16 Lakes Across Canada Quietly Reclassified As Toxic Dump Sites For Mining Waste - CBC

[hatrack]

CBC News has learned that 16 Canadian lakes are slated to be officially but quietly "reclassified" as toxic dump sites for mines. The lakes include prime wilderness fishing lakes from B.C. to Newfoundland. Environmentalists say the process amounts to a "hidden subsidy" to mining companies, allowing them to get around laws against the destruction of fish habitat.

Under the Fisheries Act, it's illegal to put harmful substances into fish-bearing waters. But, under a little-known subsection known as Schedule Two of the mining effluent regulations, federal bureaucrats can redefine lakes as "tailings impoundment areas." That means mining companies don't need to build containment ponds for toxic mine tailings.

CBC News visited two examples of Schedule Two lakes. In Newfoundland and Labrador, the Vale Inco company wants to use a prime destination for fishermen known as Sandy Pond to hold tailings from a nickel processing plant.

In northern B.C., Imperial Metals plans to enclose a remote watershed valley to hold tailings from a gold and copper mine. The valley lies in what the native Tahltan people call the "Sacred Headwaters" of three major salmon rivers. It also serves as spawning grounds for the rainbow trout of Kluela Lake, which is downstream from the dump site.

EDIT

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/06/16/condemned-lakes.html

[liberal N proud]

1. Oh what the hell, it's only the planet we have to live on

We will all be dead by the time the natural resources are used up and the earth it too polluted to inhabit.
Let our kids and grandkids figure our how to get by on nothing.

:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:

[phantom power]

2. If I were an ungenerous man...

I might point out that this sort of thing needs to be properly accounted for, as environmental impact for building things like smart grids, or wind turbines.

[NNadir]

3. It's time to call in Amory Lovins for some greenwashing. He did great things for Rio Tinto in the

arctic.

[XemaSab]

4. They were already impounding water

and if you have too much water, that's bad, so they're already impounding a harmful substance, right? :shrug:

[DCKit]

5. So, we sElect a neocon, corporate owned government and,...

instead of learning from our example - what not to do - Australia, Canada, France, Italy and England rush to install their own fascist regimes.

How's that working our for ya', eh?

Personally, now that this is in the media, I don't think it's going to happen. The Canadians would have moved en-masse to the U.S. decades ago if they weren't, to a person, fanatic about their environmental riches.