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Mining's Toxic Orphans
MiningWatch Canada
MiningWatch Canada
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Abstract
"MiningWatch Canada and its member organizations have prepared the following paper to make recommendations to the federal government about dealing with this responsibility. Many different ministries are affected by the problem of abandoned mines, including Environment, Indian and Northern Affairs, Fisheries, Natural Resources, Health, Human Resources, Finance, and Treasury Board. The paper is organized in four sections: Section One is a discussion of the current state of knowledge with respect to the numbers, distribution and dangers of orphaned mine sites in Canada. Although Treasury Board is presently undertaking an inventory of contaminated federal sites, and there have been other studies, none of these adequately capture the extent of the problem. Section Two attempts to assess the extent of federal responsibility for mine clean-up in Canada - well in excess of a billion dollars - and suggests research that must be undertaken to better estimate the financial extent of federal responsibility. Section Three provides suggestions for a federal action plan to protect the public interest from contaminated mine sites. A comprehensive federal action plan would include the following: 1) A national inventory of abandoned mine sites; 2) Physical and chemical site assessments to determine the contamination associated with the sites and assess actual and potential safety hazards, and; 3) A transparent and efficient plan to choose priority sites for clean-up; resources to cleanup the sites in a thorough and timely fashion, including provisions for community involvement in monitoring and remediation; an increase in funding for research into cleanup strategies and technology; 4) A funding mechanism - based on federal principles of polluter pays, the precautionary principle, and participation - to pay for the costs of cleaning up the mine sites."
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Preprint
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2000
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With permission of the license/copyright holder