NEWS 

A SMALL NUMBER OF THE 10,000 ABANDONED MINE SITES IN CANADA WILL COST TAXPAYERS $1 BILLION TO CLEAN UP

Canadian Institute for Business and the Environment - 08 January 2001 - The environment and economics group, MiningWatch Canada, presented a four point plan for dealing with Canada's abandoned mines crisis to the federal government. Clean-up of sites under federal jurisdiction alone will cost more than $1 billion. It recommends a national inventory of sites for which the federal government carries responsibility, and incentives for the provinces to create compatible databases on sites under their jurisdiction. It recommends a physical and chemical assessments of all abandoned mines to verify hazards and the provision for resources to clean-up the worst sites first with a plan to establish the priorities and more research dollars to figure out how best to do this. MiningWatch is calling for the establishment of a funding mechanism to recover costs from industry to pay for cleaning up the sites. It reports that there are at least 10,000 of these "toxic orphans" leaching often-acidic mixtures of cyanide, lead, cadmium, mercury and radioactive wastes. MiningWatch found that abandoned mines are a serious and immediate danger to human health and the environment. The abandoned mines are already costing taxpayers millions of dollars in clean-up, cancers, lost fishery and farm income, and they stand to cost billions more. Every year, mining companies create thousands of tons of waste rock and tailings for every ton of ore. Usually the tailings have been treated with toxic chemicals. Some of them are radioactive. Sulphur-bearing rock, broken up and exposed to air and water, creates "acid mine drainage," which then leaches heavy metals into rivers, aquifers and soil. In the past few if any guarantees were taken to ensure that mining companies cleaned up their mess. Now, although reclamation securities or bonds are sometimes required, they are often inadequate to cover the costs of clean-up. At the Mt. Nansen Mine in the Yukon, the security was only $225,000, but the costs of clean-up will be $6 million with an annual cost for maintaining the site of $2 million in perpetuity. In other cases, like the Giant and Faro Mines in the NWT and Yukon respectively, bankruptcies have left the federal government holding the bag for hundreds of millions in clean-up costs. For more information, contact Joan Kuyek, National Coordinator, MiningWatch Canada, Suite 508, City Centre Building, 880 Wellington St., Ottawa, Ontario

K1R 6K7, tel. (613) 569-3439, fax (613) 569-5138, e-mail: canada@miningwatch.ca. Visit their website at http://www.miningwatch.ca/