Why a Countdown of 28 Facts, Tragedies, & Catastrophes of Open-Pit Mines?

On January 12, 2021, the Post Register published a Forest Service legal notice giving the public 30 days to comment on a proposed expansion to the Kilgore Project in Idaho’s Western Centennial Mountains. Two days later, on January 14, our ScholarDay snouts first caught wind of what was going on. To celebrate each day of the public comment period, we’ve put together this running Countdown of Facts, Tragedies, & Catastrophes of open-pit mines.

Quick Kilgore Project Recap

The Forest Service intends to accept the proposal of Excellon Resources, a Canadian mining company, to expand their explorative drilling for gold in the Western Centennials. This expansion alone threatens our singular Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) through more deforestation, stream sedimentation, and stress to wildlife.

But what makes this expansion proposal categorically asinine is how the drilling is all meant to collect enough data to convince investors to fund cratering the Western Centennials’ West Camas Creek’s mountainside with cyanide open-pit mines (!).

This plan would lead to annihilating part of the GYE, one of the earth’s largest nearly intact temperate-zone ecosystems. Also, it would lead to the almost certain contamination of the Eastern Snake River Aquifer, the water southeastern Idahoans drink and farm with.

Check out our almost 100-year timeline of the Kilgore Project for more details.

Countdown of 28 Facts, Tragedies, & Catastrophes of Open-Pit Mines

#28: Open-pit cyanide mines are banned in Montana.

Excellon Resources’ proposed spot for an open-pit cyanide heap leach mine is illegal just a few miles north.

Why did a state as mining-friendly as Montana outlaw it? It was actually a citizen’s initiative that passed into law back in 1998, which was the culmination of environmental problems caused by several gold mines during the 90s that destroyed streams, outdoor recreation, and cost Montanans more than $40 million in taxes to try to clean up.

#27: “Mining in the western United States has contaminated stream reaches in the headwaters of more than 40 percent of the watersheds in the West.”

And that’s based on figures from an EPA report more than 20 years old.

#26: There are at least 500,000 abandoned mines scattered across 32 states in the US.

From that same 2000 EPA study, they estimated that it would cost taxpayers more than 35 billion USD to remediate the damages of those mines haunting our outdoors.

Since 1937, eight different mining companies have drilled then abandoned the Kilgore Project area. Excellon Resources is just the latest scab remover, not giving the region a chance to heal.

#25: One open-pit mine in Montana killed 25,000 snow geese overnight.

The Berkeley Pit in Butte, Montana was an open pit mine that’s now one of America’s most toxic bodies of water. In 1995, 342 migrating snow geese corpses were found there floating. In 2016, officials estimated some 25,000 snow geese were forced by a storm to land in the Berkeley Pit’s water, their dead bodies soon scattered across the region’s landscape as they fell from the sky like feathered rain.

#24: Open-pit mines are yet another example of environmental racism

Check out PBS Utah’s recent Downwinders and the Radioactive West that include interviews from the Navajo Nation talking about their experience with uranium pits that mining companies pocked into Navajo lands and then abandoned without cleaning up.

#23: Open-pit mining creates 45x more waste than other forms of mining.

Both the EPA and USGS estimate open-pit mining creates approximately 45x more waste than other kinds of mines. Entire mountains of waste.

#22: One open-pit mine tailing dam disaster in Brazil killed hundreds of people.

In 2019, a tailings dam at a mine near Brumadinho, Brazil broke and its deluge of toxic mud killed 259 people with 11 others still missing and presumed dead. 16 company employees were charged with homicide because they knew the dam’s vulnerabilities while doing nothing, including making no warnings to their workers and people downstream.

#21: Another open-pit mine disaster in Myanmar killed hundreds more.

In July 2020, a muddy slurry collapsed into a jade open-pit mine in Myanmar killing a confirmed 168 people, with dozens more missing. “Officials said there was little left for rescuers to do but retrieve bodies that floated to the surface.”

#20: A Swiss-owned mine disaster recently killed dozens of people in the Congo.

In June 2019, two galleries collapsed at the Swiss-owned KOV cobalt/copper mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, killing dozens. In 2016, at the same mine, a wall collapsed and killed 7 miners.

#19: There are resources available to make the most impact when submitting public comments concerning open-pit mines.

For example, nonprofits can offer a virtual public comment workshop, like the one Idaho Conservation League and Greater Yellowstone Coalition held for the Kilgore Project on Feb 1, 2021.

As well, there exists passionate folks among us who spend days making public comment guides.

#18: The Kennecott copper mine basically destroyed the Salt Lake valley.

For 50 years, miners dumped arsenic, lead, and other heavy metals straight into Bingham Creek, contaminating communities downstream. Then, their evaporation pools leaked 1 million gallons a day of toxins into the groundwater for 26 years through 1991 (that’s 9.5 billion gallons that poisoned Salt Lake valley’s aquifer).

Unknowing citizens of South Jordan, West Jordan, Herriman, Magna, and Eureka lost and continue to lose dozens of family members and neighbors to freak cancer clusters and find their animals and fruit trees suddenly, inexplicably dead.

The EPA made Kennecott remove 6 inches of dirt and 18 inches of garden soil from these residential areas. Kennecott officials claim to have spent $500 million on this reclamation, and supposedly just in one of its zones, removed more topsoil than all other superfund sites in the country combined.

The EPA returns every 5 years to ensure the toxic soils below those depths remain undisturbed. But the EPA only made cleanups happen in residential areas, leaving farmers and ranchers on their own to provide the region its food out of the decades-accumulated toxic waste.

#17: An open-pit mine is responsible for Canada’s worst environmental disaster.

In 2014, the Mount Polley copper mine tailings dam collapsed, releasing more than 24 million cubic meters of toxic waste into Quesnel Lake in British Columbia. The impact on Indigenous peoples in the area and downstream was devastating. Now more than six years later, the mining company has received no fines, charges, or sanctions for the disaster.

#16: An open-pit mine is responsible for Europe’s worst environmental disaster since Chernobyl.

on Jan. 30, 2000, a mine tailings dam broke in Romania and unleashed a 40 km flow of cyanide-laced toxic sludge into the Tisza River. It continued to flow another 1000 km through Hungary and the Balkans. It made its way into the Danube and poisoned drinking water for three countries.

It wiped out all life in the river. One man in Hungary described it like this: “Everything down to bacteria is dead. There’s more life in a sewage channel than this river now. Nothing is alive. Zero.”

#15: Open-pit mining disasters can ruin everything in their path downstream.

In October 2010, the Hungarian government issued a state of emergency when a tailings dam broke and 185 million gallons of toxic red sludge tsunami-waved down the Torna River, engulfing several towns, bridges, and roads.

It spread over 16 square miles, killed 10 people, and chemically burned 120 people through their clothes. With a ph of 13 and loaded with heavy metals and toxic if ingested, the slurry destroyed the river, vegetation, and soil.

On the day of the catastrophe, the mine’s owner issued a statement that said “the red sludge waste is not considered hazardous waste” according to European Union standards.

#14: Writing letters to the editor of your local newspapers spreads awareness about the threats of proposed mining projects.

The Post Register published a letter to the editor co-written by Eric and me about the dangers of the proposed Kilgore Project expansion

#13: Uranium open-pit mines have permanently taken and continue to take from the Navajo Nation’s past, present, and future.

During the Cold War, mining companies gutted Navajo lands of nearly 30 million tons of uranium (by the EPA’s count). As the US government stopped buying so much in the mid-80s, the companies packed up and abandoned their highly toxic handiwork without responsibly cleaning up after themselves.

Again by the EPA’s count, at least 523 mines were just left there radiating the air, homes, and water of the Navajo.

A few of the health risks of elevated exposure to radiation include lung cancer, bone cancer, and impaired kidney function. During the time the mining companies blasted out uranium then abandoned them, the cancer rate in the Navajo Nation doubled.

Multiple studies recently show around or more than a quarter of Navajo participants have high levels of the radioactive metal in the systems (5x the US average). These studies keep finding high levels of uranium even among the Navajo Nation’s infants born today.

#12: Citizens, and not the mining companies, are often left with the cleanup costs associated with the resulting ecosystem-scale damage.

Congressional researchers estimate that more than 20,000 leaking old mines poison rivers at their headwaters in the US. They estimate it would cost $73 billion to clean them all up.

US government officials have yet to complete basic risk analyses for 80% of the mines abandoned and littering federal land.

These leaky mines are time(bomb?) capsules. And like them, the proposed Kilgore Project is also situated upstream, specifically threatening our Snake River Aquifer. A Canadian company’s thirst for gold is putting southeastern Idaho’s water at risk.

#11: An open-pit mine is responsible for Colorado’s worst environmental disaster.

The Summitville mine, like the Kilgore Project proposal, was ran by a Canadian gold mining company and placed on a mountainside upstream of important river systems. Once the Canadian gold mining company got all the gold they wanted in 1991, they filed for bankruptcy the next year and left without finishing the cleanup process.

They left 1,100 acres of alpine tundra destroyed by open-pit cyanide mines. The very mine type that the Kilgore Project wants to put in Idaho’s Western Centennials.

As the mining company washed their hands of cleanup responsibilities that allowed poisonous leaking into the Alamosa River downstream, the EPA listed it as a Superfund site. For the last 27 years, US taxpayers have had to pay the bill in excess of $250 million.

Now in 2021, Colorado citizens have to pay $2 million every year in perpetuity to maintain the cleanup efforts. 2,100 gallons of toxic waste flow from the site every minute. Maintenance entails filtering out the heavy metals with a treatment plant, then hauling 4.1 million pounds of toxic concentrate annually back up the mountainside to be buried.

As one local puts it, “It will never be the mountain area I remember as a little girl. That is gone.”

#10: More than 50 million gallons of toxic wastewater flows daily from just 43 mining sites across the US.

And 40% of that unreal contamination ends up going straight into the fresh water we’ve built our communities around. To put that gargantuan amount of toxicity into perspective, Matthew Brown with PBS NewsHour describes it like this: “In many cases, [wastewater] runs untreated into nearby groundwater, rivers and ponds – a roughly 20-million-gallon (76-million-liter) daily dose of pollution that could fill more than 2,000 tanker trucks.”

The fact that about 60% of the post-mine poison gets treated doesn’t exactly tell a story with a happy ending either. In fact, it’s a story without an ending. Those treatment plants will have to keep running and keep costing taxpayers money indefinitely.

#9: Upstream dams account for 75% of tailing dam failures.

Open-pit mines require dams to forever hold the mine’s toxic waste. They’re called tailing dams (sorry for not explaining this earlier), and they’re the mining industry’s trash. Tailing dams make a mining company no profit. So, they spend as little on the tailing dams as legally possible.

For the mining companies, the cheapest option is an upstream dam construction. It consists of a dyke holding back the waste muck. As more muck piles on, more dykes have to go on top to hold back all the muck from overflowing. What makes upstream dams so stupid in engineering terms is that the dykes have no foundation on which to sit other than the unstable muck that they’re trying to hold back.

Because of the obvious structural weakness of building dykes on top of muck, upstream dams fail most often, causing some of the earth’s worst environmental disasters most often. Some studies estimate 40% of tailings dams are of the upstream ilk. In China, 95% of their 8,000 known tailing dams are upstream tailing dams.

Mining companies save money with upstream dams. The communities downstream, both human and non, are the ones who bear the greatest costs.

When these tailing dams fail and toxic slurries devestate on a disastrous scale, what often gets left out of the news coverage is the mining company’s irresponsible greed underlying it all.

#8: Tailing dams are among the largest manmade structures on Earth.

Well they have to be, considering how mining companies create exponentially more waste than their intended resource. More waste equates to bigger tailing dams that have to sit there as an everlasting poisonous stew. That is, until they fail.

It’s scary to rub such facts together, yet tailing dams are both among the largest structures and also have a failure rate 100x that of reservoir/hydroelectric dams.

No wonder mining waste failures account for so many places’ worst environmental disasters on record. To paraphrase the investigative journalism over at The Narwhal, mining waste failures have killed hundreds of people, decimated hundreds of miles of streams, rendered irrigation and drinking water sources unusable, erased entire aquatic ecosystems and wetland habitats, permanently ruined heritage sites and monuments, and threatened the future of whole communities.

And that’s just in the last 10 years.

#7: A mine’s tailing dam failure led to the largest radioactive spill in US History.

Here’s a glowing example of the catastrophic danger of making giant disaster-prone tailing dams: 94 million gallons of toxic slurry, including 1,100 tons of radioactive waste, flooded the Puerco River on Navajo lands around 5:30 A.M. on July 16, 1979 near Church Rock, New Mexico when a 20-foot-wide section of barrier wall collapsed.

While this particular tailing dam failed to hold back the waste of an underground mine, its destructive aftermath matches tailing dam failures involving open-pit mines.

Radioactive waste flooded through communities downstream for 130 km, compromising at least two aquifers, all the way to at least Winslow, Arizona. Suddenly, the river that several communities in the Navajo Nation depended on, became their greatest threat. Sheep drank from it and fell down dead. Children waded into it and burnt their feet.

The largest radioactive spill in US history is also another example of environmental racism. Consider the attention frenzy of the Three Mile Island radioactive leak at a nuclear facility in central Pennsylvania. A state of emergency was issued and somewhere above 140,000 people were evacuated. Then, the government quickly funded several investigations into the causes and long-term effects of the leak.

Even though the Church Rock disaster unleashed three times more radiation than the Three Mile Island accident, and even though the Church Rock spill came just three months after the Three Mile Island headlines, the Navajo Nation received nowhere near the same amount of attention. Forget about issuing a state of emergency; the New Mexico governor wouldn’t even declare it a federal disaster area, denying the Tribal Council’s Emergency Services Coordinating Committee’s request.

No long-term, government-funded studies of causes and effects happened either. As far as causes go, they already knew. State and federal agencies acknowledged that the dam was unsound two years before the preventable happened. Cracks were reported in the structure in 1977, yet they took no action to repair them. The CDC stopped by for a short visit that didn’t include assessing the groundwater or the produce grown from contaminated water sources. They hurried and tested only six people. When those few results didn’t give them pause to worry, the CDC claimed the spill posed no major threats to public health.

The EPA would finally add the disaster area to the superfund list of priorities in 1983. Going on 38 years now and still the EPA reports that “the migration of contaminated groundwater is not stabilized.”

As for the mining company responsible for the largest radioactive spill in US history, the United Nuclear Corporation cleaned up only 1% of the estimated tailings waste, threatened mass layoffs if required to remain shutdown, and then got permission from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to resume operations again five months after the disaster.

#6: The Doñana National Park Catastrophe Became Spain’s Worst Environmental Disaster.

This National Park is one of Europe’s crowning conservation areas, considered Europe’s “most precious bird sanctuary,” listed twice over by UNESCO (once as a world heritage site and again as a biosphere reserve).

In 1998, a tailings dam of the Los Frailes open-pit mine busted, and about 2 billion gallons rushed 45 km downstream toward Doñana National Park in a “toxic tsunami of mine tailings.”

It immediately became Spain’s worst environmental disaster yet. Farmers lost their crop fields. And here’s a summary of some of the aftermath from the Gardian: “More than 25,000 kilos of dead fish were collected in the aftermath and nearly 2,000 adult birds, chicks, eggs and nests killed or destroyed. Even worse, the contamination persisted and many birds gave birth to deformed or dead chicks for several years.”

The cleanup continues to this day, costing hundreds of millions of euros.

#5: California’s Iron Mountain Mine costs taxpayers $5 million a year with no end in sight.

Coming to a Screen Near You on February 6, 2021

#4: The open-pit mining industry notoriously leans on child labor.

Coming to a Screen Near You on February 7, 2021

#3: In their catastrophic potential, more than a third of tailing dams worldwide are considered high risk.

Coming to a Screen Near You on February 8, 2021

#2: Canadian mining companies make some of the most disaster-prone open-pit mines of any other country in the world.

Coming to a Screen Near You on February 9, 2021

#1: Open-pit mine disasters are run-of-the-mill.

Coming to a Screen Near You on February 10, 2021