Idled Canadian iron ore mine charged with $30K fine over pollution – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – December 21, 2016)

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Wabush Mines, an iron ore operation in Canada’s western Labrador that has been shut since 2014, will have to pay a Cdn$30,000 (about $22K) fine for polluting the environment, a Newfoundland and Labrador provincial court has ruled.

The verdict follows the company’s guilty plea last week to offences including failing to perform acute-lethality sampling of effluent and failing to notify an inspector following a deposit out of the normal course of events.

In practical terms, that means Wabush Mines didn’t test the mine’s surroundings to determine whether there was any amount of waste being released that could harm rainbow trout. The company also failed to let an inspector know there was an unusual amount of deposit. All this happened in May 2015.

The majority of the fine, $25,000, will go to the federal Environmental Damages Fund, and the company’s name will be added to the Environmental Offenders Registry.

Before it closed, Wabush Mines was Canada’s third largest iron ore operation, with an annual capacity of 6 million tonnes. Mining there began in 1965, at the Scully Mine, with iron concentrate railed to a pelletizing facility in Pointe Noire, Quebec, for shipment to Europe and throughout North America.

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