Twitter

Mining Environmental Accidents, Pollution, Tailing Dams and Abandoned Mines

Task force commissioned by mining industry recommends tighter dam oversight – by Gordon Hoekstra (Vancouver Sun – December 8, 2015)

http://www.vancouversun.com/

The Mining Association of Canada says it will implement beefed up oversight of earth-and-rock dams that hold back mining waste as recommended in an independent report it commissioned after the Mount Polley mine dam failure last year.

That means its members — which include some of B.C.’s largest mining companies — will have to have independent reviews of all stages of dam development, from site investigation and selection to design, operation and closure.

The 29 recommendations released in the report on Tuesday also call for more transparency and communication with communities on safety risks and monitoring. It also calls for high-risk closed mine facilities to be part of the industry association’s oversight program.

Read more

Brazil sues BHP, Vale for $5 billion in damages for mine disaster – by Anthony Boadle (Reuters U.S. – November 30, 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/

BRASILIA – Brazil filed a lawsuit on Monday against two of the world’s largest mining companies for 20 billion Brazilian reais ($5.2 billion) to clean up what it says was its worst environmental disaster, caused by the collapse of a tailings dam.

The governments of Brazil and those of two states hit by the damburst sued iron ore operator Samarco and its co-owners, the world’s largest miner BHP Billiton Ltd and the biggest iron ore miner Vale SA.

Earlier on Monday, President Dilma Rousseff blamed the disaster on the “irresponsible action of a company” in a speech to the COP21 climate change summit in Paris. “We are severely punishing those responsible for this tragedy,” she said.

Read more

Brazil to File $5.3 Billion Suit Against Dam Owners – by Paul Kiernan (Wall Street Journal – November 27, 2015)

http://www.wsj.com/

RIO DE JANEIRO—Brazil’s government said it is preparing to sue mining giants Vale SA, BHP Billiton Ltd. and their joint venture Samarco Mineração SA in response to a catastrophic dam failure earlier this month, as Vale acknowledged the presence of toxic elements in a river downstream for the first time.

The civil suit demanding damages of 20 billion Brazilian reais ($5.3 billion) is expected to be filed on Monday, the Attorney General’s office said on Friday in a news release. The proceeds are intended to create a fund to help recovery efforts in the Rio Doce, a major river that was contaminated with mud and toxic mining waste in the wake of the Nov. 5 collapse of Samarco’s dam in Minas Gerais.

As many as 13 people were killed and hundreds displaced as the mud swallowed up entire villages below the dam. An additional 11 are missing.

Read more

BHP battered by UN’s claims of toxic tailings – by Barry Fitzgerald and Matt Chambers (The Australian – November 28, 2015)

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

If there was a saving grace to the tailings dam collapse at BHP Billiton’s half-owned Germano mine in the mountains of Brazil’s Minas Gerais state, it was that the iron ore waste which has since found its way to the Atlantic Ocean some 600km away was not toxic.

That was the accepted truth from BHP and Brazil’s Vale, BHP’s equal partner in the mine, and the mine’s operating company Samarco. After all, BHP managing director Andrew Mackenzie had seemed to say so, and he’s one of the great geoscientists of the modern era. Last year he became a fellow of the world’s premier scientific club, London’s Royal Society. Past fellows have included Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton.

So when Mackenzie said that the tailings material that hurtled down the valley floor after the tailings dam was breached on November 5 was “relatively inert’’, there was relief all around.

Read more

Mud from Brazil dam burst is toxic, U.N. says – by Stephen Eisenhammer and Sonali Paul (Reuters U.S. – November 26, 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/

RIO DE JANEIRO – Mud from a dam that burst at an iron ore mine in Brazil earlier this month, killing 12 people and polluting an important river, is toxic, the United Nations’ human rights agency said on Wednesday.

The statement contradicts claims by Samarco, the mine operator at the site of the rupture, and Samarco’s co-owner, BHP Billiton (BHP.AX)(BLT.L), that the water and mineral waste contained by the dam are not toxic.

Citing “new evidence,” the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement the residue “contained high levels of toxic heavy metals and other toxic chemicals”.

Read more

Tailings Dams and Due Diligence – Questions for the Board, shareholders and potential investors – by Steve Mackowski (InvestorIntel.com – November 24, 2015)

http://investorintel.com/

A large tailings dam has burst. Its contents; millions of tonnes of sludge, a muddy deluge, have spewed forth and destroyed a local village with tragic loss of life.

The tidal wave of man-made misery and despair continues seemingly unstoppable contaminating water ways, destroying the ecology so necessary to the local indigenous people, polluting water sources, on its way downstream.

What is the overall impact to the local environment? What is the sociological loss? What is the cost of remediation? What is the consequent legal cost? What is the loss of reputation cost?

Read more

Editorial: Bill would push mining jobs to other countries – by Albuquerque Journal Editorial Board (Albuquerque Journal – November 22nd, 2015)

http://www.abqjournal.com/

U.S. Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich are digging into familiar territory with a proposal to reform the General Mining Act of 1872, which governs mining on federal lands. But the New Mexico Democrats’ plan to charge royalties on new mines to help fund the cleanup of thousands of old ones gives those mining companies, other extractive industries and the public the shaft.

The problems of using a 143-year-old law to regulate an industry with a historically checkered environmental responsibility record are well known.

From Gov. Bill Richardson in 2008 to U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman in 2009, New Mexico politicians have tried to come up with new rules that would balance taxpayers’ interests, environmental concerns and the economic importance of mining to New Mexico and to the United States.

Read more

Rio Tinto’s fight with Vale over massive iron ore mine falls at first hurdle – by Matthew Stevens (Australian Financial Review – November 23, 2015)

http://www.afr.com/

How apt that a failed racketeering case by World Wrestling Entertainment sets a critical benchmark in a New York court’s refusal to allow Rio Tinto to continue its case for criminal damages against fellow iron ore major Vale and its allies in Guinean grubbiness.

Others tarred by Rio’s sensational racketeering allegations against its Brazilian competitor number an Israeli billionaire, Benny Steinmetz, a former mines minister of Guinea, the third wife of one of its deceased presidents and a bloke who is currently in a Florida jail as a result of bribes paid to her in the US.

The nub of the Rio case was (and will be again given the likelihood of appeal) that Vale “secretly” worked with a Steinmetz company called BSGR to steal rights to two iron ore mining tenements in Guinea.

Read more

Brazil dam collapse reignites debate over storing mining waste – by James Regan and Susan Taylor (Reuters U.S. – November 18, 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/

SYDNEY/TORONTO, Nov 19 A deadly mud slide at an iron ore mine in Brazil has reignited calls for safer ways to dispose of millions of tonnes of ore waste held back by man-made dams.

The disaster at the Samarco iron ore mine is only the latest in a series involving tailings – waste in mining parlance – that have devastated the environment, and in the case of Samarco, killed at least 11 people and left another 12 missing.

Tailings are typically a mud-like material and their storage and handling has become a major safety and environmental issue, since they can be toxic and may need to be kept isolated.

Read more

Mine Disasters Seen Showing Cost of Cheap Waste Solutions – by Danielle Bochove (Bloomberg News – November 18, 2015)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

As miners globally review the way they store waste in the wake of another horrific dam spill, the solution may be as simple as it is dramatic: spend a lot more.

Images of sludge spewing into towns and rivers could be a thing of the past if mines used different types of storage such as removing water or building on more stable ground. While that can be as much as 10 times costlier for companies already squeezed by slumping prices, the cost is much higher when things go wrong.

The cleanup bill for the Nov. 5 spill at the Samarco iron-ore venture in Brazil, owned by BHP Billiton Ltd. and Vale SA, probably will exceed $1 billion, Deutsche Bank AG said. Then there’s lost output and potential lawsuits.

Read more

Crisis of the Week: Collapsed Brazil Dam Trouble for BHP, Vale – by Ben Dipietro (Wall Street Journal – November 17, 2015)

http://blogs.wsj.com/

The crisis this week centers on BHP Billiton Ltd.BHP.AU -2.13% and Vale SAVALE5.BR -5.53% and how the companies have responded to a lethal burst at a dam they co-own in Brazil. BHP said the cause of the dam collapse at the iron-ore mine in Minas Gerais state remains unknown and that Chief Executive Andrew Mackenzie was headed to Brazil to lead the response effort.

BHP Billiton, which co-owns the Samarco Mineracao SA mine with Vale, said Samarco is “responsible for the entirety” of operations at the mine. Samarco was criticized for how it engaged with the community before the collapse. BHP Billiton has provided a number of updates on its website, but investors still were selling shares in the company.

Vale issued statements as well on its website, pledging support to local authorities and communities affected by the disaster. Samarco has been providing near-daily updates on its website, and the company said it’s been putting up displaced residents and is offering paid leave to employees so it can focus on supporting the rescue operations. The CEOs of BHP and Vale appeared together to discuss the response.

Read more

Muddy waters: After Mount Polley, miners and engineers grapple with the risk of maintaining the status quo -by Eavan Moore (CIM Magazine – November 2015)

https://www.cim.org/en/

Six months before the Mount Polley tailings dam failure in August 2014, a tailings facility in North Carolina released toxic coal ash into the Eden River. One month after Mount Polley, three workers died in a tailings facility failure at the Herculano mine in Brazil. An unusually bad year? Not necessarily.

According to a July 2015 report by David M. Chambers, president of the Center for Science in Public Participation, and Lindsay Bowker, a Maine-based activist with a background in civil construction projects, between 1990 and 2010 there were 33 dam failures that released more than 100,000 cubic metres of “semi-solid discharge” and/or caused loss of life. Based on historical trends, the report predicts 11 more will have occurred by 2020.

In January 2015, a three-person panel appointed to investigate the origins of the Mount Polley tailings spill came to similar, albeit less drastic, conclusions. “If the inventory of active tailings dams in [British Columbia] remains unchanged, and performance in the future reflects that in the past, then on average there will be two failures every 10 years and six every 30,” the panel wrote. “In the face of these prospects, the Panel firmly rejects any notion that business as usual can continue.

Read more

[Sudbury] Health unit wants forum to ‘air concerns’ about Vale spill – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – November 14, 2015)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

The Sudbury and District Health Unit is looking to coordinate a meeting at which representatives of three levels of government, an environmental group and others would discuss a situation that prompted an Environment Canada investigation at Vale Ltd.

The first Burgess Hawkins heard about Environment Canada seizing computers and materials from the mining giant, in relation to an alleged 2012 violation of the Fisheries Act, was when he read a news story about the raid, first reported by The Sudbury Star.

Since early last month, when Environment Canada produced a warrant and was accompanied by the RCMP to Vale’s engineering offices in Copper Cliff, Burgess has been keeping an eye on the unfolding investigation.

A manager in the SDHU’s Environmental Health division, Burgess said Friday he has had conversations with officials with the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change, and talked with a co-chair of the Coalition for a Liveable Sudbury.

Read more

Brazil mining flood could devastate environment for years – by Stephen Eisenhammer (Reuters U.S. – November 15, 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/

RIO DOCE, BRAZIL – The collapse of two dams at a Brazilian mine has cut off drinking water for quarter of a million people and saturated waterways downstream with dense orange sediment that could wreck the ecosystem for years to come.

Nine people were killed, 19 are still listed as missing and 500 people were displaced from their homes when the dams burst at an iron ore mine in southeastern Brazil on Nov. 5.

The sheer volume of water disgorged by the dams and laden with mineral waste across nearly 500 km is staggering: 60 million cubic meters, the equivalent of 25,000 Olympic swimming pools or the volume carried by about 187 oil tankers.

President Dilma Rousseff compared the damage to the 2010 oil spill by BP PLC in the Gulf of Mexico and Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira called it an “environmental catastrophe.”

Read more

Residents deserve answers about Vale runoff – by Naomi Grant and Lilly Noble (Sudbury Star – November 13, 2015)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

What’s your reaction when you see your neighbourhood playground in the news in relation to contaminated runoff?

“We just moved in August from three houses down from the site. Kids played there all the time. A little pissed off right now that nobody alerted us to the problem.”

“I lived near there for 20 years … They knew all that time and didn’t inform any-one. Our kids played at that park since it was built.”

“Who is going to test my soil? Who is going to give us answers?” These are a few of the comments posted by residents in response to the news that Vale runoff saturated a school board property in the west end, the site of Travers playground, for years.

Residents have received no information from regulatory agencies, authorities or Vale. Let’s look at the information available so far.

Read more