Mining Environmental Accidents, Pollution, Tailing Dams and Abandoned Mines – Page 53

North Country aluminum giant Alcoa to lay off 500 in Massena and seal its toxins in riverbed – by Brian Nearing (Albany Times Union – November 9, 2015)

November 9, 2015

http://www.timesunion.com/

Massena – An aluminum smelting plant that has operated on the shores of the St. Lawrence River for more than a century is closing, taking with it hundreds of good-paying jobs in the North Country.

But while last week’s announcement by Alcoa means jobs will be lost, a troubled environmental legacy will linger at its sprawling, 2,700-acre Massena Plant at the Canadian border in St. Lawrence County.

Alcoa touts the plant, first opened in 1902, as the longest continually operating aluminum smelter in the world; since the 1950s, the plant has relied on a flood of cut-rate state hydropower provided by the New York Power Authority.

Last week, Pittsburgh-based Alcoa announced it was abandoning plans to modernize its Massena East Plant mothballed two years ago — formerly owned by Reynolds aluminum — and will close its newer Massena West Plant by the first quarter of 2016, throwing 500 people out of work. Smaller facilities at Massena for aluminum casting, forging and extrusions will remain in operation.

BHP says ‘no confirmation’ of cause of dam failure, reviewing ore forecasts – by Rhiannon Hoyle (Dow Jones/The Australian – November 9, 2015)

November 9, 2015

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

BHP Billiton shares have hit a seven-year low in the wake of the deadly collapse of two tailing dams at a mine in Brazil. As more information emerges, analysts are trying to tote up the potential bill for BHP and Vale of Brazil, the mine’s co-owner.

The dam breach was the largest-ever spill of its kind, according to Robert Chambers, president of the non-profit Centre for Science in Public Participation, whose group has tracked these types of failures back to 1915.

The cost to the companies, including for clean-up and rebuilding, could top $US1 billion, said Paul Young, a Sydney-based analyst at Deutsche Bank, who estimated the mine could be closed until about 2019. He described the dam burst as “catastrophic.”

“The uncertainty regarding clean-up and legal costs is likely to be an overhang on” shares, according to Jefferies analyst Christopher LaFemina, who said the reputations of both BHP and Vale, which have relatively good safety records, would emerge damaged.

Two dozen missing in vast mudflow of Brazil mine disaster – by Stephen Eisenhamer (Reuters U.S. – November 8, 2015)

November 9, 2015

http://www.reuters.com/

MARIANA, BRAZIL – Brazilian authorities late on Saturday were investigating a second suspected death after two dams at a major mine in the country’s southeast burst and unleashed a massive mudflow that wreaked havoc across more than 80 km (50 miles).

A dozen residents of villages downstream from the burst dams remain missing, along with 13 workers from the mine. Officials warned of a higher death toll even as they struggle to find bodies probably swept away by the torrent.

One death from the disaster was confirmed on Friday, and authorities reported the body of someone believed to be a second victim on Saturday evening. A spokesman for the state fire department said they expected to be able to determine on Sunday if the body is that of one of the missing people.

“The death toll will rise for sure,” said Duarte Júnior, mayor of Mariana. “Some people still aren’t accounted for.”

Western senators launch effort to reform mining law to spur cleanup – by Bruce Finley (Denver Post – November 5, 2015)

November 6, 2015

http://www.denverpost.com/

Legislation introduced by Sen. Michael Bennet and colleagues from New Mexico would charge companies fees and royalties

Western senators Thursday weighed in on the toxic mines problem, launching legislation to reform the nation’s 1872 Mining Law and require companies to pay fees to create a cleanup fund for abandoned inactive mines.

The legislation, introduced by Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet and New Mexico Sens. Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall, would apply to existing and new mining operations. It aims to raise at least $100 million a year.

The idea is to create a new path — beyond “Superfund” responses to environmental disasters — to begin to clean up tens of thousands of inactive mines in Western states that continue to taint headwaters of the nation’s rivers. These include an estimated 230 sites in Colorado where state officials have documented bit-by-bit degradation of waterways.

Congress has been giving greater attention to the problem after the Aug. 5 Gold King Mine disaster in southwestern Colorado above Silverton, where an EPA crew triggered a deluge of 3 million gallons of mustard-yellow liquid that worsened contamination of the Animas River.

NEWS RELEASE: Fatal Brazilian mine waste disaster shows modern mining is increasingly dangerous

November 6, 2015

https://www.earthworksaction.org/

November 6, 2015 – Earthworks and Center for Science in Public Participation

New research validated: mining disasters on the rise because of modern mining techniques

Washington, D.C. — A mine waste dam at the Germano open-pit iron ore mine in Brazil’s state of Minas Gerais breached yesterday, flooding the downstream area with mining waste and causing fatalities. The Germano facility is co-owned by two of the world’s largest mining companies, Brazilian Vale SA and Anglo-Australian BHP Billiton.

A recent report, The Risk, Public Liability & Economics of Tailings Storage Facility Failure, demonstrates that catastrophic mine waste failures are increasing in frequency and severity because of — not in spite of — modern mining techniques, and will continue to do so until regulators and mining companies take active steps to prevent them.

“Our research shows that more mining waste disasters like Brazil’s Germano spill are inevitable,” said David Chambers, report co-author and director of the Center of Science in Public Participation.

[Timmins] 2 local derelict mine sites among those cited in ECO report – by Alan S. Hale (Timmins Daily Press – November 5, 2015)

November 6, 2015

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

TIMMINS – Ontario’s environment watchdog has released a report slamming the provincial government and the mining industry for not putting in place adequate financial assurances to prevent the government from footing the bill for any clean-up after mining operations.

Such provisions are legally required in all mining project closure plans, but the Environment Commissioner of Ontario found that in July there were five idle operations in Ontario without sufficient financial assurance measures in their closure plans. Two of those projects listed in the report are in the Timmins area.

One is the Carshaw-Malga Mine and Mill property located in Shaw and Carman Townships, approximately 25 kilometres southeast of Timmins. The site, owned by Marshall Minerals Corp., was mined and milled gold-bearing ore in the mid-1980s. In 1990, the mill was reactivated to process nickel ore.

Brazil community flooded after dam burst at BHP and Vale-owned iron ore mine – by Matt Chambers (The Australian – November 6, 2015)

November 6, 2015

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

At least 17 people are dead in Brazil following a mudslide unleashed after the collapse of a tailings dam at a mine half owned by BHP Billiton.

More than 50 people were injured, said local fire chief Adao Severino Junior, who added: “The number of missing is going to surpass 40 but that is not official.”

Television footage showed a torrent of industrial muck several hundred metres long that had swamped houses and ripped off their roofs in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais.

The structure that failed is a tailings dam, used to hold water and discarded minerals from a nearby iron-ore mine operated by Samarco Mineração, a company owned 50-50 by BHP Billiton (BHP) and Brazil’s Vale.

The village of Bento Rodrigues near the dam was practically buried in mud, the fire chief said.

Groups call for ‘clear, enforceable’ mine waste-dam laws – by Gordon Hoekstra (Vancouver Sun – November 3, 2015)

November 4, 2015

http://www.vancouversun.com/

Environmental coalition calls on B.C. government to phase out industry self-regulation

The B.C. government should phase out industry self-regulation to ensure dams that hold back waste and water at mines are safe and sustainable, says a joint submission by environmental groups.

The Fair Mining Collaborative, Mining Watch Canada and Northern Confluence (an arm of the International Boreal Conservation Campaign) are also calling for the province’s review of mining rules to be broadened by examining all laws that regulate mining, including the Mines Act, Environmental Management Act and Water Act, not just the Health, Safety and Reclamation Code for Mines.

Their submission is the first look at the type of changes that are being called for by outside groups as the B.C. government responds to Imperial Metals’ Mount Polley catastrophic tailings dam collapse last year and recommendations from an expert geotechnical engineering panel it commissioned.

Vale runoff saturated school board property for years – by Jonathan Migneault (Sudbury Northern Life – November 02, 2015)

November 3, 2015

http://www.northernlife.ca/

The Sudbury Catholic District School board property where toxic runoff from Vale’s slag piles allegedly seeped for decades, was often over-saturated, says a former manager who worked at the property.

Denis Faucher retired in 2013, but in October 2012, when a nearby resident reported seeing lime-green-coloured runoff in Nolin Creek, he was the manager of facility services for the Sudbury Catholic District School Board.

The facility services building, and surrounding property, is located at 199 Travers Street, near Vale’s large slag piles that line Big Nickel Road.

Faucher started to work at the facility in the late 1980s, and said even then he noticed coloured runoff coming down from the nearby slag piles.

“Especially in the early years, we always thought it was iron in the water coming through the rock,” he said. “It never dawned on us that it could have been something else.”

[South Dakota] Radioactive Legacy, Part 3 of a Journal Special Report: The uranium boom goes bust – by Seth Tupper (Rapid City Journal – November 1, 2015)

November 3, 2015

http://rapidcityjournal.com/

In 1980, the Brafford family of Edgemont learned their house, or the land around it, was probably giving them cancer. That’s what they claimed in a lawsuit against Susquehanna Corporation, the Chicago company that ran Edgemont’s uranium industry.

Before the Braffords moved in, someone used sand-like radioactive tailings from the mill owned by Susquehanna’s subsidiary, Mines Development, as fill material around the home’s foundation. The tailings gave off potentially cancer-causing radiation far in excess of regulatory limits.

Susquehanna tried to get the Braffords’ lawsuit tossed out. When that didn’t work, the giant holding company paid the family to drop it.

That was 1984. The same year, the author of a Life magazine story on Edgemont claimed the amount of the settlement was “believed to be in excess of a quarter of a million dollars.”

Timeline of [South Dakota] Edgemont’s uranium industry – by Seth Tupper (Rapid City Journal – October 26, 2015)

November 3, 2015

http://rapidcityjournal.com/

Here is a look back at the timing of key events in the history of the Edgemont uranium mining industry:

1951: Uranium deposits are discovered in a canyon wall near Edgemont.

1952: The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission opens an ore sampling and buying station in Edgemont, one of many Western sites where the federal government buys uranium to fuel its growing stockpile of nuclear weapons.

1953: The Chicago North Shore and Milwaukee Railroad reorganizes and emerges as a subsidiary of a new holding company, Susquehanna Corporation, which will soon come to dominate Edgemont’s uranium industry.

1955: Mines Development Inc., a subsidiary of Susquehanna Corp., builds a uranium mill in Edgemont.

1960: Edgemont’s population hits 1,772, a 53 percent increase from 1950.

Radioactive Legacy, Part 1 of a Journal special report: A yellowcake gold rush – by Seth Tupper (Rapid City Journal – November 1, 2015)

November 2, 2015

http://rapidcityjournal.com/

Four million tons of radioactive waste are buried under a grassy field three miles southeast of Edgemont in far southwestern South Dakota. North of Edgemont, two massive abandoned mines, the biggest measuring about a mile across, scar the range land.

They are the byproducts of a uranium mining boom, and because the waste is nine feet underground and the mines are too far from the roads to be seen, they’re largely forgotten. So, too, are the other ill effects of the uranium mining rush that took place a half-century ago.

Locals may remember the jobs, and the bustling processing plant. They perhaps never knew about the out-of-state tycoons who pulled millions in profits from the ground, and then left a big mess behind. And they tend to forget or overlook the abandoned mill waste, the workers sickened by dust and radiation, and the abandoned mines and possible environmental contamination.

Now those old buried memories are being stirred by two very different yet confluent developments: a proposal for a new method of uranium mining in the same area; and new federal studies of the environmental damage caused by the old mines.

Radioactive dump that burned in Nevada had past troubles (Associated Press/Mining Gazette – October 25, 2015)

October 26, 2015

http://www.mininggazette.com/

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The operator of a closed radioactive waste dump that caught fire in southern Nevada had trouble over the years with leaky shipments and oversight so lax that employees took contaminated tools and building materials home, according to state and federal records.

The firm, now called US Ecology Inc., had its license suspended for mishandling shipments in the 1970s — about the same time that state officials say the material that exploded and burned last weekend was accepted and buried.

Nevada now has ownership and oversight of the property, which opened in 1962 near Beatty as the nation’s first federally licensed low-level radioactive waste dump and closed in 1992. State officials said this week they didn’t immediately know what blew up.

A soundless 40-second video turned over by US Ecology to state officials showed bursts of white smoke and dirt flying from several explosions on Oct. 18 from the dump in the brown desert about 110 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Vale SA investigated for allegedly leaking toxic run-off in Sudbury (Canadian Press/MACLEAN’s Magazine – October 23, 2015 )

October 23, 2015

http://www.macleans.ca/

Allegations of run-off leaks going back to at least 1963 come following seizure of documents, computers from Vale’s Sudbury offices in early October

Environment Canada is investigating Vale SA’s Sudbury, Ont., smelting operations for allegedly leaking toxic run-off into local waterways since at least 1963.

The allegations are contained in a warrant the government agency used to seize documents, computers and related materials from Vale’s Sudbury offices on Oct. 8 as part of its investigation into potential violations of the Fisheries Act.

In the warrant, Environment Canada accuses the company of allowing “acutely lethal” seepage from the smelter waste piles into water frequented by fish, and of knowing about the leakage for years. The warrant contains allegations not proven in court.

The accusations indicate the seepage started well before Vale took control of the smelter when it acquired Inco Ltd. in 2006 for US$17.6 billion.

EPA Mine Spill in Colorado Could Have Been Prevented, Probe Concludes – by Matthew Brown (Associated Press/ABC News – October 22, 2015)

October 23, 2015

http://abcnews.go.com/

BILLINGS, Mont. — Government investigators squarely blamed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday for a 3 million-gallon wastewater spill from a Colorado gold mine, saying an EPA cleanup crew rushed its work and failed to consider the complex engineering involved, triggering the very blowout it hoped to avoid.

The spill that fouled rivers in three states would have been avoided had the EPA team checked on water levels inside the Gold King Mine before digging into a collapsed and leaking mine entrance, Interior Department investigators concluded.

The technical report on the causes of the Aug. 5 spill has implications across the United States, where similar disasters could lurk among an estimated hundreds of thousands of abandoned mines that have yet to be cleaned up. The total cost of containing this mining industry mess could top $50 billion, according to government estimates.

The root causes of the Colorado accident began decades ago, when mining companies altered the flow of water through a series of interconnected tunnels in the extensively mined Upper Animas River watershed, the report says.