Clean Production and Toxics

Canada’s toxic mining secret goes to court

In January, the Canadian federal court heard a lawsuit against the Minister of the Environment for failing to ensure that the millions of kilograms of toxic pollution generated every year by Canada’s mining industry is publicly reported. A decision is expected closer to the summer.

The lawsuit was filed in late 2007 by Ecojustice on behalf of Great Lakes United and MiningWatch Canada. The case alleges that the Minister broke the law when he directed mining companies to not report the huge amount of pollution they store in tailings ponds and waste rock piles to the National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI), a publicly accessible database of pollution generated at larger point sources.

Mining waste is a toxic soup of chemicals such as mercury, lead, arsenic, copper, nickel and cyanide. Keeping track of the amount of these chemicals sitting in tailings ponds and waste rock piles is a necessary element of environmental and public health protection.

In 2006, under pressure from groups such as Great Lakes United and MiningWatch Canada, Environment Canada lifted an exemption that allowed mining companies to conceal their pollutant releases from the NPRI.

However, despite lifting the exemption, Environment Canada continues to allow mining companies to hide their toxic releases. As such, there are still no records in the NPRI for the toxic substances put into tailings ponds and waste rock piles by Canada’s mining industry.

The lawsuit calls on the Minister of the Environment to ensure that the legal requirements of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act are followed by Environment Canada.

In stark contrast, for more than twenty years, the U.S. government has required mining companies to report the amount of pollutants they release under the American equivalent of the NPRI, the U.S. Toxics Release Inventory (TRI).

In 2005, in the United States, mining operations represented less than one-half a percent of all industries reporting to the TRI; however, they accounted for 27 percent of all pollutants released. This is more than 530 kilograms of toxic materials.

Pollution in the form of mine tailings and waste rock—the data being withheld from the Canadian public—accounted for more than 97 percent of the total pollutants reported by the U.S. mining industry.

Mining is an industry with serious environmental consequences and the public deserves an accessible means of understanding the consequences of these operations.

© 2009 Great Lakes News.