MINE WASTE
Mining Waste
Mines produce waste, a lot of it. Some companies construct tailings dumps, some tailings dams and others just dump it in rivers or the sea, whatever method they use, mining leaves behind a legacy of waste that lasts forever. Burst dams, pollution, filled rivers and devastated ecosystems are regular consequences of modern mining where recovery rates can be as little as 5-10 grams of gold per tonne of rock and ore mined.
This page deals with waste, overtime lots of waste but Mining Monitor is starting with -
Submarine Tailings Disposal [from STD Toolkit - Mining Watch Canada]
Submarine Tailings Disposal is dumping mine tailings into the sea through a submerged pipe. In the Western Pacific region, mining companies argue that Submarine Tailings Disposal (STD) is the best solution for tailings disposal. They say that storing tailings on the land in this region is risky—because the Western Pacific experiences earthquakes; has many moun- tainous islands with no place for on-land storage; is an area where land is urgently needed for agriculture; and has high rainfall, making tailings dams vulnerable to collapse. In modern STD systems, mining companies claim that the goal is to deposit tailings into deep waters of the sea where there is little oxygen. They say that therefore tailings will be less likely to oxidize and leach out toxic metals. Mining companies also argue that marine life at these depths is not so abundant and it is not important to the human food chain.
By pumping their tailings into the sea, mining companies remove unsightly tailings on land. They “solve” the problems of maintaining tailings impoundments and dams, and managing acid mine drainage and metal leaching from tailings impoundments, sometimes “in perpetuity” (forever). And in case of a dam failure, mining companies avoid the risks of social rage and of expensive clean up.
Unlike on land, if something goes wrong with an STD system, there is little the company, or anyone else, can do. The public may not even discover a problem, because it is out of sight under the sea. Even if a problem becomes known, it is harder to hold a company legally and financially responsible.
STD is also a relatively cheap mine-waste solution. Placer Dome’s Dick Zandee wrote in a 1985 article about their surface disposal system into Calancan Bay in the Philippines that, “operation of the current sea-disposal system costs less than half as much as the operation of the tailings-pond system.” For the Kitsault mine in Canada, which was given a special site-specific exemption in 1979 to operate an STD system, it was estimated that STD would save the company $25 million dollars per year in tailings disposal costs relative to the cost of land-disposal. The U.S. Department of the Interior concluded that, on average, STD use resulted in a 17% reduction in capital costs and a 1.6% increase in operating costs.
In discussions with local communities and governments, mining companies and their consultants make claims about the environmental acceptability of STD and they claim STD, or Deep Sea Tailing Placement “is proven technology.” But there are known risks related to STD that mining companies and their consultants either do not discuss with local communities or tend to minimize their severity by speaking of “mitigating measures” that can be taken or good “monitoring systems” that will warn people when a problem does occur. Especially during the pre-permitting phase, there is not enough transparency about the risks associated with STD.
Where STD is Practiced, and Proposed Sites 
The first mines to use STD were the Atlas Mine, in the Philippines, and the Island Copper Mine, in Canada (both in 1971) and the Jordan River Mine, in Canada, and the Black Angel Mine, in Greenland (both in 1972.) In all of these cases, the mines dumped at relatively shallow depths and experienced serious problems with wider than predicted dispersal (spreading out) of tailings, turbidity, and metal leaching.
The first mines to use STD were the Atlas Mine, in the Philippines, and the Island Copper Mine, in Canada (both in 1971) and the Jordan River Mine, in Canada, and the Black Angel Mine, in Greenland (both in 1972.) In all of these cases, the mines dumped at relatively shallow depths and experienced serious problems with wider than predicted dispersal (spreading out) of tailings, turbidity, and metal leaching.
Even after it became well known that these mines were damaging marine environments, the Island Copper Mine, the Black Angel Mine, and the Atlas Mine continued using STD into the 1990s. (The Atlas Mine is still operating.)
STD is currently being practiced in the following places:
• In Chile at the Huasco Iron Pelletising Plant operated by Compania Minera del Pacifico
• In Indonesia at Minahasa Raya and Batu Hijau mines both operated by Newmont Corporation
• In Turkey at the Cayeli Bakir Mine operated by Inmet Mining
• In Papua New Guinea at the Lihir Mine operated by Lihir Management Company and Rio Tinto
• In Papua New Guinea at the Misima Mine operated by Placer Dome
• In England at the Boulby Potash Mine operated by Cleveland Potash
• In the Philippines at the Atlas Mine operated by Atlas Consolidated Mining and Development Corporation
• In Chile at the Huasco Iron Pelletising Plant operated by Compania Minera del Pacifico
• In Indonesia at Minahasa Raya and Batu Hijau mines both operated by Newmont Corporation
• In Turkey at the Cayeli Bakir Mine operated by Inmet Mining
• In Papua New Guinea at the Lihir Mine operated by Lihir Management Company and Rio Tinto
• In Papua New Guinea at the Misima Mine operated by Placer Dome
• In England at the Boulby Potash Mine operated by Cleveland Potash
• In the Philippines at the Atlas Mine operated by Atlas Consolidated Mining and Development Corporation
Additional Reading – both from Mining Watch Canada’s STD Toolkit
Science of dumping mine waste at sea
Decision nears on Papua New Guinea coastal mine waste dumping
| Thursday, 24 March 2011 | |
| By John Luick1, Gregg Brunskill2, Gavin Mudd3, Amanda Reichelt-Brushett4, and Philip Shearman5The dumping of mine tailings waste into the shallow coastal marine environment is currently before the National Court of Papua New Guinea, in a case that will have far-reaching implications. At stake are the pristine waters of the Bismarck Sea and the livelihoods of thousands of coastal inhabitants on one hand, and the future of mine waste disposal on the other: a number of other mine operators are reportedly waiting on the result before announcing their own plans for waste disposal.
While a decision may come as early as 15 April, the issues raised make the information timely and important regardless.
The newly-constructed Chinese nickel cobalt mine, coastal treatment facility, and submarine waste pipeline are fully constructed. The only thing standing in the way of operation is a temporary injunction, brought on behalf of 1081 local landowners, who fear that the proposed dumping threatens their livelihoods. They seek a permanent injunction against dumping, which would require the mining company to use some form of on-land waste disposal. Specifically, they fear that the pipe will leak waste into the local reef lagoon; that upwelling will carry a suspended fraction back up into the upper mixed layer and thence into the lagoon; or that the local fishery will be impacted by the discharges.
The waste pipe runs 450 metres from the shoreline out to the 150 metre isobath. The bottom slopes are fairly gentle: about 12˚ or less from the shore out to 1300 m, where the slope is less than 1˚. For part of the way, the path is constrained by the walls of a submarine canyon (Basamuk Canyon, located 40 km due SE of Madang, PNG, at the eastern side of Astrolabe Bay).
The dominant large scale oceanic features are: the strong New Guinea Coastal Undercurrent that flows west along the coast at about 200 metres depth; the New Guinea Coastal Current that reverses with the monsoons; and a wind-driven upwelling plume during the SE monsoon that spreads along the PNG coast (Cresswell, 2000). In the vicinity of the mine outfall, none of these appear to drive massive large-scale upwelling (Hasegawa et. al, 2010). However, progressive vector diagrams published in the Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) (NSR, 1999 and Coffey enesar, 2007) show clear evidence of onshore drift near the seabed above the proposed outfall site at about 1 cm/s (750 metres/day). The drift is persistent; while it occasionally swings alongshore, it was seen most of the time and in all months of the year. If it continued onshore beyond the point of observation, it would advect a suspended fraction up into the base of the mixed layer and possibly beyond. The mixed layer is often as little as 30 metres vertically above the proposed outfall. Thus, the fears of the local landowners are well-founded.
Upwelling is not the only matter of concern in this case. The lateritic Ni and Co ore refinery solid tailings are predicted to form a sedimentary apron within the submarine canyon and seaward between the 500 and 1500 metre depth contours, over an area of at least 150 km2 of ocean floor, to a thickness of tens of meters. The area in which this occurs is within the “Coral Triangle”, an area described by marine biologists as having the highest diversity of corals, fish, crustaceans, molluscs and marine plant species in the world (Veron et al., 2009). SE Asian countries (including PNG) have vowed to protect and conserve this region of exceptional biodiversity. This region is also the location of one of the few healthy tuna fisheries in the ocean (Lehodey et al., 1997). Aside from a few scattered bottom samples, virtually nothing is known about the deep area that will be buried in Fe/Mn rich silty clay refinery tailings, that are enriched in a chemical soup of trace elements and refinery reagents. Submarine canyons are thought to be “hotspots” of poorly known biodiversity and biomass (DeLeo et al., 2010). It should be added that nearby larger mines are being developed; their owners are waiting on the outcome of this case before deciding on whether to use the same method of waste disposal, in the same submarine canyon. Finally, it has been suggested that the coastal treatment facility be expanded to process ore barged in from distant mines. Thus, quite a significant fraction of the continental slope of the Astrolabe Bay/Vitiaz Basin would be buried deeply in tailings waste. Regrettably, this method of deep sea tailing placement has already happened at Lihir and Misima Island, where significant areas of surface water and deep seafloor have been deleteriously impacted (SAMS 2010).
The mining company and its consultants have argued before the Court that, because the site is located in a seismically active and high rainfall zone with sharp topography, a conventional land-based tailings storage facility (TSF) is too expensive. This is due to the heavy engineering which is required for site investigations, design, construction, operations and then decommissioning a TSF in these conditions. The fact, however, that they readily acknowledge that TSFs have been built in similar contexts around the world – and safely – is proof that the primary driver for preferring marine waste dumping is cost – certainly not any alleged environmental risks of marine dumping versus land-based TSFs (which can be addressed by a good TSF engineer). With an above-ground, land-based TSF, the waste remains above ground and can be easily monitored – and, if deemed necessary, remedial action readily taken. If tailings are dumped into the marine environment, it is inconceivable that any remediation could ever be undertaken practically. Put simply, a land-based TSF would be close to a hundred times as expensive (or more) to build than marine dumping – yet marine tailings disposal has been approved without any understanding of its long-term costs.
The ecotoxicity testing upon which the EIA was based contained a number of flaws and deficiencies that seriously under-estimated risk. Early toxicity tests were completed on temperate species using 0.45µm filtered tailings water. Other tests completed after proposed changes to the ore processing included the use of some tropical marine species using 22µm filtered tailing water. In the real world no organism will be exposed to filtered tailing waters. No tests exposed organisms to tailing filtrates for longer than 96 hours. No tests were completed to investigate trophic transfer to contaminants. No mesocosm studies were completed. All toxicity tests were conducted in static water as opposed to flow through conditions. No tests were completed on whole tailing toxicity (i.e. equivalent to sediment toxicity tests) even though this was a recommendation made in a sub-consultants report. Furthermore consultants recommended safe dilution rates of tailings water to protect 95 per cent of species. However these calculations had only 50 per cent confidence in their prediction – an enormous uncertainty that does not give confidence in ensuring that species will not be harmed.
The PNG Department of Environment and Conservation, by their own admission are short on capacity, to either critically review Environmental Plans or to monitor the environmental performance of the mining industry. Indeed the department has been treated somewhat as a ‘rubber-stamping’ agency by the small number of environmental consulting firms that monopolise the sector. Despite warnings from both the Department of Fisheries and the Department of Mining about the problems in the miner’s EIA relating to adverse currents and the toxicity of tailings as far back as 1999, and despite several peer reviews and external assessments calling for substantial modifications and new data (mostly unheeded), the project remains essentially unchanged from that proposed a decade ago. In a rather sad indictment of the parliamentary government response, the Environmental Act of Papua New Guinea was then revised implicitly to facilitate the dumping.
The case took a dramatic twist when Dr Tracy Shimmield, of the Scottish Academy of Marine Sciences (SAMS), took the stand on behalf of the mine owners, to testify that the best way to test for upwelling would be to start dumping as soon as instruments could be placed in the field to observe the effect. This, she suggested, would proceed for some months, after which instruments would be retrieved and upwelling and tailings dispersion assessed. It emerged that SAMS itself had been contracted to perform the fieldwork and analysis. Dr Shimmield’s affidavit further proposes that SAMS continue to monitor the behaviour of the tailings plume on the assumption that the tailings dumping continues indefinitely. The Shimmield affidavit strongly supports marine tailings dumping as an alternative to on-land storage, repeatedly stressing that the majority of the waste ends up in deep water. (This logic has an interesting history. About a decade ago, in the face of a series of submarine tailings pipe breakages resulting in ecological and human health catastrophes, the proponents of marine tailings dumping began insisting that the practice be referred to as “Deep Sea Tailings Placement” (DSTP) in order to emphasise the final “deep and still” resting place of the majority of the waste. While the new title may detract attention from the pipe breaks and upwelling issues, it ignores the fact that abundant, and almost completely unexplored, life exists on and within the deep sea bed that is destroyed by burial.)
Dr Shimmield revealed under cross-examination that SAMS will also be paid by the World Bank to produce a set of guidelines to assist governments in setting conditions for marine dumping of mine waste.
The timing of the proposed guidelines, and their announcement before the Court, also has an interesting history. In 2003, the World Bank produced the “Extractive Industries Review” (World Bank, 2003), which concluded that:
The timing of the Shimmield guideline-drafting contract is concerning, because its announcement (before the Court) maximizes the degree to which it undermines the landowners’ case. While the Review does not completely reject the option of “Submarine Tailings Disposal” as they call it, there is a big leap between leaving a door open a crack (as in the Review) and flinging it open with an effective endorsement, which in a country like PNG, with very weak regulatory controls, is precisely the effect of a new set of guidelines issued by a world body.
In response to queries from the authors, the World Bank has stated:
“This (support for the new guidelines) does not imply any form of approval (of STD) by the World Bank, but demonstrates that should the Government go down this path, then the Bank supports the establishment of a regulatory framework which minimizes any potential environmental impacts from whatever tailings management system which is adopted by the Sovereign State of Papua New Guinea. The Bank’s assistance is motivated by a desire to see that permits issued through that ‘normal’ process are then also subjected to further site-specific stringent requirements, to strengthen ability to hold industry accountable and responsible in discharging their permitted activities.”
It may be that in certain future circumstances the guidelines will have a positive impact. For example, in a developed country, in which there exists the capacity and political will to enforce them, they might make a useful framework to deny permission to dump wastes in coastal seas. However, nearly all developed countries have either explicitly or effectively banned the practice of shallow marine dumping of mine tailings waste (STD/DSTP). Even in countries like PNG, a generally-excellent set of laws exists. The only problem is that they are not enforced, or enforced poorly. So however lofty the stated goals of the World Bank, their effect will be to simply facilitate a practice that – like many early forms of industrial pollution – should be consigned to the dustbin of history.
The situation, as it currently stands, is that a state-funded European institution is being paid by a foreign mining company and/or a foreign national government agency to not just monitor but to actively advocate in Court marine pollution on a massive scale (covering perhaps hundreds of square kilometres of seabed with potentially toxic waste), a practice which almost certainly would not be tolerated in their home country, while at the same time being paid by the World Bank to produce guidelines to govern when and how the dumping should be done – guidelines which (if followed) would have disallowed the particular mine outfall they hope to monitor.
While scientific institutions increasingly have to chase the dollar to survive, as scientists we have to be able to say no when profitable consultancies become ethically questionable, or when our actions in faraway places can leave a poisonous legacy for generations to come.
The authors of this report were called by the landowners to provide unpaid “expert witness” testimony in their case to get a permanent injunction against the shallow marine dumping at Astrolabe Bay.
1South Australian Research and Development Institute, Adelaide, SA, Australia
284 Alligator Creek Road, Alligator Creek, QLD 4816, Australia 3Environmental Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, Australia 4School of Environmental Science and Management, Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW, Australia 5Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia and University of Papua New Guinea, Port Moresby, PNG
References
Cresswell, G. (2000) Coastal currents of northern Papua New Guinea, and the Sepik River outflow. Mar. Freshwater Res., 2000, 51, 553–64.
Coffey enesar (2007) Environmental Baseline Report, Ramu Nickel Project. CR 161_33_v2., pp1-63, plus Appendices 1-14.
De Leo, Fabio C., Craig R. Smith, Ashley A. Rowden, David A. Bowden and Malcolm R. Clark (2010) Submarine canyons: hotspots of benthic biomass and productivity in the deep sea. Proc. R. Soc. B 2010 277:2783-2792. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2010.0462.
Hasegawa, T., A. Kentaro, K. Mizuno, R. Lukas, B. Taguchi, and H. Sasaki (2010) Coastal upwelling along the north coast of Papua New Guinea and El Niño events during 1981–2005. Ocean Dynamics, DOI 10.1007/s10236-010-0334-y.
Lehodey, P., M. Bertignac, J. Hampton, A. Lewis, and J. Picaut (1997) El Nino Southern Oscillation and tuna in the western Pacific. Nature 389:715-718.
NSR (1999) Ramu Nickel Project Environmental Plan, Volume A: Executive Summary. CR 161/9/v4 plus Appendices 1-25.
SAMS (2010) Independent Evaluation of Deep-Sea Mine Tailings Placement (DSTP) in PNG. Scottish Academy of Marine Science, Project Number: 8.ACP.PNG.18-B/15. http://www.mpi.org.au/submarine-tailings-disposal.aspx
Striking a Better Balance: Volume I. The World Bank Group and Extractive Industries. The Final Report of the Extractive Industries Review, December, 2003.
Veron, J., L. Devantier, E. Turak, A. Green, S. Kininmonth, M. Stafford-Smith, and N. Peterson (2009) Delineating the Coral Triangle. Galaxea, Journal of Coral Reef Studies 11: 91-100.
This is an updated article originally published on Papua New Guinea Mine Watch - this updated version is from Science Alert
|
