Nearly a year after the deadly Brumadinho collapse, a majority of mining firms have failed to disclose information about their waste dams

By 
Alistair MacDonald and Kim Mackrael
Dec. 18, 2019 5:30 am ET
Published by The Wall Street Journal

Less than half of the world’s larger miners have released safety and environmental details about their mine-waste dams, showing the mixed success of investors’ demands for greater transparency after the deadly Brumadinho dam collapse in Brazil.
In January, 270 people died following the collapse of a tailings dam owned by Brazil’s Vale SA. The incident prompted a coalition of investors who manage more than $13 trillion to ask 726 companies in the mining and oil-sands business to disclose information on their dams.

Nearly 55% of companies hadn’t delivered as of last month, the Church of England said. While some of the largest miners—including Vale, BHP Ltd. and Anglo American PLC—have disclosed their information, others have yet to do so.

Investors are increasingly examining ethical issues when looking at mining.

Vale's tailings dam in Brumadinho earlier this month. PHOTO: WASHINGTON ALVES/REUTERS“Not disclosing is unacceptable and poses a very real risk to our investment,” said John Howchin, who analyzes ethical issues for Sweden’s state pension funds, which led the group demanding more transparency alongside the Church of England Pensions Board.

Tailings risk has become another turn-off for an investment community that has largely shunned the mining sector since the collapse of the commodity bubble in 2011.

Tailings, the waste material from extracting valuable minerals, are often held for decades behind dams that can be risky if they are poorly constructed, ill-maintained or filled with too much waste. Major failures of tailings dams have become more frequent as mining companies ramp up production to meet the world’s growing demand for commodities.

The large number of funds involved in the survey—coupled with the lack of comprehensive, state-compiled databases on tailings—has drawn attention to the coalition’s effort and investors’ increasing engagement on environmental issues.

Norilsk Nickel, one of world’s most valuable miners with a market capitalization of roughly $43 billion, hasn’t publicly released details on its tailings dams. In 2016, heavy rainfall caused a Norilsk Nickel tailings dam in northern Russia to overflow, coloring a local river red.

Polluted water overflowed a Norilsk Nickel tailings dam in northern Russia in 2016. 
A spokeswoman for the Moscow-based company said it hadn’t received a request from the coalition but would be happy to cooperate. The Church of England said it emailed requests to the chief executives and investor relations departments at the 726 companies. If the email to investor relations bounced back, it would go to the CEO and staff in sustainability or engineering departments.

Miners of potash and phosphate—minerals used mainly in fertilizers—have been slow to disclose. Canada-based Nutrien Ltd. , a major producer valued at around $27 billion, sent basic information on its mine-waste facilities but didn’t answer key questions such as whether the dams have had stability issues.

Nutrien said late last month that it had added resources that would allow it complete the survey. A company spokesman initially said some questions were left unanswered because the main byproduct of potash mining is salt, viewed as less dangerous in a spill, and because Nutrien’s mines in Saskatchewan aren’t close to major water bodies or populated areas.

Satellite images show two of the company’s six Saskatchewan mines are located a few miles from residential communities and one neighbors a bird-breeding area. A tailings pond at the company’s North Carolina phosphate mine is located next to the Pamlico River, which feeds into the state’s largest estuary.

At least two tailings facilities owned by Nutrien have leaked or failed in the past, public records show. That includes a potash mine near Vanscoy, Saskatchewan, that reported a failure at its tailings pile in a 2014 technical report. Also that year, the company, then called Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan, revealed to a local broadcaster that it had discovered tears in a liner meant to contain salt water tailings at a site in New Brunswick, Canada.

The Nutrien spokesman said the company has never had a dam failure result in a release of salt water beyond its tailings management areas. He said any seepage of brine from the New Brunswick tailings pond would have been small and captured by the site’s remedial systems

The Brumadinho tailings dam disaster in Brazil has killed at least 179 people, with hundreds more missing and feared dead. This video shows the moment the disaster began. Israel Chemicals Ltd. is among other potash and phosphate miners that haven’t responded to the investor group’s survey. A spokesman said the original request for tailings data hadn’t reached the relevant people at the organization.

“Now that you have brought this issue to our knowledge, the company has forwarded it to the relevant person who will take care of it immediately,” the spokesman said.

In 2017, Israel Chemicals reported that the partial collapse of a subsidiary’s dike in Israel released 100,000 cubic meters of acidic wastewater that flowed into a nearby nature reserve. The wastewater resulted from the production of phosphate fertilizer.

The spokesman said the company worked to clean up the wastewater spill and is developing stronger and more-stable storage facilities for its phosphate fertilizer tailings.
A number of smaller Western-based miners also haven’t disclosed information on their tailings dams.

Vancouver-based Imperial Metals Corp. is not on record—even though it is tied to what is considered one of Canada’s worst environmental catastrophes. In 2014, a British Columbia dam owned by the company burst, sending some 25 million cubic meters of mining waste pouring into a pair of glacial lakes
A representative for Imperial Metals said the company’s CEO had received the request but declined further comment.

Large Chinese miners such as Jiangxi Copper Co. , Zijin Mining Group Co. and Zhongjin Gold Corp. also haven’t shared information with the investor coalition. None of the three replied to emails seeking comment.

In China, there are 8,869 documented tailings dams, of which 16% are within about half a mile of a residential area, school or hospital, according to research led by the School of University of Science and Technology in Beijing.

Karen Hudson-Edwards, a mining specialist at Britain’s University of Exeter, said the actual number in China is estimated at around 12,000 dams and there is little transparency on tailings risk in the country.

There have been at least 12 serious tailings-dam accidents in China since the 1960s, with one in 2008 killing 277 people, according to the World Information Service on Energy, a Netherlands-based nonprofit.

Write to Alistair MacDonald at alistair.macdonald@wsj.com and Kim Mackrael at kim.mackrael@wsj.com

By Evan Bush, Seattle Times staff reporter Dec. 4, 2019 

Amid an international dispute, British Columbia’s government announced Wednesday that it will no longer allow timber sales in the Skagit River’s headwaters.
The decision could intensify pressure over a Canadian company’s pending permit to begin exploratory mining in the area, which conservationists view as a bigger threat to the river’s ecology.
Last year, loggers built roads and clear-cut several large swaths of forest in the headwaters, which drain into the Skagit River and eventually flow through Washington state to Puget Sound.
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan cried foul, writing to B.C. officials with “grave concern” about water quality and environmental degradation. The Skagit is a top producer of salmon for Puget Sound, it is home to endangered bull trout and its waters churn hydropower dams to bring Seattle much of its electricity.
After Durkan’s protests, B.C. officials last summer put future logging plans on hold. On Wednesday, they committed to protect the area from logging, at least.
“Timber harvesting under this license has ended. No future licenses will be awarded,” said Doug Donaldson, the minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development in British Columbia.
The decision by the B.C. government could raise negotiating stakes with Imperial Metals, a Canadian mining company that has applied to perform exploratory drilling on its mineral tenures there. Conservationists fear a potential spill of mining waste or byproduct would imperil the Skagit River ecosystem and devastate struggling salmon species.
The conservationists hope to one day incorporate the unprotected land, which is often called the “donut hole,” into the Manning and Skagit provincial parks that surround it. That’s not possible until the mining rights are sorted out.
“We’ve been working to get logging banned in the area for 15 years,” said Joe Foy, the Protected Areas Campaigner for the Wilderness Committee, a Canadian environmental group. “This is a big move forward for us, but we remain nervous until the tenure is removed and the area is legislated as protected.”
Negotiations over the mining rights are ongoing, according to Thomas Curley, a Canadian appointee to the Skagit Environmental Endowment Commission (SEEC), an organization created by treaty to settle prior disputes over the landscape.
Controversy over the Skagit’s headwaters kicked off in 1937 when the city of Seattle began construction of the Ross Dam on the river. The dam created a reservoir, Ross Lake, that stretches into Canada. For years, the city considered building the dam higher and expanding the reservoir farther into Canada, flooding some old-growth forestland.
Environmentalists protested. B.C. and Seattle eventually came to an agreement in 1984. Seattle agreed not to raise the dam. The Canadians promised to provide cheap hydropower to Seattle through 2065. The U.S. and Canada signed a treaty over the deal.
The agreement also created SEEC. Seattle’s mayor and B.C.’s premier each appoint four members to the commission, which works to conserve the watershed, enhance recreation and acquire timber and mineral rights.
In March, Imperial Metals applied for an exploratory mining permit in the donut hole.
The company applied to drill for as many as five years, according to project documents. Imperial Metals would extend a recently created logging road, set up trenches and build settling ponds for exploratory drilling in an area believed to have gold and copper. Metals, particularly copper, are toxic to salmon.
Imperial Metals saw an environmental disaster at its Mount Polley mine in British Columbia in 2014, when a dam there failed and allowed billions of gallons of gold- and copper-mining waste to flood into local waterways.
The B.C. government has yet to make a decision on whether to allow exploration.
Durkan said the city would continue to advocate “to fully protect the Upper Skagit Watershed from mining exploration … “
The application sparked outcry from U.S. officials, tribes and environmental groups. Nine Democratic members of Washington state’s congressional delegation called for the U.S. Department of State to intervene.
U.S. officials have pressured British Columbia over mining regulations because toxics and mining waste can flow downstream and into the U.S.
A bipartisan group of eight Western U.S. senators in June wrote to British Columbia Premier John Horgan, saying they “remain concerned about the lack of oversight of Canadian mining projects near multiple transboundary rivers.”
Evan Bush: 206-464-2253 or ebush@seattletimes.com; on Twitter: @EvanBush.