Twitter

Mining Environmental, Water Shortage and Land Reclamation/Revegetation Issues

Ring of Fire planning should be holistic, study advises – by Colin Perkel (CTV News – June 18, 2014)

http://www.ctvnews.ca/

The Canadian Press – Exploitation of Ontario’s Far North offers the potential for huge economic benefits but could also result in conflict and large-scale environmental degradation unless a comprehensive, regionally based planning is used before development gets underway, a new scientific paper indicates.

The working paper, to be released Thursday, warns that current piecemeal assessment tools are inadequate for the vast, unspoiled but mineral-rich region known as the Ring of Fire.

The issue has taken on new significance with the province’s newly re-elected Liberal government promising quick action on development in the region. “Ontario will have only one chance to get it right in the Far North,” the paper states.

“We simply will not be able to circle back and undo poorly considered decisions about development, infrastructure or ecological and social tradeoffs once plans are approved and shovels are in the ground.”

The paper by the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada and Ecojustice Canada advocates a holistic approach to development planning.

Read more

Regulators should get out of takeovers – by Adrian Myers (Globe and Mail – June 12, 2014)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Can an endangered wild animal determine the fate of a hostile takeover bid? In Canada, the answer seems to be “yes.”

On May 22, an ocelot was spotted on the site of Augusta Resource Corp.’s Rosemont copper project and speculation is that this wildlife sighting could be a boon for HudBay Minerals Inc.’s hostile bid for Augusta. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will now have to conduct further analysis of the project site, which means Augusta will likely not receive final development permits until the third quarter.

While this delay may seem minor, it may have a major effect on the outcome of HudBay’s bid by putting final permitting on the wrong side of the British Columbia Securities Commission’s (BCSC) arbitrary poison pill cease-trade deadline.

This reveals a fundamental issue with Canadian securities regulation: Regulators, not shareholders, are the ones who determine whether a hostile takeover succeeds or fails. By forcing companies to abandon takeover defences after arbitrary periods of time, regulators leave shareholders vulnerable not just to hostile bidders but to unexpected turns of fate, feline or otherwise.

Such deadlines mean that the most powerful voice in the debate over the fate of Augusta may not be the shareholder’s proxy ballot, but a dwarf leopard’s meek roar.

Read more

Vale, stewardship partnership supporting stream rehab – by Lindsay Kelly (Northern Ontario Business – June 11, 2014)

Established in 1980, Northern Ontario Business provides Canadians and international investors with relevant, current and insightful editorial content and business news information about Ontario’s vibrant and resource-rich North. 

It’s been 15 years since a small group of volunteers decided to take on the rehabilitation of Sudbury’s Junction Creek. What started as a grassroots effort has resulted in a unique partnership with one of the world’s biggest mining companies.

Vale has been one of the Junction Creek Stewardship Committee’s most reliable and consistent industry partners since its inception in 1999, said Sarah Woods, the committee’s research manager and coordinator. The company has contributed both with financing and labour to rehabilitation efforts.

“We’ve had a (Vale) member on our board for a very long time, so they’ve been helpful not only with the financial and logistical components, but also as a source of information and expertise for the committee, which has been incredibly valuable,” Woods said.

Vale conducts the analysis of monthly water samples taken by the committee, while employees take part in annual creek cleanups.

Though much of what the committee does is hard to measure, fish studies conducted with the Co-operative Freshwater Ecology Unit in 2004 and 2008 show improved fish communities, which results from better water quality, Woods said.

Read more

Igniting the Ring of Fire: no one has a plan – by Robert B. Gibson (Toronto Star – June 9, 2014)

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

Robert B. Gibson is a professor of Environment and Resource Studies at the University of Waterloo.

None of the major party leaders in Ontario has assessed the overall opportunities and risks of developing the province’s Ring of Fire.

Last week in the Ontario election campaign, the three major party leaders fell over each other competing for the mining booster award — the ribbon for being the most enthusiastic expediter and/or public funder of Ring of Fire development.

There was plenty of loose talk of superfast approvals and heaps of taxpayer funding for mine-enticing infrastructure, and plenty of starry-eyed anticipation of huge provincial revenue.

But no one has a plan. No one has assessed the overall opportunities and risks of Ring of Fire development. No one has prepared a considered vision of the desirable future for the region or how to get us there. And so far, none of the booster ribbon contestants has promised to try.

Ore bodies are inevitably depleted. They bring lasting benefits only if the mines, associated projects and revenues are used to build foundations for sustainable livelihoods after the mining ends. That does not happen automatically. Lasting benefits depend on far-sighted effort from the outset.

Read more

Glencore to spend up to $400M on emissions upgrades – by Jonathan Migneault (Sudbury Northern Life – June 5, 2014)

http://www.northernlife.ca/

Company hosted public forum Monday to share plans

Glencore expects to spend up to $400 million to make modifications to its Falconbridge smelter so it can meet new provincial standards for its nickel emissions.

The company hosted a public forum Tuesday to bring the community up to speed on its plans to meet the new, and more stringent, air quality standards.

The province’s new air quality standards, under Ontario Regulation 419/05, will take effect on July 1, 2016.

The new standard will switch from a daily averaging period — where contaminants cannot exceed 2 ug/m3 (micrograms per cubic metre of air) — to a yearly averaging period with a contamination limit of 0.04 ug/m3. One microgram represents one millionth of a gram.

Cathy Grant, an air standards and risk management specialist with the Ministry of the Environment, said she and her colleagues determined the new standard would be more representative of industrial emissions with a yearly average. Companies are still limited to a daily upper-risk threshold of 2 ug/m3.

Read more

Glencore seeks exception to air standards – Laura Stricker (Sudbury Star – May 21, 2014)

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

Mining giant Glencore is requesting an exception for the Sudbury smelter’s nickel emissions.

Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment is introducing new air quality standards come July 2016. Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations, a Glencore company, is applying for a Site-Specific Air Standard. Basically, it’s a temporary standard that – with approval from the ministry – gives the company more time to meet the new standards, and includes an action plan explaining how the company will get up to speed with those regulations.

“The new standard will be based on an annual averaging period, as opposed to the current standard that is based on a 24-hour averaging period,” Kate Jordan, a Ministry of the Environment spokesperson, said in an email. “For this reason it’s difficult to compare the two standards, but the current is 2 ug/m3 (micrograms per cubic metre of air) and the new is 0.04 ug/m3.”

A notice was sent to neighbours, informing of the application and a public meeting being held next month. Notices will also be printed in local newspapers. “The company is applying for a site-specific standard to allow us to research and implement the best technologies and processes in order to be in compliance with the new standard in the future,” it says.

Read more

The Astonishing Nickel Eating Plant That Could Radically Change Mining – by Tim Worstall (Forbes Magazine – May 13, 2014)

http://www.forbes.com/

There’s been a discovery of a new species of “metal-munching” plant that has the possibility of radically changing how we go about mining for metals. Or at least, how we go about mining for certain metals. We’ve long known that certain plants concentrate certain metals in their tissues: for example, that coal has elevated levels of germanium in it is simply the result of the fact that those plant tissues the coal was made from contained Ge. But this latest finding concentrates metals, in this case nickel, to such an extent that it could radically change the way that we go mining for certain metals.

A report is here and this is the most amazing line:

“Professor Fernando said that the Rinorea niccolifera’s leaves can take in up to 18,000 parts per million of nickel. This is a thousand times more than what any other known plant species can safely absorb.”

It’s that thousand times which is the astonishing part. And it’s so astonishing that it completely changes the economics of the matter.

18,000 ppm is also known as 1.8%. So, for one tonne of the leaves of this plant we would have 18 kilogrammes of nickel contained. Well, OK, we would if it had been growing on highly nickel contaminated soil.

Read more

What Sudbury can teach China about air pollution – by Kate Allen (Toronto Star – May 10, 2014)

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

Air pollution was once so bad in Sudbury it literally blackened the earth. Now countries such as China can turn to cleaned-up Canadian city for hope. In so many stock images of Beijing, someone is wearing a face mask. Air pollution has become a feature of the urban Chinese landscape.

There was another city where debilitating air pollution once seemed permanent. In this other city in the 1960s, housewives reportedly planted their tomatoes in wagons: when a plume of bad air descended, the tomatoes could be wheeled out of the toxic cloud.

As for sulphur, “you could taste it when you were outdoors,” says Bill Keller. Keller is the director of the Climate Change and Multiple Stressor Aquatic Research program at Laurentian University, and a resident of Sudbury for the past 40 years.

In Sudbury, he remembers, air pollution was so bad it literally blackened the earth: acid rain, along with mining operations, stripped the land of vegetation, leaving 100,000 hectares of barren or semi-barren moonscape.

Read more

Vale N.L. not ordered to hold back waste – by Ashley Fitzpatrick (St. John’s Telegram – May 8, 2014)

http://www.thetelegram.com/

Former Environment Canada officer details slow response to failed tests

Environment Canada officer Ron Hunter was kept informed as, repeatedly, samples of treated liquid waste from Vale Newfoundland and Labrador’s mine site at Voisey’s Bay failed a key environmental safety test in October 2011.

According to the now-retired officer’s testimony, during a day of trial at provincial court in St. John’s Wednesday, it took the better part of the month and a third failed test before he felt the need to give formal direction to the company about the discharge of the waste into nearby Anaktalak Bay, on the Labrador coast.

Release of treated mine waste into the waters is permitted, but only with regular testing showing it remains within specific parameters, for the protection of the environment.

During Hunter’s testimony, a reference was made to a “final discharge point monthly summary,” stating a total volume of waste released into the bay during the month in question was 492,337 cubic metres — enough to fill 197 Olympic-size swimming pools.

The Telegram has yet to see that document.

Read more

Nickel soars to two-year high on Goro mine halt, shortages – by Eric Onstad and Harpreet Bhal (Globe and Mail – May 9, 2014)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

LONDON — Reuters – Nickel raced to its strongest level in more than two years on Thursday as industrial consumers scrambled to secure supplies and speculators extended their buying spree after Vale halted its Goro nickel operations in New Caledonia.

Though the Goro shutdown was not expected to have a major impact on physical nickel supplies, it served to fire up bullish sentiment and chart-based purchases.

The nickel market, which has soared nearly 40 per cent this year, was already nervous about shortfalls from top producer Indonesia and worried about potential Russian supply problems.

“Today we’ve seen some panicked consumer hedging and the hedge funds have already been in there for a while,” said analyst David Wilson at Citi in London.

Three-month nickel on the London Metal Exchange (LME) surged 6.1 per cent to a high of $19,786 a tonne, the strongest since March 2, 2012. It later retreated to $19,451 a tonne at 1421 GMT, up 4 per cent from Wednesday’s close, with trading volumes of over 10,700 lots compared with Wednesday’s full-day volume of 5,121.

Read more

UPDATE 2-New Caledonia says to take legal action over Vale nickel spill – by Cecile Lefort and Melanie Burton (Reuters India – May 9, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

(Recasts with statement from New Caledonian provincial government)

May 9 (Reuters) – New Caledonia’s southern provincial government said on Friday it was starting legal proceedings against Vale over environmental damaged caused by an effluent spill at the miner’s nickel operations.

Vale said in an earlier statement that the spill contained some acid, but that subsequent test results carried out on a nearby river and the sea showed conditions appeared to have returned to normal.

The mining giant said it had suspended 80 percent of its nickel production in New Caledonia and planned a complete shutdown later on Friday, helping to send nickel prices up nearly 6 percent. A spokesman for Vale could not immediately be reached for further comment.

The southern province of New Caledonia was starting legal proceedings under its environmental code after the spill had killed about 1,000 fish, and swimming and fishing had been suspended in the area, it said in a statement. The local government did not say when it might allow Vale to resume operations, but said pollution had been contained to a river.

Read more

Mine Waste Transformed to Tap Water for 80,000 Consumers – by Firat Kayakiran, Randall Hackley and Kevin Crowley (Bloomberg News – May 2, 2014)

 http://www.bloomberg.com/

Anglo American Plc (AAL) was the first company to transform the wastewater from its coal mines into something 80,000 people drink. Now they’re seen as a model.

Purifying contaminated waters from three sites in South Africa has proven so successful that Anglo’s plant in Witbank is doubling in size and being replicated elsewhere in the country by BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP), the biggest mining company, and Glencore Xstrata Plc. (GLEN)

While the $130 million plant won’t upend the $600 billion world water industry, Anglo’s treatment center provides as much as 12 percent of the area’s municipal drinking supply and serves as a template for how the industry could treat waste in the future. It also shows how companies and municipalities are finding new ways to confront an increasingly water-stressed planet.

Water of a different sort — sewer water — is similarly about to be treated, purified and pumped back to residents in Wichita Falls, Texas, to augment shortages caused by growth and the area’s worst drought on record.

Mines often treat wastewater to some extent yet until the Emalahleni water-reclamation plant, 120 kilometers (75 miles) east of Johannesburg, none was of drinking quality.

Read more

Copper miners grapple with arsenic problem – by Xan Rice (Financial Times – April 30, 2014)

http://www.ft.com/intl/commodities-note

New flow of ‘dirty’ copper pushing up treatment costs

In the world’s driest desert in Chile, arsenic has long been a hazard. Research published this month revealed that a 1,000-1,500-year-old mummy found in the Atacama region, north of the country, died from drinking water laced with the poisonous element. Today, the threat is less to human life than to the profitability of copper miners.

Arsenic is often found alongside the red metal on the west coast of South America, home to the world’s largest copper reserves. Until recently, mining companies there chose not to develop copper deposits containing high amounts of arsenic, in favour of the abundant cleaner operations.

But as the large, old mines have become depleted, some arsenic-rich sites are now being exploited. They include Toromocho in Peru, which is owned by the Chinese state-owned group Chinalco, and Codelco’s Ministro Hales project in northern Chile. Both are important sources of new global greenfield copper supply.

The new flow of “dirty” copper concentrate is a sign of the declining ore grades globally, and presents fresh challenges for the industry since the material cannot be sent directly to smelters. Delays in processing this concentrate has resulted in stocks increasing and a rise in treatment and refining charges.

Read more

MiningWatch Canada Celebrating 15 Years of Mining Activism 1999-2014: Fifteen Major Achievements for our Fifteenth Anniversary

 http://www.miningwatch.ca/

MiningWatch Canada was created in 1999 to push back against the mining industry’s ability to rewrite laws, mislead the public, and bulldoze communities, workers, and ecosystems – literally – in its quest for profit. We’ve done that. We’ve changed the debate and helped put power back into the hands of the affected communities. But global demand for metals continues to grow, and the industry continues to push into remote areas, finding new ways to advance its interests. There is still an awful lot left to do.

1. Growing Up

MiningWatch has not only survived, but grown by leaps and bounds in terms of the number of groups and key individuals we work with in Canada and internationally, as well as the strength and depth of those networks and relationships. We’ve also made huge strides in our recognition by the public, media, and decision-makers, and our presence in important civil society planning spaces and multistakeholder dialogues. We’ve grown in size, too, from the equivalent of two full-time staff in 1999 to five in 2014, and from eight member organisations to twenty-seven. Requests for assistance have grown even faster. It would be wonderful to have more staff – and more money – but we’re moving in a great direction.

2. Expanding media reach – both social media and traditional media

People continue to come to our website in the thousands weekly for information and analysis, while our email ists provide daily news, newsletters, alerts, and updates for over three thousand people. Our social media presence – something we couldn’t have even imagined in 1999 – is substantial.

Read more

From wasteland to parkland: Mining greens up – by Daina Lawrence (Globe and Mail – April 22, 2014)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Today, the aerial view of the historic Coniaurum gold mine, owned by Goldcorp Inc. since 2002, more closely resembles a putting green on a golf course than an old mine site. But it didn’t always look like this.

For decades it was a wasteland of discarded rock – leftovers from its previous life as an active mine since 1913, until a storm in 1961 caused a breach in the tailings dams and shut down operations for good.

Past practices did not call for any closure or clean up of these sites, so for more than 30 years the Timmins, Ont.-based mine site sat almost untouched. But through a mergers and acquisition deal, Goldcorp Inc. inherited the historic mine (along with almost 20 others) and in 2005 the company began its multimillion-dollar reclamation project. It took three years and between $10-million and $12-million to complete, but the current property now grows plant life and even acts as home to a colony of beehives that aid in Coniaurum’s revegetation.

“The goal, with this property in particular, is to bring us back as close as possible to the original vegetation that would have been there before mining,” says Marc Lauzier, manager of Goldcorp’s Timmins property. “We have to do what’s right and do a complete mining cycle, which ends when you can return the land to its original state,” he adds.

Read more