Mining Environmental Accidents, Pollution, Tailing Dams and Abandoned Mines – Page 21

Vale misled public on dangerous dams, prompting Brazil probe: source – by Marta Nogueira, Jake Spring and Christian Plumb (Reuters Canada – September 17, 2019)

September 17, 2019

https://ca.reuters.com/

RIO DE JANEIRO/BRASILIA/SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Faced with public outrage after its second mining dam collapse in four years killed at least 240 people in Brazil, Vale SA misrepresented what it had done to shut down its riskiest dams, a review of the company’s statements shows.

Fabio Schvartsman, Vale’s then-chief executive, said at a nationally broadcast news conference days after the dam burst in late January that the company had already decommissioned nine “upstream dams” in the wake of a 2015 disaster involving the same type of structure, and planned to dismantle 10 more over the next few years. The company repeated the claim in a statement on its website.

Reuters asked Vale for details on these moves on February 5, seven days after Schvartsman’s news conference. In March, some five weeks later, Vale gave Reuters a list of nine dams that it said it had closed since 2014, a year before the Mariana disaster.

Global mining panel looks to boost accountability after Brazil disaster – by Christian Plumb (Reuters U.S. – September 11, 2019)

September 12, 2019

https://www.reuters.com/

BELO HORIZONTE, Brazil (Reuters) – New safety standards being drawn up by a global mining industry panel will include rules to better define management accountability after Vale SA’s (VALE3.SA) January tailings dam disaster, a top industry official said on Wednesday.

The governance standards would help ensure independent reviews of dams and adequate disclosure of risks, said Tom Butler, president of the International Council on Mining and Metals.

“The engineers know what they’re doing with these things but the implementation and the management and the change management, that all involves humans,” Butler told Reuters in an interview in Brazil.

Papua New Guinea may shut Chinese-owned nickel plant after spill – by Melanie Burton (Reuters U.S. – August 29, 2019)

August 30, 2019

https://www.reuters.com/

MELBOURNE (Reuters) – A nickel processing plant owned by Metallurgical Corp of China (MCC) that spilled mine waste into Papua New Guinea’s Basamuk Bay faces compensation claims and possibly closure, the head of the country’s minerals authority said on Thursday.

MCC’s Ramu nickel plant located in Madang, on the country’s northeastern coast, spilled waste into the bay over the weekend which caused the surrounding ocean to turn red and left a muddy residue on the rocky shoreline, according to locals and photographs of the incident.

The spillage occurred when a plant operator did not notice a pump failure during a maintenance shutdown, causing a tank to overflow and mining waste to disperse into the ocean, Jerry Garry, managing director of PNG’s Mineral Resources Authority (MRA) said.

Chinese-owned nickel plant spills waste into Papua New Guinea bay – by Melanie Burton and Tom Daly (Reuters U.S. – August 28, 2019)

August 30, 2019

https://www.reuters.com/

MELBOURNE/BEIJING (Reuters) – Waste from a nickel plant in Papua New Guinea owned by Metallurgical Corporation of China spilled into the adjacent Basamuk Bay over the weekend, three sources told Reuters on Wednesday.

Locals noticed red discharge clouding parts of the bay that is next to the Ramu Nickel plant in Madang, Papua New Guinea, a local indigenous person who took photographs of the spillage told Reuters. The man declined to be identified because of the topic’s sensitivity.

The head of Papua New Guinea’s Mineral Resources Authority (MRA) said that its officials, as well as those from PNG’s Conservation and Environment Protection Authority (CEPA), had put together a preliminary report on the incident.

Amazon Gold and Army Suspicion Fuel Bolsonaro’s Rainforest Rage – by Simone Preissler Iglesias and Bruce Douglas (Bloomberg News – August 28, 2019)

August 29, 2019

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Among the tens of thousands of Brazilians who descended on the Amazonian goldmine of Serra Pelada in the 1980s was Percy Geraldo Bolsonaro, father of the current president, Jair Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro senior was among the wildcat miners who endured brutal working conditions in the quest for riches. The rainforest suffered too, with widespread environmental degradation as miners ripped apart the Amazon in their desperate hunt for gold.

It’s an aspect of Brazil’s national psyche that resonates deeply with the president. “Gold mining is a vice; it’s in the blood,” he told miners from the region in a video posted to YouTube in July 2018. “We owe all we have to people with spirits like yours.”

Imperial Metals seeks to present evidence before decision on potential Mt. Polley environmental prosecution – by Gordon Hoekstra (Vancouver Sun – August 26, 2019)

August 27, 2019

https://vancouversun.com/

Imperial Metals wants evidence from a trial on the responsibility for the Mount Polley mine dam failure to be considered in a prosecutorial decision by Canada against the company for potential environmental damage charges relating to the breach.

In a petition filed in B.C. Supreme Court on Aug. 19, Imperial Metals says the evidence of former-British Columbia chief inspector of mines Al Hoffman is of “fundamental importance” to establishing whether there is any reasonable prospect of securing a conviction against the company under the federal Fisheries Act, and whether it is in the public interest to launch such a prosecution.

The mining company has asked for the court’s permission to use Hoffman’s evidence and related B.C. government responses collected during the discovery stage, information normally only to be used in the lawsuit for which it is gathered.

TÜV SÜD pulls out of dam safety checks after Brazil disaster – by Alexander Hübner (Reuters U.S. – August 19, 2019)

August 20, 2019

https://www.reuters.com/

MUNICH (Reuters) – Germany’s TÜV SÜD has pulled out of conducting safety assessments of dams after the collapse of a Brazilian dam it had vetted killed almost 250 people in January, the industrial inspection firm’s chief executive told Reuters.

The collapse of the tailings dam, which was operated by Brazilian mining company Vale SA, flooded the town of Brumadinho with mining waste water only four months after TÜV SÜD had vouched for the safety of the structure.

“So far nobody knows the cause of the accident. And we do not know in particular what happened between September 2018 and January 2019 – if, for example, heavy equipment was being operated nearby or if there had been detonations,” Axel Stepken said in an interview.

NEWS RELEASE: New program to clean up largest abandoned mines in the Yukon and the Northwest Territories (August 19, 2019)

August 20, 2019

YELLOWKNIFE, Aug. 19, 2019 /CNW/ – Canada is moving forward with a long-term plan to clean up contaminated sites in the North.

Today, the Honourable Carolyn Bennett, Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, announced that the Government’s new Northern Abandoned Mine Reclamation Program will invest $2.2 billion over 15 years to address remediation of the eight largest abandoned mine projects in the Yukon and the Northwest Territories.

These projects are the Faro, United Keno Hill, Mount Nansen, Ketza River, and Clinton Creek mines in the Yukon; and the Giant, Cantung, and Great Bear Lake mines in the Northwest Territories. The Great Bear Lake project consists of multiple smaller sites in close proximity to each other.

The new program will leverage expertise gained over 15 years of managing human and environmental health and safety risks at contaminated sites in the North and allow for longer-term tenders for work at the sites, providing greater certainty for impacted communities and economic opportunity for Indigenous people and Northerners.

Russia’s Norilsk and S.African coal town Kriel top SO2 emissions hot spots -NASA data (CNBC.com – August 19, 2019)

August 20, 2019

https://www.cnbc.com/

JOHANNESBURG, Aug 19 (Reuters) – Russia’s Norilsk smelter complex and a town in South Africa’s eastern coal mining province have the highest sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions in the world, according to satellite data from U.S. space agency NASA.

The NASA-compiled data published on Monday was commissioned by environmental group Greenpeace India and used the space authority’s satellites to track anthropogenic sulphur dioxide emission hot spots around the world.

Scientists say that excessive exposure to SO2 particles causes long-term respiratory difficulties and stunted growth in infants among other problems.

4 Investigates: Abandoned uranium mines continue to threaten the Navajo Nation – by Colton Shone (KOB.com – August 19, 2019)

August 20, 2019

https://www.kob.com/

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — There are hundreds of abandoned uranium mines scattered across the Navajo Nation.

The clean-up process has been slow for those who live right in the heart of them. For many, it’s been a decades-long fight for the removal of “hot dirt” and there’s still no real end in sight. Red Water Pond Road Community Association is home for Edith Hood. She and her family have lived there, a few miles east of Gallup, for generations.

“We had a medicine man living across the way,” she said. It’s a remote village on Navajo land surrounded by beauty and radioactive waste. There is tons of “hot dirt” left behind from the nearby abandoned Northeast Churchrock Uranium Mine and the abandoned Kerr-Mcgee Uranium Mine Complex.

Gold rush-era rules to stop mining pollution are still in use – but they’re failing – by Susan Lawrence and Peter Davies (The Conversation – August 14, 2019)

August 14, 2019

https://theconversation.com/

Bento Rodrigues, Brazil, 6 November 2015

Wet, orange mud covers everything: streets, houses, cars, animals, trees, fields. The violent force of a torrent of mud has overturned cars and left them hovering on top of buildings. It has torn the roofs off houses and pushed over their walls.

The view of the town from helicopters flying above reveals a desolate landscape: sludge-caked animals struggle to free themselves, and rescue teams search desperately for survivors. Mud dyes the river orange for hundreds of kilometres downstream, and two weeks later it will flow out into the Atlantic in an expanding orange stain.

This devastation is the result of the catastrophic failure of a tailings dam: a vast settling pond built to store the muddy waste from Samarco’s Germano iron ore mine.

A dam collapse in Brazil has some worried about PolyMet’s plans. Why the DNR says it won’t happen here – by Walker Orenstein (MinnPost.com – August 13, 2019)

August 14, 2019

https://www.minnpost.com/

In January, the tailings dam at a Brazilian iron ore mine collapsed, killing nearly 250 people. The wave of toxic waste and mud also wrecked two dozen buildings and polluted water for five miles.

In Minnesota, the disaster raised eyebrows among opponents of a copper-nickel mine planned near Hoyt Lakes. That’s because the design of the dam in Brumadinho was similar to one PolyMet Mining hopes to build. In fact, the Vale mining company had used a method to judge dam safety created by a PolyMet adviser.

And the tragedy in Brazil embodied the worst fears of some Minnesota environmental activists and the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, who warn PolyMet could pollute the St. Louis River.

Sierra Leone community’s suit against diamond miner shows activist trend – by Cooper Inveen (Reuters U.S. – August 6, 2019)

August 6, 2019

https://www.reuters.com/

FREETOWN, August 6 (Reuters) – At the foot of a slag heap some 40 meters high, Adi Kalie Bangura showed the black welts that dot his arms and legs that he says are the result of drinking and bathing in water contaminated by Sierra Leone’s largest diamond mine.

The water “makes us get headaches and feel sick in our stomachs,” said Bangura, a traditional healer and community elder in Koidu, the largest city in the West African country’s diamond-rich Kono district. The aluminium roof of the mud brick house he shares with a dozen family members is pockmarked by holes he says are the result of rocks loosened by years of blasting by the mine.

Bangura’s claims are part of those made by a group of Koidu residents in a lawsuit against diamond mining firm Octea Limited and related companies, highlighting how communities in developing countries are becoming increasingly emboldened to use courts to pursue grievances against mining firms.

Mount Polley mine disaster five years later; emotions, accountability unresolved – by Dirk Meissner (Canadian Press/CTV News – August 4, 2019)

August 6, 2019

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/

VICTORIA – People are swimming and fishing in Quesnel Lake five years after the largest environmental mining disaster in Canadian history, but residents of Likely, B.C., are still struggling with unresolved emotions about what happened and who will be held accountable for the dam collapse at the Mount Polley mine.

A five-year deadline for federal Fisheries Act charges expired Sunday, while the possibility of other charges under the same act remains with no timeline for a decision. British Columbia missed the three-year deadline to proceed with charges under both the province’s Environmental Management Act and Mines Act.

Likely resident Lisa Kraus said the central B.C. community of about 350 people remains wounded, concerned and somewhat divided about the tailings dam breach at the Imperial Metals open-pit copper and gold mine.

Murkowski, Sullivan urge action on mine cleanup – by Peter Segall (Juneau Empire – August 5, 2019)

August 6, 2019

Juneau Empire

Alaska’s Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, both Republicans, on Monday hosted a number of state and federal agencies, local organizations and commissioners of the U.S.-Canada International Joint Commission for a round-table discussion of transboundary mining.

Among the organizations present were the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, Salmon Beyond Borders, Council of Alaska Producers, Alaska Miners Association and United Fishermen of Alaska.

Government organizations present were the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Forest Service, Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Alaska Department of Fish and Game and Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.