact on the Délı̨nę First Nation of the Northwest Territories. I explore their stories in the film A Moral Awakening, which is available online.

This heritage connects Indigenous people, Canadians and people all over the world who are concerned with peace, reconciliation and social justice. The film contributes to understanding of the global impact of nuclear weapons and its contested history.

But the main goal of A Moral Awakening is to acknowledge the service and sacrifice of the people of Délı̨nę, a story long silenced.

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Life in Kyrgyzstan’s once-booming uranium mining town, where the past poisons the future – by Liza Premiyak (The Calvert Journal – August 10, 2020)

https://www.calvertjournal.com/

Mailuu-Suu is a small town in southern Kyrgyzstan, secretly built by the Soviets in the 1950s. The uranium extracted there from the surrounding mountains between 1946 and 1968 was reportedly used to create the first atomic bomb for the Soviet nuclear programme.

But improperly managed, the mines also heralded environmental catastrophe. In 1958, a dam failure caused nuclear waste to collapse into the area’s water system.

Even when operations were running smoothly, nuclear waste was often hastily disposed of close to the town. Much of it remains. Today, earthquakes and landslides pose an ever present threat to the town’s uranium dumps.

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Global Tailings Review launches new tailings management standard – by Matthew Parizot (CIM Magazine – August 6, 2020)

https://magazine.cim.org/en/

On August 6, the Global Tailings Review (GTR) launched its long-awaited Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management, created due to the tragic tailings dam failure at Vale’s Brazilian Córrego do Feijão iron mine in January 2019.

The GTR was originally co-convened in March of the same year and consists of three organizations – the United Nations Environment Programme, Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) and the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) – which combined will pressure governments, investors and mining companies to adopt the standard for themselves.

The standard also incorporated feedback from 340 extractive companies operating around the world through disclosures of their tailing facilities and methods.

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MINING WATCH NEWS RELEASE: Mine Waste Safety: New Global Industry Standard Will Not End Disasters (August 5, 2020)

https://miningwatch.ca/

TORONTO and NEW YORK and LONDON, Aug. 05, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — In response to the new Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (the Industry Standard) launched today, a group of scientists, community organizations, and non-governmental organizations say the Industry Standard does not go far enough to adequately protect workers, communities, and ecosystems from future mine waste failures.

Together with Earthworks and MiningWatch Canada, the group released a “Scorecard” comparing the Industry Standard to the 16 Safety First Guidelines. Those guidelines were launched in June by 142 scientists, community groups, and non-governmental organizations from 24 countries. The group concludes that over half (nine) of the 16 guidelines are not met, six are partially met, and only one is fulfilled (see also an assessment of B.C. regulations here).

Their analysis highlights that the Industry Standard is voluntary and mostly management-based, not performance-based, with no implementation or enforcement mechanisms, and no set of consequences or penalties if companies fail to meet the Standard.

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Barrick backs new global industry standard for mine tailings dams – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – July 5, 2020)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

North Shore miner Barrick Gold is endorsing a new international standard for managing current and future mine tailings facilities with the aim of preventing waste dam failures.

The Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management was born from a year-long review process by United Nations Environment Programme, Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) and the International Council on Mining and Minerals.

With more than 12,000 tailings storage facilities globally, the goal of the review was to establish a standard of the safer management of mine waste, by strengthening environmental, social, governance and technical practices of the mining industry across the entire lifecycle of these facilities.

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How microbes could help clean up Nova Scotia’s abandoned mines – by Emma Smith (CBC News Nova Scotia – August 6, 2020)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/

‘We want to develop a treatment that you would apply … that would block the arsenic and the mercury’

Researchers from three Maritime universities are hoping microbes collected from the bottom of a lake near an abandoned gold mine in Dartmouth, N.S., will provide a model for how to clean up contaminated sites across the province in a quicker and less-intrusive way.

Last May, a research team took a boat to the middle of Lake Charles, not far from the former Montague gold mine, where extensive mining took place from 1860 to about 1940.

They lowered a plastic tube 30 metres into the water and scooped up 200-year-old sediment, which provides a snapshot of the lake before, during and after the mine was in operation.

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Goal of tailings management should be zero harm – report (Mining.com – July 1, 2020)

https://www.mining.com/

An international group of 142 scientists, community groups and NGOs from 24 countries has published a set of 16 guidelines for the safer storage of mine waste.

The guidelines aim to protect communities, workers and the environment from the risks posed by thousands of mine waste storage facilities, which are failing more frequently and with more severe outcomes.

“Safety First: Guidelines for Responsible Mine Tailings Management” argues that the ultimate goal of tailings management must be zero harm to people and the environment and zero tolerance for human fatalities.

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