Monday, August 10, 2015

EPA Causes Pollution

CNN EPA Causes River Spill

Now that is an ironic story...

8 comments:

Sean said...

This is the sort of material that we want kept in large pools near the rivers and streams that feed Lake Superior under the Polymet plan.

John said...

Hopefully the government agency in charge of over seeing the approved containment structure wouldn't pump it out into one of those pristine lakes/streams...

Sean said...

The reason the EPA was there in the first place was because the containment method put in place by the mining company was showing signs of failure. So note that taxpayers were on the hook for inspecting and maintaining that -- not the mining company. Which is why before we approve Polymet, there need to be mechanisms in place to collect sufficient funds over the ~20 year life of the mine to cover the 300 or so years of expected environmental remediation that will be required.

jerrye92002 said...

I never trust the EPA to display any sort of common sense in these matters. Let me tell a story from personal experience. North of the Arctic Circle there is a lead mine, owned and operated by the native Inuit. In addition to the EPA, the natives wanted to make certain that the lands and waters were protected and voluntarily installed some serious treatment equipment. As a result, the land and waters nearby are not only not harmed, but there are actually fish in the streams that couldn't live there before because of NATURAL leaching from the ores. EPA and radical environmentalists, assuming that's not redundant, want to shut DOWN the mine because of the "huge quantities of heavy metals leaving the site." Of COURSE heavy metals are leaving the site, it is a LEAD MINE and the Lead gets shipped out for use all over the place. It's the whole reason there is a mine there, providing economic opportunity for the natives.

The same thing, I would bet, is true of Polymet, that the ores are already leaching into the waters and mining them out and containing the immediate runoff will actually be an improvement, as well as offering substantial economic gains. The DNR has already signed off and the only holdup is purely political.

Sean said...

That's assumiong you can successfully contain the runoff. There have been a number of containment pond failures over the years. This one in Colorado was fairly minor, but there was a much larger one in British Columbia last year, and lots of them over the years.

List of tailings pond failures

From a societal perspective, we need to make sure that we're collecting sufficient revenues from the mining operations to cover the hundreds of years of environmental maintenance that will be required to support those 20-year jobs.

jerrye92002 said...

I'm sure the DNR has covered all of those bases when they gave the project the green light. Most of the "remediation" efforts required in these environmental mitigation plans are excessive, anyway. A large Ohio coal strip mining area was almost given up when the rules changed requiring a "return to natural contour" standard. The company had been turning the hills and valleys into forests and fishing lakes for recreation (and future timber production), a far better use than the poor farming on the "natural contour." Much depends on how these things are done, of course, but there are good ways of doing it that serves both jobs AND the environment. It's rarely either/or.

Sean said...

No, they haven't discussed financial remediation at all at this point.

jerrye92002 said...

It makes sense to me that financial remediation probably isn't part of the package. They will agree (or mandate) on the technical nature of the remediation and who is responsible for doing it. That settles the financial matters as a byproduct, yes?