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Mining Environmental Accidents, Pollution, Tailing Dams and Abandoned Mines

Gold mining in the Amazon poisoning scores of threatened species – by Gloria Dickie and Jake Spring (Japan Times – August 7, 2023)

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/

LOS AMIGOS BIOLOGICAL STATION, PERU – In a camping tent in the Peruvian jungle, four scientists are crowded around a tiny patient: An Amazonian rodent that could fit in the palm of a human hand.
The researchers placed the small-eared pygmy rice rat into a plastic chamber and piped in anesthetic gas until it rolled over, asleep.

Removing the creature from the chamber, they fitted it with a miniature anesthetic mask and measured its body parts with a ruler before gently pulling hairs from its back with tweezers. The hairs, bundled into a tiny plastic bag, would be carried to a nearby lab at the Los Amigos Biological Station for testing to determine whether the rat is yet another victim of mercury contamination.

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Focusing on abandoned uranium mines across Navajo, EPA opens Flagstaff office – by Adrian Skabelund (Arizona Daily Sun – July 29, 2023)

https://azdailysun.com/

Tuesday saw the opening of a new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office in Flagstaff that will be largely focused on investigating and cleaning up hundreds of abandoned uranium mines across the Navajo Nation.

The office comes as the agency, in cooperation with local partners, works toward a goal of remediating 110 high-priority mines by 2030. As it opens, the office, which is located on the U.S. Geological Survey campus near Buffalo Park, will have a staff of at least 14 employees. That number could increase, according to office manager Jacob Phipps.

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Yukon gov’t inspectors find violations at Hecla Mining’s Keno Hill project (CBC News North – July 28, 2023)

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

Report from June notes concerns with tailings facilities, water discharge, and hazardous material storage

Yukon mine inspectors found a series of problems at the Hecla Mining Company’s Keno Hill property, according to a recent report. Inspectors raised a number of concerns, including sediment runoff from tailings facilities, poor storage of hazardous materials, hydrocarbon stains on the ground, and discharged water that was toxic to fish.

“When you say are there lots of infractions found, well, I can tell you there’s 11 different pieces of legislation, all kinds of rules that have to be followed, and we do everything we can to help our companies comply with those requirements,” said Will Tewnion who’s with Yukon’s department Energy, Mines and Resources.

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BHP and Vale square off in London court – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – July 12, 2023)

https://www.mining.com/

BHP (ASX: BHP) and Vale (NYSE: VALE) faced off in a London court on Wednesday as part of one of the largest class action lawsuits in history, which could see them fined £36 billion ($44bn) for their role in a mining disaster in Brazil that killed 19 people.

The case, brought to trial by around 720,000 Brazilians, centres on who should accept legal and financial responsibility over the deadly 2015 collapse of a dam. The incident at the iron ore mine, owned by BHP and Vale’s joint venture Samarco, became the country’s worst ever environmental disaster.

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Vancouver mining CEO convicted on environmental charges – by Jeremy Hainsworth (Business In Vancouver – July 12, 2023)

https://biv.com/

A Vancouver mining company president has been found guilty in a Prince Rupert Provincial Court retrial of multiple counts of environmental pollution at a B.C. mine. The charges relate to discharges of zinc and other waste contrary to Banks Island Gold’s (BIG) permit for the Yellow Giant Mine site on Banks Island, B.C., between Sept. 9, 2014, and July 31, 2015. The island is just south of Prince Rupert on Hecate Strait.

“A systemic failure resulted in various exceedances in the water samples,” Judge David Patterson said in his July 7 decision. “BIG should have had a fool-proof system, regardless of which BIG department was responsible for the testing.” Patterson said company president Benjamin Mossman was the person responsible.

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Tracing Mining’s Threat to U.S. Waters – by Jim Robbins (New York Times – July 11, 2023)

https://www.nytimes.com/

Environmental concerns are raised anew about potential contamination from Canadian open-pit mines flowing through the waterways into Montana’s lakes, harming fish.

PABLO, Mont. — In the mountain streams of southern British Columbia and northern Montana, a rugged part of the world, fish with misshapen skulls and twisted spines have been caught over the years.

Many scientists attribute the malformed creatures and declines in certain fish populations to five enormous open-pit coal mines that interrupt this wild landscape of dense forest flush with grizzly bears and wolves.

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The rush for nickel: ‘They are destroying our future’ – by Valdya Baraputri (BBC News Indonesia – July 9, 2023)

https://www.bbc.com/

Two men are carrying torches and homemade arrows as they slip into the ocean at night on an Indonesian island. They are from an indigenous community of Bajau people – renowned freedivers who find it better to hunt in the dark when fish, lobsters and sea cucumbers are less active.

But they fear time is running out for their traditional way of life. “Right now, the water is still clear,” says Tawing, one of the fishermen. “But it won’t stay that way… nickel waste enters our water during the rainy season and the current carries it here.”

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Trial over Spanish ecological disaster starts, 25 years on (France 24 – July 4, 2023)

https://www.france24.com/en/

Madrid (Spain) (AFP) – Twenty five years after one of Spain’s worst ecological disasters, a court case against the Swedish mining company involved opened Tuesday in the southern city of Seville.

The case, being brought by the regional government in Andalusia, holds mining company Boliden responsible for a 1998 toxic spill that contaminated a vast stretch of rivers and wetlands with heavy metals including arsenic, cadmium and mercury.

The Donana National Park wetlands, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, are home to the endangered Iberian lynx and are a vital stopover point for millions of birds migrating between Europe and Africa. The catastrophe occurred when a wastewater reserve pool burst at Boliden’s Los Frailes lead and zinc mine in the city of Aznalcollar, spewing more than five million cubic metres (17.5 million cubic feet) of highly acid sludge into the river and groundwater.

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Yukon government raised red flags about copper mine before owner abandoned site – by Brent Jang (Globe and Mail – June 21, 2023)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

The Yukon government raised red flags about a copper mine’s environmental infractions days before the owner abandoned the site last month, an inspection report shows.

The new report filed this month by two employees of the territory’s Department of Energy, Mines and Resources says they inspected Minto Metals Corp.’s mining site on April 26, finding that its storage capacity for contaminated water in an open pit and tailings waste management were unsatisfactory.

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Ottawa, Yellowknives Dene sign procurement framework agreement for Giant Mine cleanup – by Emily Blake (CBC News North/Canadian Press – June 23,2023)

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

Deal includes tougher penalties for companies that fail to meet Indigenous hiring commitments

The federal government and Yellowknives Dene First Nation have signed a procurement framework agreement for the cleanup of Giant Mine, one of Canada’s most contaminated sites. Ottawa says the agreement confirms its commitment to increase procurement opportunities for Indigenous people through the more than $4-billion Giant Mine Remediation Project, including prioritizing contracts with Indigenous-owned businesses.

The First Nation says the deal will increase its oversight of how the project awards contracts and provides for tougher penalties for companies that fail to meet Indigenous hiring commitments.

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They thought they’d found an affordable place to live. They were never told about the radioactive mining waste – by Marco Chowan Oved and Declan Keogh (Toronto Star – June 15, 2023)

https://www.thestar.com/

Recent testing at four houses in Elliot Lake reveal elevated levels of gamma radiation and concentrations of radon gas far exceeding safety guidelines. There could be up to 60 homes in the community currently on top of mine waste, documents allege.

A cluster of homes in Elliot Lake sits atop a deadly secret. Radioactive tailings from long-closed mines in northern Ontario –– which produced uranium for atomic bombs –– were allegedly used as infill when the subdivision was established decades ago, emitting gamma rays and poisonous gasses into and around people’s homes.

The dangers have long since been forgotten and the mine has been shut down. Recent testing at four houses in the area, however, reveals that there are still elevated levels of gamma radiation and concentrations of radon gas far exceeding safety guidelines, according to thousands of documents shared exclusively with the Investigative Journalism Bureau (IJB) and the Toronto Star.

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Red floods near giant Indonesia nickel mine blight farms and fishing grounds – by Riza Salman Mongabay.com – June 14, 2023)

https://news.mongabay.com/

KOLAKA, Indonesia — Ansal grabbed a makeshift raincoat, an empty rice sack, and ran home as the rain began to pound the fields of Pomalaa. A few hours later, after the rain stopped, the 49-year-old returned to his fields. “Everything is red,” Ansal told Mongabay Indonesia, here in Kolaka district in the province of Southeast Sulawesi.

In previous years, the occasional floods were more manageable, but this downpour caused the river to burst its banks. The ensuing overflow caked Ansal’s field in a layer of knee-deep sludge, drowning the newly planted rice under water the color of clay.

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These are 11 of B.C.’s most ‘polluting and risky’ mines – by Francesca Fionda (The Narwhal – May 25, 2023)

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Mining is big business in B.C. and it’s an industry that produces a lot of waste. A new report highlights 11 mines of concern and what’s stopping the province from getting them to clean up their acts

Chief Francis Laceese of Tl’esqox describes the Gibraltar mine as a “disaster waiting to happen.” Located about 60 kilometres north of Williams Lake, B.C., it’s the fourth-largest open-pit mine in North America. Laceese’s Tsilqot’in community, Tl’esqox, is directly downstream.

The Gibraltar copper mine is among B.C.’s most polluting and high risk mines, according to a report released today by SkeenaWild Conservation Trust and BC Mining Law Reform Network. Eleven mines are listed based on their proven or probable impacts to the environment, unsafe management of tailings waste, non-compliance with environmental permits and violations of Indigenous Rights.

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The View from England: Win their hearts, and minds will follow – by Chris Hinde (Northern Miner – May 19, 2023)

https://www.northernminer.com/

I shed tears within 30 pages. I expect you would too and, if you’re a miner, so you should. In a recently-published novel we are taken back to a small mining town in October 1966 when our industry killed children, young children, half a school of them.

Published by Faber & Faber, ‘A Terrible Kindness’ reminds us (as Jo Browning Wroe writes in her opening sentence) of when “something dreadful happened in Wales.” In Aberfan on that dark morning, 116 children (mostly between the ages of seven and 10) went to school and didn’t come back.

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Scientists purify uranium-laden water using magnetic bacteria – by Staff (Mining.com – May 18, 2023)

https://www.mining.com/

A research team at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) has managed to purify water containing uranium using a special kind of bacteria known as magnetotactic bacteria.

In a paper published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, the scientists explain that the name of the bacteria derives from their ability to react to magnetic fields. They can accumulate dissolved heavy metals in their cell walls. These research findings also shed new light on the interaction between uranium and bioligands.

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