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Mining Environmental Accidents, Pollution, Tailing Dams and Abandoned Mines

The Goose-Killing Lake And The Scientists Who Study It – by Sarah Zhang (The Atlantic/Huffington Post – December 14, 2016)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

In late November, a flock of migrating snow geese landed in a lake in Butte, Montana. Soon, they began to die. Because what they landed in was the Berkeley Pit, a Superfund site filled with acidic and metal-laden toxic waste from copper mining. The lake was “white with birds;” thousands died. Weeks later, as the story has gone viral, officials are still counting.

The Berkeley Pit had killed migrating geese before. “It was a shock to hear it happening again, on a much larger scale,” says Andrea Stierle, who, along with her husband Don, has been studying the Berkeley Pit for more than three decades. In 1995, over 300 migrating geese landed in the pit and died from ingesting the toxic water.

The Stierles were chemists at nearby Montana Tech at the time, and they were in search of microbes living in the toxic waste water that could make antibiotics and other useful substances. That arrival of the first flock of geese changed the microbial makeup of the Berkeley Pit and likely the outcomes of Stierles’ research, too.

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Soviet Uranium Mines Still Have Deadly Impact in Kyrgyzstan – by Ryskeldi Satke (The Diplomat – December 13, 2016)

http://thediplomat.com/

MAILUU-SUU, Kyrgyzstan — The remote town of Mailuu Suu in South Kyrgyzstan is known for a Soviet legacy that still haunts the local population of more than 22,000.

Residents of Mailuu Suu commonly say that the very first Soviet atomic bomb was made out of locally extracted uranium in the late 1940s. The township is surrounded by uranium tailings and radioactive dumps that have been of greatest concern to the country’s neighbor, Uzbekistan, for decades.

The gravest dilemma for the Kyrgyz government is related to the frequent landslides in the areas along the river of Mailuu Suu where the Soviet government kept radioactive waste from the uranium mining. The glaciers of the southern Tian Shan feed this river, which flows directly to the neighboring republic of Uzbekistan in the Ferghana Valley.

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Thousands of snow geese die after landing in contaminated Montana mine pit – by Debbi Baker (San Diego Union Tribune – December 7, 2016)

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/

Thousands of snow geese died last week in Butte, Montana after a snowstorm forced them to land in contaminated water in an open pit at an old copper mine.

The site, called the Berkeley Pit, was the only open water in the area. Witnesses said it looked like “700 acres of white birds,” said Mark Thompson, environmental affairs manager for Montana Resources, which is responsible for the mine along with Atlantic Richfield Co.

According to The Montana Standard, mine officials estimated that as many as 10,000 of the migratory birds may have perished. Some were found dead or dying in and around town, including two in a Walmart parking lot.Thompson told the Associated Press that as many as 25,000 birds were flying through the area since Nov. 28, thousands more that the usual numbers of between 2,000 and 5,000 a year.

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Vale-BHP’s Samarco expects preliminary license in first quarter – by Marta Nogueira and Stephen Eisenhammer (Reuters U.S. – December 7, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

RIO DE JANEIRO/BRASILIA – Brazilian iron ore miner Samarco Mineracao expects to receive a preliminary environmental license in the first quarter, an important step in its effort to resume operations by mid-2017, Chief Executive Officer Roberto Carvalho said in an interview on Tuesday.

This would be the first of three environmental licenses needed by the company, which is jointly owned by Vale SA and BHP Billiton. Samarco’s operations were suspended in November 2015 after the collapse of a dam holding mining waste, or tailings, killed 19 people and caused Brazil’s worst environmental disaster.

“They are deep discussions, slow discussions, but they are advancing,” Carvalho said, referring to the process of getting the licenses approved by Semad, the environmental body for the state of Minas Gerais, where Samarco’s mine is located.

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Environment group takes De Beers Canada to court over mercury – by Nicole Mordant (Reuters Canada Reuters – December 6, 2016)

http://ca.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – An environmental group said on Tuesday it filed a lawsuit against De Beers Canada, accusing the diamond producer of failing to report toxic levels of mercury and methylmercury at its Victor diamond mine in northern Ontario.

The Wildlands League alleged that De Beers Canada failed to report mercury levels from five of nine surface water monitoring stations for the creeks next to its open pit mine between 2009 and 2016.

This was an offense under the Ontario Water Resources Act, the group said in a statement. It said it had alerted the province of Ontario and De Beers Canada to the failures more than 18 months ago.

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ICMM commits to new tailings dam measures – by Esmarie Swanepoel (MiningWeekly.com – December 6, 2016)

http://www.miningweekly.com/

PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) has adopted a range of new measures to manage tailing dams, following the Samarco disaster in 2015, which claimed the lives of 19 people in Brazil.

The ICMM in December last year launched a review of the global tailings management of its member companies, which include majors BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Newmont and South32.

The review report focused on surface tailings management across the ICMM membership, including a review of standards and governance. The review, which was published on Tuesday, concluded that an increased emphasis on governance was needed to ensure that extensive existing technical and management guidance was more effectively applied.

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Environmentalists allege De Beers failed to report on mercury in water – by Tanya Talaga (Toronto Star – December 6, 2016)

https://www.thestar.com/

A Canadian environmental group is taking DeBeers Canada to court, claiming the company failed to report toxic levels of mercury and methylmercury in the waters surrounding a northern Ontario diamond mine.

The Wildlands League, a chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, represented by Ecojustice lawyers, says De Beers has failed to consistently report the levels of methylmercury in the creeks surrounding the Victor Diamond Mine, located 90 kilometres west of Attawapiskat First Nation.

De Beers Group denies the allegations, saying, “To suggest that we have not been reporting per our legal requirements for seven years is grossly misleading. That is simply not true.”

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Vale slashes Sudbury nickel refinery emissions – by Norm Tollinsky (Sudbury Mining Solutions Journal – November 14, 2016)

http://www.sudburyminingsolutions.com/

$75 million project reduces metal particulate emissions by 90 per cent

Vale has announced the completion of a $75 million Nickel Refinery Emissions Reduction Project in Sudbury.

The largest investment and facility upgrade at the Copper Cliff nickel refinery since it was constructed in 1973 brings the company into compliance with new provincial and federal government standards for the emission of nickel and total suspended particulates.

The new provincial standard took effect July 1, 2016 and is based on an annual averaging period as opposed to the 24-hour averaging period of the previous standard.

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Kola Peninsula nickel giant promises to cut sulfur dioxide emissions in half – by Charles Digges (Bellona.org – November 21, 2016)

http://bellona.org/

MURMANSK –The notoriously polluting Kola Mining and Metallurgy Combine (KMMC) has said it plans to reduce annual emissions of sulfur dioxide by nearly half within two years, it’s parent company told Bellona.

A source of tension between Norway and Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, the KMMC – a daughter company of the giant Norilsk Nickel based in Northern Siberia – yearly emits some 80,000 tons of the heavy metal, much of which finds its way into northern Norway.

Norilsk Nickel itself announced last week that it would slash emissions in its hometown – the most polluted city in Russia – by as much as 75 percent by 2020. Yury Yushin, who heads the Norilsk Nickel’s department of cooperative programs told Bellona that the company intends to reduce its emissions to 44,000 tons a year by 2019. He didn’t, however, discuss any specifics behind the dramatic reduction.

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BHP Said to Seek Samarco Restructure as Vale Wants More Time – by R.T. Watson and David Stringer (Bloomberg News – November 15, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

BHP Billiton Ltd. is pushing to restructure debt at its Samarco venture as joint owner Vale SA prefers a grace period on payments until it secures licenses to resume mining, people familiar with the matter said.

While the owners have said they don’t intend to cover Samarco’s more than $3 billion in debt, they’re at odds over how the Brazilian iron miner should approach banks and bondholders after a year-long halt in output, the people said, asking not to be identified because talks are private. BHP’s preference for restructuring now would mean a haircut for creditors, the people said.

Samarco Mineracao SA, as the joint venture is formally known, has been shut since a tailings dam ruptured a year ago. The accident, described by the government as Brazil’s worst ever environmental disaster, killed as many as 19 people and polluted waterways in two states. The venture has already missed two bond coupon payments. Its bonds due 2022 are trading at about 35 cents on the dollar, down from 39 cents at the end of last month.

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Gold mining invades new areas of Peruvian Amazon – by Benji Jones (Mongabay.com – November 11, 2016) Environmental Headlines

Illegal gold mining in Peru – once restricted to the southern states – is now spreading across new territory in the northern and central Peruvian Amazon. In a report released earlier this month, Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) revealed three new “frontiers” of gold mining in the departments of Amazonas and Huánuco – regions that boast exceptional biological and cultural diversity.

Across the frontiers, MAAP detected 32 hectares of mining deforestation – an area equivalent to about 42 soccer fields. These mining scars are fresh, and relatively small, indicating that a larger-scale deforestation event can still be prevented.

“Deforestation in these cases is still in its early stages, so there is still time to avoid larger-scale damage, as in the case of [the southern region of] Madre de Dios,” the report states.

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Green dreams: Duterte and the Philippine mining industry – by by Robert Veldhuizen (Global Risk Insights – November 7, 2016)

Throughout its history, the Philippine mining industry has been defined by its diverse set of political risks relating to governance, inequality, elitism, foreign export and absent contribution towards the country’s overall economic growth. President Duterte’s nomination spells a radically different future for the industry; unprecedented opportunities may lie ahead for foreign investors, however they are not without risk.

Pervading problems

Since the 1500s, mining has played a critical part in the economic development of the Philippines. Despite the abundance of chromite, copper, gold and nickel deposits, the industry has been marred, since the 1980s, by issues of volatility, and defined to a realm of ‘potential’—rather than direct opportunity.

Issues that have and continue to plague the industry range from matters of foreign ownership, corruption, obdurate and unforced regulatory laws, environmental incidents, murky issues of land rights, militant attacks, as well as disastrous weather conditions.

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BHP Billiton one year on from the Samarco Fundão dam disaster – by Peter Ker (Australian Financial Review – November 2, 2016)

http://www.afr.com/

Andrew Mackenzie was rushing towards South America when he took a call from an old friend. A dam failure had killed scores of people at a BHP site in Brazil just days earlier, and there was little time for social calls.

But the BHP chief executive made an exception for Tony Hayward’s call. The two men had been friends for more than two decades, having spent a significant part of their careers at BP, where Hayward was the much-maligned chief executive who wished he could “get his life back” during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Upon hearing of the dam collapse at BHP and Vale’s Samarco iron ore business, Hayward felt there were messages his friend had to hear. Mackenzie had already won plaudits for fronting the media in Melbourne within 12 hours of the dam spill on November 6, 2015, despite confusion reigning at the time amid the darkness of night in Brazil.

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Vale cuts waste storage spending after disaster at BHP joint venture – by Paul Kiernan (The Australian/Dow Jones – November 1, 2016)

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/

Brazilian mining giant Vale SA has slashed spending on waste storage even after a catastrophic dam failure at its Samarco joint venture with BHP Billiton last November killed 19 people and triggered tens of billions of dollars in lawsuits.

Vale, the world’s largest producer of iron ore and nickel, reduced maintenance capital expenditures on waste dumps and tailings dams by 51 per cent in the first nine months of 2016 from the year-ago period to $US86.7 million, according to its financial statements. That followed similarly large cuts in 2014 and 2015 as Vale doubled down on belt-tightening measures in a bid to shore up cash reserves and pay down debt amid the commodity downturn.

In an emailed statement, Vale said its 2014 spending was elevated in part by the construction of a large tailings dam at its Brucutu mine in Brazil, while subsequent investment in new dams was slowed by licensing delays. Vale also said it has been shifting to high-grade ore that can be processed without water and therefore doesn’t require tailings dams, though it uses this method for only 40 per cent of iron-ore output at present.

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Is Yellowknife ready to reckon with its toxic legacy? – by Richard Gleeson (CBC North News – October 23, 2016)

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

Gold smelters emitted 19,000 tonnes of arsenic during half-century of mining

Winter is returning to the subarctic city of Yellowknife, bringing its snow and ice, the only barriers between people and a toxic legacy of the city’s gold mining history. During more than half a century of mining, 19,000 tonnes of arsenic trioxide dust went up the stacks of smelters at the Giant and Con mines and settled on the once-pristine land and lakes in and around Yellowknife.

One teaspoon of that dust is enough to kill an adult. Though recent scientific research shows that much of the arsenic that went up the stacks is still in the water, sediment and soil, officials and governments have yet to reckon fully with the environmental and human risks.

Due to concerns about arsenic and sewage, since 1968 the city has been drawing its drinking water through an eight-kilometre underwater pipe to the Yellowknife River, upstream of the mines and away from the arsenic fallout.

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