Twitter

Mining Environmental Accidents, Pollution, Tailing Dams and Abandoned Mines

Cleanup for pollution from Teck coal mines will top $6.4-billion, assessment claims – by Wendy Stueck (Globe and Mail – March 19, 2024)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

It will cost at least $6.4-billion to tackle selenium contamination from Teck Resources Ltd.’s Elk Valley coal mines, according to a new report – far exceeding a $1.9-billion security bond required by the B.C. government to cover cleanup costs.

The report, commissioned by environmental group Wildsight, bases its price tag on calculations of what it would cost to implement Vancouver-based Teck’s current plan of building water treatment plants through to 2027 and then running them for 60 years.

Read more

Gold mine with history of contaminating B.C. creek fined $276K – by Betsy Trumpener (CBC News British Columbia – March 15, 2024)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/

Barkerville Gold Mines’ penalty reduced in part because of COVID restrictions on business: report

A gold mining company that discharged contaminants into a B.C. creek more than a thousand times since 2017 has now been fined over $275,000 for its most recent violations of environmental rules, according to a March 2024 report from the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy.

Barkerville Gold Mines, owned by Osisko Development since 2019, operates two gold mines and a processing mill east of Quesnel, B.C., in the mountainous Cariboo region about 440 kilometres north of Vancouver. The environmental violations took place at its underground Bonanza Ledge gold mine.

Read more

Remediation project at Long Lake gold mine expected to finally begin to clean up arsenic tailings – by Angela Gemmill (CTV News Northern Ontario – March 13, 2024)

https://northernontario.ctvnews.ca/

An environmental cleanup project is expected to finally get going in Sudbury this year. It was in 2015 when arsenic was discovered in an old gold mine site near the extreme western part of Long Lake, but several delays prevented the project from moving forward until now.

The two tailings ponds above the glory hole are what will be remediated. “What they’re doing is scraping all of the tailings together and putting them together into a compound,” chair of the Long Lake Stewardship Committee, Scott Darling explained.

Read more

B.C.’s multimillion-dollar mining problem – by Francesca Fionda, Jeffery Jones and Chen Wang (Globe and Mail/The Narwhal – February 24, 2024)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

The true cost of cleaning up mine pollution in B.C. is growing, a Globe and Mail-Narwhal investigation has found – and if disaster strikes, taxpayers could be stuck with an even bigger bill

When John Morris Sr. is asked where the sacred sites on the Taku River are, his answer comes easily. “This whole place is sacred,” the 84-year-old Elder says. In the spring, all five species of North American salmon fight the current to spawn. In the summer, bright orange salmon berries speckle the landscape.

Mr. Morris, a member of the Douglas Indian Association in southeast Alaska, said his grandparents, aunt, uncle and parents always reminded him that everything they needed was provided by the land there.

Read more

First Nation warns of ‘ecocide’ as spring melt poses risk to tailings pond at Yukon mine site – by Julien Gignac (CBC News North – February 16, 2024)

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

Calling it an impending crisis, the Little Salmon Carmacks First Nation says problems have been in plain sight

The Little Salmon Carmacks First Nation is warning spring melt could cause the tailings dam at the abandoned Mount Nansen mine in central Yukon to overflow or breach, and send a toxic slurry into the environment. The company managing the site, however, says a dam breach is unlikely — though it could be at risk of overflowing.

Little Salmon Carmacks Chief Nicole Tom calls it an emergency, and compared it to the 2014 Mount Polley mine disaster in B.C. that saw roughly 25 million cubic metres of water and tailings effluent flow into surrounding waterways. It was the largest tailings spill in Canadian history.

Read more

Quebec opposition attacks the CAQ on copper smelting plant’s future (Canadian Press/CTV News Montreal – February 14, 2024)

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/

Opposition parties in Quebec City are urging the government to react to reports that Glencore is considering closing the Horne smelter if investments to meet air quality targets are too high.

Horne smelter issue in Rouyn-Noranda is once again taking a political turn after Radio-Canada revealed that Glencore’s board of directors was due to meet shortly to decide on the smelter’s future, despite the fact that the estimated cost of reducing arsenic emissions has risen by 50 per cent.

Read more

Billions of litres of water are used yearly by Quebec’s mining and metal industry, data reveals – by Jaela Bernstien and Naël Shiab (CBC News Climate – February 2, 2024)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/climate/

Advocates hope more transparency will help towns struggling with water shortages

Quebec has lifted the veil of secrecy around the province’s biggest water users, revealing that billions of litres of water are withdrawn yearly by the mining and metal industry, along with pulp and paper manufacturing.

The data dump, which includes records going back a decade, also lists golf clubs, ski hills, water bottling plants and food processors among the companies that are withdrawing tens of millions — sometimes hundreds of millions — of litres in a year.

Read more

Third Mine Disaster in a Decade Tests ESG Boundaries in Brazil – by Vinícius Andrade, Giovanna Bellotti Azevedo and Mariana Durao (Bloomberg News – January 29, 2024)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — Investors were swift to dump debt of Braskem SA after the Brazilian petrochemicals maker’s salt mine partially collapsed in December — a situation that has forced tens of thousands to evacuate the city of Maceio since 2019.

The selloff lasted less than a month before the prices recovered. It was a rebound reminiscent of what happened in the wake of Samarco’s tailings dam collapse in 2015 and the rupture of a Vale SA dam in Brumadinho that killed 270 people in 2019: Any punishment levied by the debt markets was short lived.

Read more

Mining giants told to pay $9.7bn over Brazil dam disaster – by Peter Hoskins (BBC.com – January 26, 2024)

https://www.bbc.com/news/

A federal judge in Brazil has ordered mining giants BHP, Vale and their Samarco iron ore joint venture to pay 47.6bn reais ($9.67bn) in damages over a deadly dam burst in 2015.

The collapse of the Fundão dam in the south-east of the country caused a giant mudslide that killed 19 people. It also severely polluted the Rio Doce river, compromising the waterway to its outlet in the Atlantic Ocean. It was not immediately clear how much each company is required to pay.

Read more

Report outlines cost of Indonesia’s EV dream as Chinese-funded nickel plants linked to pollution, ‘land grabbing’ – by Resty Woro Yuniar (South China Morning Post – January 17, 2024)

https://www.scmp.com/

A new report accuses a massive China-funded nickel industrial complex in Indonesia’s Maluku province of causing “significant” environmental destruction and existential threats to indigenous peoples in the area, adding to the array of issues the nation faces in becoming a major player in the global electric vehicle (EV) supply chain.

Released on Wednesday by the US-based Climate Rights International (CRI) advocacy group, the report also alleges that the Indonesia Weda Bay Industrial Park (IWIP) in Halmahera, Maluku, worked with Indonesian police to protect the interests of some nickel miners by engaging in “land grabbing, coercion and intimidation of indigenous peoples”.

Read more

How did Vale tailings dam burst and kills hundreds? – by Valentina Ruiz Leotaud (Northern Miner – January 17, 2024)

https://www.northernminer.com/

Construction details in the tailings dam at Vale’s (NYSE: VALE) Corrego do Feijao iron ore mine in Brazil may have caused the burst that killed at least 270 people when 10 million cubic metres of sludge destroyed neighbouring settlements and took out a railway bridge, according to Swiss researchers.

Why the dam broke in 2019 specifically – three years after the pond was last loaded with new tailings – and why no significant displacements had been detected before the collapse, is the focus of a new paper by scientists at the university ETH Zurich.

Read more

Nevada has the most abandoned mines in the nation. Why is it taking so long to seal them? – by Amy Alonzo (Nevada Independent – January 4, 2024)

https://thenevadaindependent.com/

The state needs hundreds of millions of dollars to seal roughly 50,000 hazardous, abandoned mines. At current funding levels, it will take another century.

Rob Ghiglieri pauses his walk across a dusty hillside on the outskirts of Virginia City to look at a tangled web of footprints weaving in circles around the ruins of the abandoned Forman Shaft. Once a massive, seven-story-tall structure, it boasted some of the deepest shafts in the West. Decades later, the shaft remained an accessible open pit plunging hundreds of feet into the ground.

The Forman Shaft has since been closed off — visitors can still drive to the site and wander around, but the entrance has been covered by a massive steel grate. Ghiglieri, administrator of the Nevada Division of Minerals, said he still worries when he sees so many footprints around old mine sites.

Read more

Hunger for gold means the Amazon has reached ‘tipping point’ of mercury contamination from illegal mining – by Maya Fernandez (CBC News World – December 28, 2023)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/

Illegal gold mining in the Amazon has intensified, with one expert calling it a ‘transnational crime’

The rising value of gold worldwide has amplified illegal mining in the Amazon, where liquid mercury is being dumped in the Amazon River and causing scientists to warn that Indigenous communities and the environment could pay a far greater price.

Three weeks ago, Colombia, Brazil and the United States partnered up to destroy 19 illegal gold mining dredges in the Amazon Rainforest. According to Reuters, the dredges were producing about $1.9 million Cdn in gold.

Read more

How to detox coal country – by Kate Morgan (Vox.com – December 11, 2023)

https://www.vox.com/

To clean up poisoned streams, Appalachian researchers are turning acid mine drainage into something unexpected.

The most striking thing about the water tumbling out of the ground behind a small cluster of houses in southeastern Ohio isn’t the smell — a sharp, unmistakable sulfur. It’s also not the color, a vibrant red-orange. The weirdest thing about the Truetown Discharge is the silence.

Just before dark on a warm autumn night, there should be a cacophony of crickets and cicadas in the tall grass along the water. Frogs should be singing and splashing into the shallows. Bats should be circling, owls calling, small mammals and salamanders skittering in the leaves.

Read more

Navajo Nation faces possible new threats after decades of uranium mining – by Kate Holland and Tenzin Shakya (ABC News – December 7, 2023)

https://abcnews.go.com/

A Canadian company is working to move forward with uranium extraction.

Just miles from the site of the 1979 Church Rock Mill spill, the largest nuclear disaster in American history, uranium extraction operations could resume near the Navajo Nation. Now, Navajo leaders say the health and prosperity of their community could be in even further jeopardy.

A Canadian company is working to move forward with uranium extraction, an industry that has a lengthy history around the Navajo Nation. “The pursuit of happiness for us is to be able to live in our communities without fear from the impact of radiation and uranium,” said Teracita Keyanna, who grew up near an abandoned uranium mine in New Mexico. “It’s been really scary, just being a mom in this area.”

Read more