Common Ownership December 2010 Vol. 2 Num.
4
Vale to use Newfoundland Lake as Dump Site
for Tailings: We need to get to the
root of the problem and do the right thing NOW!
J. Ayers
A report in the Toronto Star (Sept. 11, 2010) revealed that the
Brazilian Mining Giant, Vale, would be dumping 400 000 tonnes of
tailings from its nickel processing plant in Newfoundland into Sandy
Pond Lake. This is a deep, 28-hectare lake known for its
prize-wining trout and American eels. This is the same company that
recently bought the Inco nickel mines in Sudbury, Ontario, and
promptly alienated its workers into a bitter, year-long strike. How
could Vale get away with such an outrageous violation of the
environment? Meera Karunanantham, national water campaigner for the
Council of Canadians, says, “The authorities are allowing the
company to use our pristine water as one big garbage dump.” An
alliance of environmental groups is combining their efforts to mount
a court challenge. They will be contesting a ‘loophole’ in the
Fisheries Act that allows for the re-classification of lakes for
dumping mining waste and protects the companies doing so from being
sued. The challenge says, “The purpose of the Fisheries Act is to
conserve and protect fish habitat. The (government) has enacted
regulatory provisions which purport to allow the total annihilation
of aquatic life in natural water bodies.” Six companies, including
Vale, are taking advantage of this loophole that appeared after the
Liberal government changed the Fisheries Act in 2002. Cory McPhee,
Vale’s vice-president of corporate affairs, counters,” we don’t
consider it a loophole. That’s the law that exists.” Of course, he’s
quite right.
The government, which, as all governments do, is acting as the
manager of the capitalist system and simply doing its job of making
sure of the best conditions for making profits, and the company is
simply complying with the law of the land. The federal government
has no plans, as far as we know, to amend the act to protect the
environment and the Newfoundland and Labrador premier, Danny
Williams, despite his stance of ‘no new giveaways’ seems quite
prepared to give away the lakes for dumping. Concerned
environmentalist, Ken Kavanagh, takes the position that any lake is
at risk of future reclassification into a dump.
Opposition parties in the legislature have made attempts to legally
stop the dumping, claiming that the existing law simply allows
mining companies to avoid spending money on building safe
impoundment areas. As usual, political parties in opposition make
great noises about doing the right thing, but rarely follow through
on these promises and rhetoric when in power. In this case, it is
water critic Francis Scarpaleggia who is attempting to introduce
legislation to prohibit Canada’s lakes from being used as ‘low cost
disposal sites’ for tailings from mining operations. Scarpaleggia is
in the opposition Liberal Party, that’s the party that changed the
Fisheries Act to allow the dumping in the first place!
The environmentalists want to see options such as an artificial, lined
containment pond used rather than the lake dumping practice. Vale
uses the old rubric of providing employment for 475 local workers.
One can comment that if creating jobs is their object, then building
the proper infrastructure for clean production would produce a lot
more jobs. Egregiously, McPhee argued that Vale studied many
alternative waste storage plans and concluded that dumping in Sandy
Pond Lake would be the best solution for the environment! This
outrageous statement is tantamount to the massive blanket of
advertising we are currently receiving via the media extolling the
environmental practices of oil extraction companies in the Alberta
tar sands project, arguably the greatest environmental disaster on
earth.
Meera Karenanantham counters that there is the possibility that
nickel tailing could leach into the ground water creating problems
long after Vale has packed up and gone, along with the 475 jobs.
In case you think that this is an isolated case, in June, 2007, the
governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, welcomed a luxury cruise ship,
sponsored by the conservative magazines, “The Weekly Standard” and
“The National Review”, to her state. On board were elite American
journalists who were flown by helicopter to the proposed site of
Kensington gold mine, owned by Coeur Alaska, part of the Coeur
d’Aline empire (Coeur is French for heart). There, Palin gave an
impressive speech, criticizing environmentalists who opposed the
propsed dumping of millions of tonnes of mining waste into Lower
State Lake. One journalist, Fred Barnes, was so impressed by the
speech that he wrote, “She’s got real star quality.” After a lower
court ruled that dumping violated the Clean Water Act, the case
ended up at the Supreme Court. This was the American equivalent of
the Sandy Pond Lake debacle, a test case for dumping. Contrary to
most people’s expectations, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favour of
Coeur and they promptly activated the mining operation. Randy
Wanamaker, a Tlingit tribal elder, and, surprisingly, a mine
promoter, who advised Palin on the Kensington site for her run up to
becoming governor, commented, “This is a muskeg lake, very sterile.
The fish don’t live in it, they just pass through it.” Ramsay Hart,
an environmental scientist with Mining Watch in Ottawa, countered, “
It gives the industry more backing for its claim this is an
acceptable practice. It’s the ability of the government to make
regulatory change and have it justified. It means Canada does not
stand alone in dumping mine waste into lakes.”
According to Mining Watch, thirteen Canadian lakes are potentially
ready for re-classification with another six cleared to go under the
2002 regulations. Sandy Lake Pond and Fish Lake, in British
Columbia, are being contested by environmentalists and First
Nations peoples. It is the way the process has been manipulated to
make it easy for the mining industry to dump cheaply into clean
water lakes that alarms Mining Watch. Hart says, “Before there had
to be a ministerial order. You had to go to the minister to
overwrite the existing provisions of the Fisheries Act”…the process
has been normalized. It’s the taking of a public trust – a lake –
and handing it over to a company to use for its private benefit.”
However, the Fisheries Act website states, “ Natural lakes can
provide a long term, stable environment for storing mine waste. They
have a small risk of failure when compared to artificial
impoundment areas if no dams are required.” Environment minister
in 2008, John Baird, adds, “ I’m not going to propose to change
something I know we are not going to change.” To say this is a
typical response from an environmentally challenged government is a
tautology. While chief Marilyn Baptiste of the Tsilhqot’in nation
wants to protect a lake, known for a unique species of rainbow
trout, and long used and cared for by her people, she wonders what
the company holds over our federal government. That the government
rules in favour of profit making and not the stewardship of the
environment, is no surprise to socialists.
The environmentalists are concerned citizens who are trying to do
the right thing, as any normal, sane human being would.
Unfortunately, sanity is not part of the capitalist mode of
production, especially when it gets in the way of profit making.
Environmentalists have been trying to get governments and
corporations to act responsibly by protecting the environment at
least since Rachel Carson’s book, “Silent Spring” in the 1960s. Now
fifty years later, we are in a measurably worse situation. The odds
are heavily stacked against anyone wanting to do the right thing in
the form of millions of dollars spent by Vale and other companies in
the advertising and lobbying, and governments whose job it is to
support the profit- making system. The little guy, the small
self-supporting organization, lacks the human and financial
resources to mount a serious challenge. Even if a small victory is
gained, what about the millions of other environmental abuses that
occur daily around the world? And how long will it be before that
small victory is lost once again? All these problems that despoil
our earth and are gradually making it unfit for human habitation, to
say nothing of the other creatures with whom we share the planet,
are endemic to the profit system. Vale’s solution to, and defense
of, their environmental practices is just one of many examples. Just
a few weeks ago, Syncrude was fined $3 million for causing the
deaths of 1 600 ducks that landed in their tailings pond in Northern
Alberta. The penalty was suggested by the company in conjunction
with crown lawyers and accepted by a judge. Compared to the billions
made annually by Syncrude, $3 million is loose change. That small
victory was followed right after by another incident of ducks
landing in their waste ponds.
This kind of flagrant disregard for everybody and every thing is
possible because private capital owns most of the land and all of
the processing of resources and the means of manufacturing
commodities from the resources, and what they do not own, they
control by virtue of assisting governments. Legislatures are there
to pass laws to support the private property system so the Vales and
the Syncrudes, and all the other capitalist enterprises will
continue as is necessary for them to create profit until we, the
vast majority who do not own, stand up and make the crucial change
to COMMON OWNERSHIP. Then we will, collectively, decide what is to
be produced, where, and how. Then we can produce for use and need,
not profit. Then we can assure that the environment and
conservation of the earth is the top priority.