Issue

Taseko Mines Ltd. is proposing to construct a massive open-pit copper and gold mine in the heart of Tsilhqot’in Territory, 125 km west of Williams Lake BC. Information about the project, critiques of the Environmental Assessment and the film Blue Gold by Raven Trust are available here.

Canada is the largest exporter of uranium ore in the world. Northern Saskatchewan is home to all of Canada’s uranium mines. Roughly half of the supply of uranium comes from mining; the balance comes from decommissioned nuclear weapons.

Uranium is mined in open pit and underground mines, sometimes along with copper and gold, and also by in-situ leaching. In-situ leaching requires pumping acid or alkaline solution underground and trying to recover the resulting solution once it contains enough uranium.

Quarrying and aggregates (sand and gravel mining) are a huge environmental and social problem in many parts of the world and many parts of Canada. However, since the policy and legal issues are mostly local (municipal and provincial) MiningWatch Canada does not usually get involved. We have picked up on some cases, however, where federal environmental assessments or aboriginal lands are at issue.

Because lakes and rivers are fish habitat, they are protected by the Fisheries Act. This Act is Canada’s oldest environmental legislation and prohibits the release of “deleterious substances” into fish-bearing waters and the alteration or destruction of fish habitat. However, in 2002, Schedule 2 was added to the Metal Mining Effluent Regulation.

Major mineral sands reserves are found in South Africa, USA, Sierra Leone, India, Australia and Madagascar. The most popular mining methods are dredging or dry mining. Dredging involves working in artificial ponds and pumping ore to floating concentrators whereas dry mining uses a variety of scrapers, bulldozers, excavators and front end loaders.

Until April 2009, most of the pollutants caused by extractive phase of mining were not included in the National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI).

Mining affects every aspect of a community in a myriad of ways, affecting the economy, the environment, families, health, land use, water, etc. This section provides a number of documents that address the impact of mining on communities.

Gold is often co-mined with copper, molybdenum and uranium. Main reserves of gold can be found in South Africa, Tanzania, Mali, Ghana, USA, Australia, Canada, China, Chile, Peru, and Brazil. Gold is extracted via large scale open pit mining or underground mining.

Gold mining produces a large amount of waste. Up to 6 tonnes of rock must be processed to obtain one gram of gold. Cyanide or mercury are the most common substances used to extract gold from the rock.

When a mining company wants a specific mineral, it has to remove rock to get at it. Only a small amount of rock – ore – will contain the mineral that the company wants. With open pit or open cast mining, the soil, vegetation, and rock above the ore body, called the overburden, must also be removed. Any other rock that is removed that does not contain "economic amounts" of mineral is called waste rock. Mining companies put this waste rock in piles or "dumps" (often measuring several square kilometres).

Mining will fragment, if not destroy habitat. It can poison waters. Some of these negative impacts are permanent. For example, there are at least 10,000 abandoned mines across Canada. This means that there is no company to take responsibility for the clean up of these mines, even when there is contamination. When there is no company that is responsible for the clean up, the government is on the hook for clean up and rehabilitation. This means that taxpayers are ultimately responsible for a mining company's mess.