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Mining Environmental Accidents, Pollution, Tailing Dams and Abandoned Mines

COLUMN-Iron ore prices shift structurally higher on Vale woes – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.S. – April 2, 2019)

https://www.reuters.com/

HONG KONG, April 2 (Reuters) – Iron ore prices in China reached a record high on Tuesday as market participants wrestled two dilemmas, namely the likely temporary weather-related disruptions from Australia and the rather more serious safety outages in Brazil.

A major tropical cyclone hitting the main producing and shipping areas in the world’s largest iron ore miner was always likely to boost prices, and indeed, markets largely responded as expected.

Iron ore futures on the Dalian Commodity Exchange rose 4.2 percent on Tuesday to reach 665.5 yuan ($99) a tonne, the most since the contract starting trading in 2013.

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Who cleans up? No requirements to fix environmental impacts from mining: auditor – by Bob Weber (National Post – April 2, 2019)

https://nationalpost.com/

CANADIAN PRESS – Ottawa is keeping appropriate track of how Canada’s mining industry releases effluent into the country’s waterways, but nobody’s responsible for fixing problems when they are discovered, says the federal environment commissioner.

“When environmental effects were found, there was no requirement on anybody’s part to actually have to do anything,” Julie Gelfand said in an audit released Tuesday. “Nobody actually seems to have to deal with the issue.”

The audit found other gaps. Environment Canada didn’t have adequate information for about one-third of Canada’s metal mines. The department completed only two-thirds of its planned inspections for non-metals operations, such as coal or oilsands mines.

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Cleanup of Sudbury’s Long Lake could begin this summer – by Staff (Sudbury Star – April 2, 2019)

https://www.thesudburystar.com/

It appears the provincial government is about to act to clean the arsenic from a gold mine that operated more than a hundred years ago on Long Lake.

In a release, Nickel Belt MPP France Gelinas, said she received the good news in a letter from Greg Rickford, the minister of Energy, Northern Development and Mines. Long Lake is located in her riding.

“I have been in communication with (various) ministers asking for action on this dangerous situation,” Gelinas said. “This week I finally got some possible good news. In his response, the minister (Rickford) has confirmed that the clean up could, finally, begin this summer and continue into the autumn of 2022.”

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Canada failed at monitoring waste dumps from mining companies – by Carl Meyer (National Observer – April 2, 2019)

https://www.nationalobserver.com/

Canada’s federal environment and fisheries departments failed at monitoring unauthorized waste dumps by mining companies and did not always check if these firms were carrying out plans to save fish from lethal chemicals, Canada’s environment commissioner has found.

Julie Gelfand examined seven metal mine projects to figure out how Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) were fulfilling their duties to oversee the safe disposal and storage of the liquid sludge that comes from industrial chemicals used in mining to extract materials from crushed rock.

That process created a byproduct filled with harmful materials to fish like cyanide, zinc and selenium, which the industry calls “effluent.”

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Why mine closure matters and why it gets ignored – by Alisha Hiyate (Canadian Mining Journal – January 1, 2017)

http://www.canadianminingjournal.com/

Trends in mine closure from the Progressive Mine Forum

If you want to clear a room of miners, there are few better ways than to raise the topic of mine closure. At least, that’s sort of what happened at the Progressive Mine Forum in Toronto in late October.

The inaugural event, organized by The Northern Miner, was dedicated to discussing innovation in mining. After a day of roundtables discussing CSR, Big Data in exploration, and innovation in mine development, operations and finance, about half the audience got up and left when it came time for the final topic of the day – mine closure. (Watch the Mine Closure portion of the event.)

While mine closure may not be a sexy topic, it is an urgent one. “It’s the single most important thing that our industry does,” said Douglas Morrison, president and CEO of the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation.

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Q&A with CEMI’s Doug Morrison – by Alisha Hiyate (Canadian Mining Journal – October 1, 2017)

http://www.canadianminingjournal.com/

This October 2017 article and the above video presentation from the Northern Mine Forum 2017, sponsored by the Northern Miner are well worth a read and view in light of the horrific tailings dam tragedy in Brazil.

It also should spur both the Ontario and federal governments, as well as the entire Canadian mining sector, to put significant funding into CEMI with a mandate to focus on innovative tailings and mine closure management.

Considering that the mining sector’s social license to operate is being challenged in many jurisdictions in Canada and around the world, a “Mining Marshall Plan” commitment to tailings management, acid mine drainage, mine closure, water quality and other environmental impacts throughout the mining cycle is paramount if the industry and government is truely committed to sustainable green practices for the 21st century! – Stan Sudol

InnovationQ&A with CEMI’s Doug Morrison

has been the hot topic of the mining industry for several years now – but how much progress have we actually made? CMJ spoke with Douglas Morrison, president and CEO of the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI), to find out.

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Vale shares jump on iron prices despite losing certifications, asset freeze (Reuters U.S. – April 1, 2019)

https://www.reuters.com/

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazilian miner Vale SA said on Monday it failed to obtain stability certificates for 13 dams under review following the rupture of another dam in January that killed hundreds, although its shares rose on strong global iron ore prices.

The world’s largest iron ore miner also disclosed in a securities filing on Monday that a court had frozen an additional 1 billion reais ($258.42 million) in assets over potential damages related to the evacuation of its Vargem Grande dam.

Despite the disclosures, Vale shares jumped to their highest point since the Jan. 25 disaster, rising 3.6 percent to 52.79 reais.

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Brazil’s Vale slashes iron ore sales estimate after dam burst – by Marta Nogueira and Roberto Samora (Reuters U.S. – March 28, 2019)

https://www.reuters.com/

RIO DE JANEIRO/SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazilian miner Vale SA on Thursday estimated selling up to 75 million tonnes less iron ore this year, after several mines were halted following its second deadly dam burst in less than four years.

The estimate, which is 20 percent below its prior forecast, is the latest blow to Vale from the collapse at Brumadinho, which killed some 300 people and forced the world’s largest iron ore exporter to fire its chief executive officer earlier this month.

Chief Financial Officer Luciano Siani said in a call with analysts that under the most optimistic scenario, 2019 sales would decline about 50 million tonnes.

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Church of England Pensions Board joins UN to conduct mine tailing storage review – by Sunniva Kolostyak (Pensions Age – March 28, 2019)

https://www.pensionsage.com/

The Church of England Pensions Board and the AP Funds’ Ethics Council will represent the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) in a co-convened independent review of the standard of tailings storage facilities.

The review is launched together with The International Council on Mining & Metals (ICMM) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to establish an international standard on the facilities.

The initiative comes as a response to the recent tragedy in Brumadinho, Brazil, where over 200 people died and a further 100 are missing, after Vale S.A’s tailing dam collapsed in January.

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Mining group works with U.N., ethical investors to tackle tailings (Reuters U.S. – March 27, 2019)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – A group bringing together the world’s biggest listed miners on Wednesday said it was working with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and ethical investors to help agree a global standard for tailings dams.

The safety of dams used to store mining waste known as tailings became more high profile after the collapse of a Vale tailings dam in Brazil in January killed an estimated 300 people.

Vale and other major miners, including Rio Tinto, BHP and Glencore, are members of the industry body International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM), which met in London on Wednesday to debate tailings safety.

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Century-old silver mines are long gone. But tainted tailings are still polluting Park City. Now the feds are suing to clean up the Superfund site. – by Nate Carlisle (Salt Lake Tribune – March 26, 2019)

https://www.sltrib.com/

What are now world-class ski runs used to be profitable mountainsides where 19th-century miners dug silver out of the dirt and mud.

The materials left over from that mining and processing are called tailings, and a lot of them were dumped into Silver Creek — the stream that runs from the south side of Park City northeast to Wanship. The federal government has had plans to clean up the tailings and the poisonous chemicals that come with them.

The plan has stalled, partly because United Park City Mines Co. hasn’t followed through on a 2014 agreement to scrub the biggest tailings site and owes the federal government for work that has been done, according to a lawsuit filed Monday in federal court. The U.S. Department of Justice is asking a judge to order the mine company to pay what it owes and declare the company liable for future cleanup costs.

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Vale’s Sul Superior Dam in critical condition – by Valentina Ruiz Leotaud (Mining.com – March 23, 2019)

http://www.mining.com/

Brazilian mining giant Vale (NYSE:VALE) announced this weekend that the Sul Superior Dam at the Gongo Soco mine is in a critical condition when it comes to stability. This, following the work of an independent auditor, hired to evaluate the state of the structure.

The dam is located in the municipality of Barão de Cocais, in the southeastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. This is the same region where, back in January 2019, a dam at Vale’s Córrego do Feijão iron ore mine collapsed killing hundreds and causing massive environmental destruction.

With the idea of avoiding a similar tragedy, the company launched a protocol to initiate level 3 of the Mining Dams Emergency Action Plan for Sul Superior, which is inactive and is scheduled to be decommissioned together with other nine dams.

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COLUMN-Tug-of-war: China’s steel sector grapples short-term bulls, longer-term bears – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.S. – March 21, 2019)

https://www.reuters.com/

PERTH, March 21 (Reuters) – China’s steel sector, and the imported iron ore upon which it relies, are currently locked in a struggle between largely bearish longer-term structural factors and short-term cyclical influences, some of which are bullish.

It’s not unusual for an industry to grapple with competing narratives, but for China, which produces half the world’s steel and consumes two-thirds of seaborne iron ore, how the issues are resolved will have a flow-on effect through other parts of the economy, such as manufacturing, mining and construction.

The other impact of the tug-of-war of factors is likely to be volatility in prices as market participants try to reconcile the short-term drivers with the longer-term trends.

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Miner Vale quashed dam safety audit efforts before Brazil disaster: prosecutor (Reuters U.S. – March 20, 2019)

https://www.reuters.com/

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Executives at Vale SA, the world’s largest iron ore miner, quashed efforts by Brazilian authorities to audit one of the company’s mining dams months before it collapsed and killed over 300 people, a state prosecutor was quoted as saying by news website G1 on Wednesday.

William Garcia, a prosecutor in Minas Gerais where the January disaster occurred, told G1 his office had filed subpoenas with Vale last June to review safety documents regarding Vale’s dam.

But Vale’s lawyers responded in November arguing they had received positive reviews of the dam by an auditor the firm had hired, the German firm Tuv Sud, Garcia said.

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EDITORIAL: Peterborough’s Innovation Cluster exemplifies ties that bind Canada, Brazil – by Examiner Staff (Peterborough Examiner – March 20, 2019)

https://www.thepeterboroughexaminer.com/

Water purification technology born here is used to help disaster victims

Canada has a complicated history with Brazil. Much of our shared experience is written in the language of commerce and has been controversial to the point of bitterness. But those are big-picture issues.

Scale the focus down and, as often is the case, smaller relationships create space for support and compassion. Peterborough is now part of just such a story, a reminder that people with open minds and hearts can find ways to cross international boundaries.

This story began in January when a huge tailing pond dam at Brumadinho in south-west Brazil collapsed. A torrent of mud and waste water from an iron mine swept away an entire section of rural Brumadinho, population 40,000. At least 300 people died.

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