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Mining Conflict and Opposition

Giant Mine to cost billions to cleanup and look after for thousands of years – by Jack Caldwell (Mining.com – April 3, 2013)

http://www.mining.com/

The news wires are alive with reports of a billion dollar estimate for remediating the Giant Mine in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. Here is an extract from one report:

Documents obtained by northern environmentalists show the government expects the cost of cleaning up the Giant Mine just outside Yellowknife to be nearly a billion dollars – perhaps the largest single environmental cleanup in Canada and paid for entirely by taxpayers. Initial estimates for safely dealing with the huge site, which includes a toxic smorgasbord of buildings, tailings ponds and a quarter-million tonnes of arsenic stored underground, were about $488 million. A federal progress report on the project says costs have increased as more has become known about the scale of the problem.

“The increase in estimated costs occurred as a result of the normal progression through the preliminary phases of the remediation project (… increased site information and detail obtained over time),” the report says. Rising labour and equipment costs are also part of the problem. So is the current state of the mine, which is so bad that emergency measures need to be taken this summer before large amounts of arsenic start escaping from collapsing buildings. The official price tag of $903 million could get higher yet.

The 2010 764-page Giant Mine Remediation Project Developer’s Assessment Report is available at this link:

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Northern Ontario First Nations seek delay on new mining rules – by Pav Jordan (Globe and Mail – April 3, 2013)

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.

A group of First Nation communities in mineral-rich Northern Ontario is asking the province to postpone implementation of new mining regulations that went into effect this week, claiming the rules were drafted without full consultation.

The new regulations are part of a modernized Mining Act that was passed in 2009 to promote mineral exploration and development in a way that recognizes aboriginal and treaty rights and minimizes impact on the environment.

The Anishinabek Nation, which represents 39 member communities and some 55,000 people in Ontario, says the new regulations should have the blessing of a bilateral table on mining that the government agreed to create in September.

“We had a very distinct understanding with Ontario as to the process by which we were going to do this work,” said Chief Isadore Day, a spokesman for the Union of Ontario Indians that represents the Anishinabek Nation.

In a statement penned by Grand Council Chief Patrick Madahbee, the Union of Ontario Indians also said the Anishinabek was concerned about recognition of treaty rights, resource revenue sharing, environmental stewardship and local capacity of First Nations to meet demands of regulations.

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Quebec imposes moratorium on uranium exploration and mining – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – March 28, 2013)

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Quebec-focused uranium explorer Strateco Resources on Thursday denounced an announcement made by Quebec Environment Minister Yves-François Blanchet, effectively placing a moratorium on uranium exploration and mining in the province, and ordering an impact study on the exploration and development of the mineral.

The Minister’s announcement followed ongoing legal proceedings aimed at forcing the provincial government to make a decision on the company’s flagship Matoush project, which is located east of James Bay on The James Bay Cree Nation’s Eeyou Istchee reserve.

Last year, after two years of public hearings, the James Bay Cree Nation enacted a permanent moratorium on uranium exploration, mining, milling and waste emplacement on their territory on the east shore of James Bay, known as Eeyou Istchee.

Despite this moratorium, federal regulators, including the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, allowed Strateco’s Matoush uranium project to proceed within this Cree territory. Nevertheless, before this project could proceed, provincial authorisation was also required, for which Strateco had already been waiting for two years.

The company in January filed a court order to force the Quebec government to make a decision on its exploration project in the province’s Otish Mountains.

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Congo Reassures Copper Miners Rattled by Attack in Katanga – by Michael J. Kavanagh (Bloomberg.com – March 27, 2013)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Democratic Republic of Congo’s mines minister reassured investors after separatists attacked the capital of mineral-rich Katanga province, raising concern among analysts that the region faces increased conflict.

At least 35 people died when 250 Kata Katanga militants battled soldiers and police in Lubumbashi on March 23 before surrendering to the United Nations. The government introduced a curfew and some businesses and schools closed early on March 25 in the city, home to the offices of some of the biggest mining companies operating in Congo.

“I’m personally reassuring miners that these events are temporary and will be completely put to a halt,” Mines Minister Martin Kabwelulu said by mobile-phone message on March 25. “A psychosis will reign for several days, but that will pass as well.”

After years of conflict and instability, Congo’s mining industry has flourished since 2009, with copper production doubling to about 600,000 metric tons last year, most of it coming from Katanga in the southeast. The Central African country was the eighth-largest producer of the metal in 2012, accounting for 3.4 percent of world output, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It also produces half of the world’s cobalt, used in rechargeable batteries.

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NDP to introduce federal bill on conflict minerals – by Iain Marlow (Globe and Mail – March 25, 2013)

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.

The NDP is about to reintroduce legislation designed to ensure Canadian companies are not using conflict minerals in their supply chain – and that consumers can be certain their smartphones and other electronics are free of minerals fuelling violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

On Tuesday, NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar will again table legislation that aims to have corporations and subsidiaries operating in Canada report annually to the government about their supply chains. This would inject transparency and due diligence into an industry where complicated global supply chains (that stretch into lawless conflict zones) and myriad smelters (often operating with little regulatory oversight) have allowed some multinationals to claim ignorance of ties to one of the world’s worst conflicts, in which an estimated five million have lost their lives.

If Mr. Dewar succeeds in gaining momentum for the bill – after having a previous conflict minerals bill die on the order paper ahead of the 2011 federal election – the use of minerals such as “gold, cassiterite, wolframite and coltan and their derivatives, such as tin, tungsten and tantalum” from countries in the Great Lakes region of Africa could earn corporations the type of consumer scorn previously heaped on purveyors of “blood diamonds” and users of sweatshops.

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Environmental approvals for Ring of Fire mine running into difficulty – by Heather Scoffield (The Canadian Press/Winnipeg Free Press – March 25, 2013)

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/

OTTAWA – Just as the federal government strives to speed up environmental reviews of major mining and energy projects, approvals for the giant Ring of Fire proposal in northern Ontario are getting increasingly tangled.

On Monday, a key environmental group asked for provincial government mediation on how Cliffs Natural Resources plans to develop a giant chromite deposit in the fragile muskeg of the James Bay lowlands.

The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society says Cleveland-based Cliffs is dramatically changing its plans for a mine without properly consulting with the public.

“Several major alterations have been incorporated at the last minute and without the benefit of public scrutiny,” the Wildlands League chapter of CPAWS says in a letter to Ontario Environment Minister Jim Bradley.

The letter says Cliffs is backing away from a long-term plan to do a combination of open-pit mining and underground mining, opting to stick with only open pit.

It also notes Cliffs is considering only a single route — a north-south road that would be heavily subsidized — to transport chromite ore out of the area, instead of considering other ways such, as an east-west corridor that could link First Nations to much-needed infrastructure.

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Canadian ‘invasion’ of Guatemala’s mines causing conflicts – by Catherine Solyom (Montreal Gazette – March 22, 2013)

http://www.montrealgazette.com/index.html

MONTREAL — With her broad, patient smile, her work-worn hands folded over a traditional, woven skirt, Lolita Chavez is hardly a menacing figure. Yet in Guatemala, Chavez has been branded a threat to national security and a terrorist for speaking out against the development of Canadian-owned mines against the people’s will.

In Montreal Friday as part of a cross-country tour to draw attention to ongoing conflicts around mines — called “Plan Nord, Plans Sud” in Quebec — Chavez spoke to a crowded auditorium at UQÀM about her experience and Canadians’ responsibility in the “new invasion” of her country.

First came the Spanish conquest, then the civil war in Guatemala that claimed some 200,000 lives, now come the Canadians, Chavez told the crowd of students, academics and activists.

“Canadian companies are the main protagonists in this invasion that brings only death and destruction,” said Chavez, the spokesperson for 87 indigenous K’iche’ (Mayan) communities in Santa Cruz del Quiché, about 145 kilometres north west of Guatemala City. “And when we say we don’t want it, they say we are ignorant, or brutes, or we don’t understand the benefits. But we have a right to say no.”

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Finding the Truth: Facts Behind Cyanide Beach Film – by Levi Rowe (March 22, 2013)


Levi Rowe is a Santa Barbara college student majoring in Entrepreneurship with a minor in Philosophy. levil.rowe@gmail.com

The recent film produced by John Dougherty, called Cyanide Beach, attempts to link Augusta Resource – and thereby Rosemont Copper – to a closed mine – the Furtei mine, in Sardinia, Italy. The producer aims to incite public fear and raise alarm over the proposed Rosemont Copper mine outside of Tucson, Arizona, with the goal of delaying and ultimately stopping the project.

The trouble with Cyanide Beach is that, like many “investigative” pieces, Mr. Dougherty started with a conclusion and worked backwards. When one starts research with a clear goal, or hypothesis, one must be extremely careful to adjust the hypothesis as their research disproves the original hypothesis. The investigator, or researcher, must resist the urge to become personally invested in their hypothesis lest they begin to distort facts and findings to fit the intended (hoped) result.

When these flawed, distorted findings are shared with the public as a means to inform, what we end up with is a grossly misinformed public.  And that’s the case with Cyanide Beach.

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Tempers flare at hearing on Central Arizona copper mine – by Michelle Peirano (Arizona Daily Star – March 22, 2013)

http://azstarnet.com/

RESOLUTION COPPER SEEKING LAND SWAP FOR C. ARIZ. PROJECT

WASHINGTON – Cronkite News Service – A four-hour congressional hearing grew testy Thursday as House members considered a bill to swap thousands of acres of private and federal land to make way for a massive copper mine in Central Arizona.

The bill to trade land near Superior with Resolution Copper Mining passed the House last year but stalled in the Senate, and is back now for its eighth year.

Supporters said the deal, which would give Resolution access to a copper-rich piece of government land, would bring thousands of jobs and more than $6 billion in new taxes to the state over 40 years of operation. “The economic benefits are staggering,” said Republican Rep. Paul Gosar, who co-sponsored the bill with Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick, both of Arizona.

The company says the mine would be the largest copper producer in the country and would account for 25 percent of the world’s copper, turning out 1 billion pounds or more a year.

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Ontario MPP attacks Mining Act reforms, warns of red-tape delays – by HazMat Staff (March 21, 2013)

http://www.hazmatmag.com/

Norm Miller, MPP for Parry Sound — Muskoka, is challenging amendments to Ontario’s Mining Act with just two weeks left before they are fully implemented by the province.

Miller is warning provincial officials that the new detailed plans required by the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines will create significant delays for Ontario mining companies, costing them millions of dollars, while drowning the province in red tape.

Historically, Canadian mining companies have been able to drill their mining claims without provincial permission. As of April 1, 2013, companies will need to submit details of almost every stage of their exploration plans and consult with affected First Nations.

“By forcing prospectors to now file detailed plans for activities as simple as flipping stones and driving stakes, the regulatory burden is increasing on this critical first step in the mining process,” said Miller, speaking at Queen’s Park on March 7, 2013. “When these amendments were passed, the current government announced they would modernize the system and promised to bring the Mining Act into the 21st century. Judging by the response so far, it sounds more like a step back.”

The amendments detail how the broader principles in the revised Act will work in practice. In 2009, the present amendments to the Mining Act were passed by the Ontario Legislature through Bill 173 – An Act to Amend the Mining Act.

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Arsenic release fears: federal government seeks emergency cleanup of toxic [Yellowknife] mine – by Bob Weber (Canadian Press/The Tyee – March 17, 2013)

http://thetyee.ca/

YELLOWKNIFE – Federal officials are scrambling to clean up a crumbling, abandoned northern gold mine that is in imminent danger of releasing massive amounts of arsenic, asbestos and other toxins.

“It’s pretty scary stuff,” said Mark Palmer, senior adviser on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development’s Giant Mine Project, which describes a proposed cleanup of collapsing, poison-filled buildings and caverns on the shore of Great Slave Lake as an emergency response.

“We are worried they are going to fall down and if that happens there will be a release.” The Giant Mine just outside Yellowknife was an economic mainstay for 50 years. But its gold was locked within crystals of arsenopyrite, and after the mine finally closed in 2004, about 237,000 tonnes of highly toxic, water-soluble arsenic trioxide remained on the site.

Most of the arsenic was blown back underground, where huge dustpiles of it sit in 15 subterranean chambers, some big enough to swallow an 11-storey building. About 3,600 cubic metres of arsenic and arsenic-contaminated material remain in surface structures — uncontained and, in many cases, exposed to the elements.

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HudBay granted injunction, judge tells RCMP to enforce it – by Bruce Owen (Winnipeg Free Press – March 21, 2013)

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/

One of the top mining companies in Manitoba won a court injunction Wednesday to stop aboriginal protesters from blocking access to two of its remote mines.

But Justice Glenn Joyal’s court order could end up having no more clout than similar injunctions issued by courts in Manitoba and other provinces to restrict Idle No More protestors, who’ve called for a national day of action today to mark International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

In approving the temporary injunction on behalf of Hudson Bay Mining & Smelting, Joyal said he expects protesters from Mathias Colomb Cree Nation (MCCN) to follow it and perhaps more importantly, RCMP to enforce it.

“The intention has to be to enforce the order,” Joyal said to lawyers representing the Mounties. “I’m confident the injunction will be respected and that the parties will in good faith carry on about their business.” An RCMP spokesman said late in the day the Mounties were reviewing the injunction.

A judge criticized the RCMP in January for not enforcing an injunction on behalf of Canadian National to remove protesters from a rail line west of Portage la Prairie.

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Klondike in Lapland: Mining Companies Swarm to Finland’s Far North – by Renate Nimtz-Köster (Spiegel Online – November 2, 2012)

http://www.spiegel.de/international/

Mining companies are flocking to northern Finland as new deposits of gold, nickel and other minerals promise vast profits. But the area’s fragile wetland ecosystem is paying the price. Conservationists are so far fighting a losing battle.

Riikka Karppinen used to catch pike as long as her arm here. She and her brother would spend days exploring the marshy wilderness. It was eight years ago, when Riikka was just 10 years old, that she saw the first red sticks stuck into the ground. To begin with, there were only a few but before long there were hundreds. “No one cared much back then,” Riikka Karppinen recalls.

In the mean time, though, the red markers have given way to the machines. “You can hear the noise of the drills day and night,” says Karppinen. Anglo American (AA), one of the world’s biggest mining companies, went treasure hunting in Finnish Lapland, 120 kilometers north of the Polar Circle. And deep below the marshlands of Viiankiaapa are nickel deposits that AA has hailed as the find of the century.

Karppinen’s childhood paradise has now become a symbol of the rush for precious metals and minerals that has overcome the entire country. Foreign mining companies are flocking to Finland to mine its treasures. Here, in some of the oldest rock formations in Europe, lie reserves of valuable raw materials, with geologists describing the ore deposits as among the richest in the world.

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Quebec Innu file $900-million lawsuit against Iron Ore Co. of Canada – The Canadian Press (Globe and Mail – March 21, 2013)

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.

MONTREAL – Two Quebec Innu communities have filed a $900-million lawsuit against the Iron Ore Co. of Canada, claiming the miner has violated its rights for nearly 60 years.

The Innu First Nations of Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam (Uashaunnuat) and Matimekush-Lac John (MLJ) said the IOC, which is majority-owned by Rio Tinto, caused harm by operating a large mining complex and railway on traditional territory (Nitassinan) in northeastern Quebec and Labrador since the 1950s without their prior consent.

The mining complex and activities are located in the communities of Schefferville, Labrador City and Sept-Îles.

“IOC and now Rio Tinto are the companies that have inflicted the most harm on the Uashaunnuat and MLJ and caused the most damage to our Nitassinan,” vice-chief Mike McKenzie of Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam said in a statement on Wednesday.

The lawsuit and a motion seeking an injunction to stop all mining activity were filed Monday in Quebec Superior Court. They claim that IOC’s mines and other facilities have ruined the environment, displaced members from their territory and prevented them from practising their traditional way of life.

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NEWS RELEASE: $900 million lawsuit filed against Rio Tinto’s IOC

Innu communities of Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam and Matimekush-Lac John defend their aboriginal rights

MONTREAL, March 20, 2013 /CNW Telbec/ – On March 18 at the Quebec Superior Court in Montreal, the Innu First Nations of Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam (Uashaunnuat) and Matimekush-Lac John (MLJ), whose traditional territory (Nitassinan) covers much of northeastern Quebec and Labrador, filed a motion to obtain an injunction against Iron Ore Company of Canada’s (IOC) mining operations in Quebec and Labrador as well as damages for the harm caused to them by IOC estimated at $900 million. IOC’s majority shareholder is Rio Tinto.

“While Rio Tinto is anxious to uphold its image as a model corporate citizen, boasting of its commitment to aboriginal peoples around the world, the Uashaunnuat and MLJ can attest that, in their own experience, these are nothing but empty words. IOC has undertaken all of its projects without the consent of the Uashaunnuat and MLJ, in violation of our rights.

IOC and now Rio Tinto are the companies that have inflicted the most harm on the Uashaunnuat and MLJ and caused the most damage to our Nitassinan” said Vice-Chief Mike McKenzie of Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam.

Since the 1950s, IOC has built and operated a mining mega-project within the Nitassinan in and around what are now Schefferville, Labrador City and Sept-Îles without the prior consent of the Uashaunnuat and MLJ. IOC’s mines and other facilities have ruined the environment of the Uashaunnuat and MLJ, have displaced them from their territory and have prevented them from practicing their traditional activities as well as their traditional way of life.

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