Mining Environmental Accidents, Pollution, Tailing Dams and Abandoned Mines – Page 28

‘Brazil learned nothing’: Another deadly dam collapse raises questions about Bolsonaro’s plans to expand mining – by Stephanie Nolen (Globe and Mail – January 30, 2019)

January 30, 2019

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

In November 2015, Brazil experienced a deadly dam collapse at the Samarco mine in Mariana. Nothing was done. Three-and-a-half years later, after another deadly dam collapse, questions remain around regulations for the mining industry

A month after a tailings dam collapsed and killed 19 people in the Brazilian town of Mariana in November, 2015, the legislature in the state of Minas Gerais gathered to consider new mining legislation.

Congress members meeting 100 kilometres from the site of the disaster at the Samarco mine voted to reduce the role given to the Ministerio Publico, a government agency that typically advocates for environmental, Indigenous and public-safety considerations, in approving new mining projects.

Vale’s Brazil disaster to prompt buyers to take more Australian iron ore – by Melanie Burton and Muyu Xu (Reuters U.S. – January 30, 2019)

January 30, 2019

https://www.reuters.com/

MELBOURNE/BEIJING (Reuters) – Vale SA’s catastrophic dam failure in Brazil may knock it off its perch as the biggest iron ore exporter as the resulting rally in high-grade ore prices steers buyers towards rivals offering cheaper ore, industry sources said on Wednesday.

The world’s largest iron ore miner is facing public ire and tougher regulation after the collapse of its tailings dam in the Brazilian region of Brumadinho killed at least 84 in one of the country’s worst ever industrial disasters. Hundreds are still missing and presumed dead.

Vale on Tuesday said it would take up to 10 percent of its output offline as it decommissions a total of 19 dams over three years, a move that would cut up to 40 million tonnes of iron ore production a year.

Vale to cut output, shut down dams after Brazil disaster – by Jake Spring and Gram Slattery (Reuters U.S. – January 29, 2019)

January 29, 2019

https://www.reuters.com/

BRASILIA/BRUMADINHO, Brazil (Reuters) – Vale SA (VALE3.SA), the world’s largest iron ore miner, on Tuesday vowed to take as much as 10 percent of its ore output offline in order to decommission 10 more dams like the one that burst last week, killing scores of workers and nearby residents.

Chief Executive Fabio Schvartsman said it would temporarily paralyze operations using those dams and spend 5 billion reais ($1.3 billion) to decommission them over the next three years.

The move came as prosecutors began arresting Vale executives over the Friday collapse of a tailings dam in the Brazilian town of Brumadinho, which was hit by a torrent of mining waste that killed at least 84 people and left hundreds more missing.

Brazil eyes management overhaul for Vale after dam disaster – by Gram Slattery (Reuters U.S. – January 28, 2019)

January 29, 2019

https://www.reuters.com/

BRUMADINHO, Brazil (Reuters) – Brazil’s government weighed pushing for a management overhaul at iron ore miner Vale SA on Monday as grief over the hundreds feared killed by a dam burst turned into anger, with prosecutors, politicians and victims’ families calling for punishment.

By Monday night, firefighters in the state of Minas Gerais had confirmed that 65 people were killed by Friday’s disaster, when a burst tailings dam sent a torrent of sludge into the miner’s offices and the town of Brumadinho.

There were still 279 people unaccounted for, and officials said it was unlikely that any would be found alive. Brazil’s acting president, Hamilton Mourao, told reporters a government task force on the disaster response is looking at whether it could or should change Vale’s top management.

New Dam Disaster Puts Vale CEO, Deals and Dividends Under Scrutiny – by Tatiana Bautzer (U.S. News.com – January 27, 2019)

January 28, 2019

https://www.usnews.com/

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – When Fabio Schvartsman took the reins of Vale SA in 2017, he suggested a motto for the world’s largest iron miner, turning the page on a tailings dam disaster that hit a small Brazilian town two years before: “Mariana, never again.”

That and many of Schvartsman’s other big promises look destined for the scrap heap. Four years later and some 100 km (60 miles) from Mariana, a breached Vale tailings dam on Friday unleashed a torrent of mud on another small Brazilian community, Brumadinho, leaving hundreds missing and presumed dead.

While the company’s focus so far has been on the human tragedy, analysts and shareholders have little doubt that Vale cannot continue on the track its CEO set.

UPDATE 2-Brazilian despair turns to anger as toll from Vale dam disaster hits 60 – by Gram Slattery (Reuters Africa – January 28, 2019)

January 28, 2019

https://af.reuters.com/

BRUMADINHO, Brazil, Jan 28 (Reuters) – Grief over the hundreds of Brazilians feared killed in a mining disaster has quickly hardened into anger as victims’ families and politicians say iron ore miner Vale SA and regulators have learned nothing from the recent past.

By Monday, firefighters in the state of Minas Gerais had confirmed 60 people dead in Friday’s disaster, in which a tailings dam broke sending a torrent of sludge into the miner’s offices and the town of Brumadinho. Nearly 300 other people are unaccounted for, and officials said it was unlikely that any would be found alive.

Vale shares plummeted 17 percent in Monday trading on the Sao Paulo stock exchange, which had been closed on Friday. Brazil’s top prosecutor, Raquel Dodge, said the company should be held strongly responsible and criminally prosecuted. Executives could also be personally held responsible, she said.

Hundreds missing in Brazil, 34 found dead, after Vale dam burst – by Gram Slattery (Reuters U.S. – January 26, 2019)

January 27, 2019

https://www.reuters.com/

BRUMADINHO, Brazil (Reuters) – Brazilian rescue workers halted searches for the night on Saturday for hundreds of people missing and feared dead under a sea of mud after a tailings dam burst at an iron ore mine owned by Vale SA, killing at least 34 people.

The dam ruptured on Friday, releasing a torrent of mining waste that slammed into Vale’s facilities and cut through a nearby community, leaving a roughly 150-meter-wide (500-foot-wide) wake of destruction stretching for miles (km).

The Minas Gerais state fire department, which gave the latest confirmed death toll, also said 23 people had been sent to hospitals. Some 250 people remained missing, according to a list released by Vale. All of those missing are Vale employees or contractors, a police spokesman said.

Hundreds missing in Brazil after Vale tailings dam breaks, area evacuated – by Anthony Boadle (Reuters U.S. – January 25, 2019)

January 25, 2019

https://www.reuters.com/

BRASILIA (Reuters) – A Brazil fire brigade said it was searching for about 200 people still unaccounted for after a tailings dam burst on Friday at an iron ore mine owned by Brazilian miner Vale SA in southwestern Minas Gerais state.

A statement from the fire brigade issued in Belo Horizonte city said scores of people were trapped in areas by the river of sludge released by the dam failure.

Vale said there were employees in the administrative buildings of the dam that were covered by the surge of mud and water and there could be casualties in that area. There was no immediate word of fatalities.

Score One for the Flamingos in High-Altitude Fight for Lithium Supplies – by Laura Millan Lombrana (Bloomberg News – December 22, 2018)

December 23, 2018December 21, 2018

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The Chilean government is taking on a U.S. mining company in a spat that could rattle the electric-car industry.

For the past nine months, a U.S. company that is the world’s largest producer of lithium — a key ingredient in electric-car batteries — has been locked in battle with the Chilean government over pricing issues, production quotas and environmental compliance. With no resolution in sight, the fight is sending tremors all the way up the electric vehicle supply chain that provides batteries to Tesla Inc., Nissan Motor Co., Bayerische Motoren Werke AG and other car makers.

The drama is playing out in the northern reaches of Chile’s Andes Mountains amid the arid and austere Atacama Desert, a vast, high-altitude bowl surrounded by snow-capped volcanic peaks named after ancient gods of the indigenous people. The U.S. company, Albemarle Corp., has taken over a massive salt-flats mine, pumping scarce briny water through dried-out salt marshes and lagoons to extract the prized mineral.

A dozen or so miles away, thick flocks of Andean flamingos feed peacefully in a lagoon teaming with tiny shrimp, as they have for countless millennia. But as mining activity surges, water tables are falling amid growing environmental concerns.

Rescue Highlights Dangers, and Possibilities, at Old Mining Sites – by Karen Zraick (New York Times – December 20, 2018)

December 20, 2018

https://www.nytimes.com/

The rescue of three people from a shut-down coal mine in West Virginia last week focused new attention on the hundreds of thousands of inactive or abandoned mines across the country, which can pose major environmental and safety risks.

Some sites, like the Rock House Powellton Mine in Clear Creek, W.Va., where the rescue took place, are simply inactive, meaning the owners could restart operations. Others, particularly in the West, have been abandoned for decades, posing big challenges to government agencies and private entities that seek to clean up or redevelop the sites.

But some have found creative uses for old mining sites, taking advantage of their expansive size, unparalleled acoustics and other unique characteristics. Here’s a look at the problem, and some of the most intriguing solutions.

Effort to reopen Bunker Hill Mine runs into problems – by Becky Kramer (Seattle Times – December 17, 2018)

December 17, 2018

https://www.seattletimes.com/

While many Silver Valley residents are eager to see the Bunker Hill reopen, the Coeur d’Alene Tribe is wary of restarting a historic polluter in the nation’s second-largest Superfund site even under modern environmental laws designed to protect air and water quality.

KELLOGG, Idaho (AP) — For nearly a century, the Bunker Hill Mine in Kellogg was the source of tremendous wealth.

The massive underground mine produced lead for bullets fired in two world wars and zinc for rust-proofing steel. Paychecks from the Bunker supported generations of Idaho workers and their families, and the profits enriched shareholders far beyond the Silver Valley.

These days, however, the closed mine costs U.S. taxpayers about $1 million annually. Polluted water gushes out of the Bunker Hill’s portal at a rate of 1,300 gallons per minute, traveling by ditch to a treatment plant run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The federal government spends about $80,000 each month to remove toxic levels of heavy metals from the water.

The Future of Mountaintop Removal Is Lavender – by Josh Dean (Bloomberg News – December 17, 2018)

December 17, 2018

https://www.bloomberg.com/

In Appalachia, the coal mining process has stripped mountains to their cores, leaving little more than dirt and rocks. But one hardy plant seems to thrive in it.

Mountaintop removal mining—MTR, in industry shorthand—is a catastrophic process with a refreshingly honest name. Basically, a mountain and all the life that once grew upon it is stripped away to expose seams of bituminous coal, leaving behind an enormous pile of dirt and rock that’s good for almost nothing.

Except, it seems, growing lavender. Four years ago a group at the West Virginia Regional Technology Park, a startup incubator in South Charleston, began an experimental program to see if this hardy, trendy plant could be grown on such sites and harvested for oil used in soaps, lotions, and perfumes.

Brazil’s Amazon rainforest under siege by illegal mines – by Ricardo Moraes and Jake Spring (Reuters U.S. – December 11, 2018)

December 13, 2018

https://www.reuters.com/

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Environmental enforcement agents deep in the Amazon rainforest swooped down on an illegal mine in a dawn raid in early November, in a campaign to tamp down on such activities that environmental groups say have reached epidemic scale.

The operation was carried out against a handful of what are now known to be hundreds of illegal Amazon mines in Brazil that have been cataloged for the first time in a study released on Monday.

The project, coordinated by Brazilian advocacy group Instituto Socioambiental, maps all illegal mines in the Amazon rainforest that sprawls across Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia.

Illegal gold rush destroying Amazon rainforest – study – by Anastasia Moloney (Thomson Reuters Foundation – December 10, 2018)

December 11, 2018

https://af.reuters.com/

BOGOTA, Dec 10 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A rise in small-scale illegal gold mining is destroying swathes of the Amazon rainforest, according to research released on Monday that maps the scale of the damage for the first time.

Researchers used satellite imagery and government data to identify at least 2,312 illegal mining sites across six countries in South America – Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Venezuela.

The maps show the spread and scale of illegal mining and were produced by the Amazon Socio-environmental, Geo-referenced Information Project (RAISG), which brings together a network of nonprofit environmental groups in the Amazon.

Canada As Ugly Neighbor: Mines in B.C. Would Devastate Alaskan Tribes – by Ramin Pejan (Earth Justice.org – December 7, 2018)

December 10, 2018

https://earthjustice.org/

Southeast Alaskan Tribes have brought a human rights petition against Canada to protect the fish at the center of their cultures.

Mining operations in Canada are threatening to destroy the way of life of Southeast Alaskan Tribes who were never consulted about the mines by the governments of Canada or British Columbia.

The Tribes have depended for millennia upon the pristine watersheds of the Taku, Stikine, and Unuk rivers. These waters flow through varied and wild landscapes from British Columbia through Alaska and are teeming with salmon and eulachon.

The mines – two of which are operating and four that are proposed – endanger downstream fish populations through the release of toxic mine waste and acidic waters. Fish are fundamental to the Tribes’ cultural practices and livelihoods, making the pollution a violation of the Tribes’ human rights to culture and an adequate means of subsistence.