MINING INDUSTRY LEAVES FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WITH MULTI-MILLION
CLEAN UP BILL
Canadian Institute for Business and the Environment - 08 January 2001 -
Open a mine. Make your profits and run - or go bankrupt. That is the
business of the dark side of the mining industry in Canada. Many good mine
operations don't do that. But many do. The latest is the Royal Oak Mines
It went bankrupt after running a successful mining operation near
Yellowknife, NT. The Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs
and Northern Development (DIAND) had budgeted taxpayers' money to clean up
Royal Oak Mines acids and toxics left behind from the gold leaching
processes. However, now DIAND has reduced its overall operation budget by
one-third. The cuts will effect the cleanup of a tailings pond leaking
cyanide into the watershed at Colomac mine, and postpone research on a
disposal solution for 270,000 tonnes of poisonous arsenic trioxide
contained underground at Giant mine. The government plans to deal with the
leaking Colomac ponds by pumping the tailings into a new settling pond
after the tailings have been treated with ferric sulfate to help
precipitate the cyanide. The federal government hopes that sunlight and
wind action will eventually break down the cyanide in the open pit. The
arsenic problem at the Royal Oak Giant Mine remains more complex, with the
deadly substance sitting dangerously close to the city's drinking water
supply. Arsenic Trioxide is a naturally occurring by-product of the gold
recovery process, and even an aspirin-sized dosage is fatal to humans. In
the early days of the mine, arsenic was put into 45-gallon drums and
simply dropped down abandoned mine shafts. Once groundwater began to carry
the poison into the drinking water, the mine was forced to store the waste
in underground containment chambers. The problem did not go away, however,
as harsh northern conditions cracked the containers. Currently, pumps run
continuously to keep groundwater from entering and flooding the chambers.
Though DIAND will spend $2 million on surface remediation at Giant this
year, this figure is only a small part of the entire clean up, which even
conservative estimates predict to be upwards of over $200 million. Both
Giant and Colomac mines were owned by Royal Oak, a now-bankrupt company of
ill repute that has left a string of environmentally disastrous mine sites
across Canada. Source, 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/
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