Falconbridge chronicles environmental progress

Every year, Falconbridge (FL-T) reviews its environmental performance in its Sustainable Development Report, and the 2000 edition is nothing if not comprehensive and candid.

Falco’s parent company, Noranda (NOR-T), publishes a similar environmental report, which matches and often exceeds its subsidiary’s frank disclosure.

In its survey of the environmental and safety record of operations last year, Falconbridge highlights several accomplishments:

– At its flagship Sudbury nickel complex in Ontario, the Strathcona mill completed 1 million hours of work without a lost-time injury. At the smelter, the company reduced, by 13%, its SO2 emissions per tonne of nickel produced.

– At its Kidd mining operations in Timmins, Ont., Falco finished building a new settling pond and achieved 100% compliance with Ontario’s average monthly effluent quality limits. At Kidd’s metallurgical operations, Falco reduced, by 25%, its SO2 emissions per tonne of metal produced.

– At the Raglan mine in northernmost Quebec, government agencies approved the building of a $3-million, mill-effluent recycling project, due for completion this summer.

– Acting as operator at its 85%-owned Falcondo nickel-laterite mine in the Dominican Republic, Falco recorded its lowest lost-time accident rate in the operation’s history.

– In Norway, at its Nikkelverk refinery, Falco reduced its lost-time, injury-frequency rate to 0.6 per 200,000 hours worked, from 3.1 in 1999.

– At the large Collahuasi open-pit copper mine in Peru, employees had no lost-time injuries. The mine is 44%-owned by Falco, 44% by operator Anglo American (aauk-q) and 12% by a Japanese consortium.

– Falco improved its overall, lost-time injury-frequency rate to 1.07 per 200,000 hours from 1.25 in 1999. However, injury severity was 17% higher in 2000, owing to a fatality at the Kidd mine, the first there since 1989.

– Metals released into the air per tonne of metal produced was 20% below 1996 levels, while SO2 releases from process facilities were reduced by 45%.

– At its Koniambo nickel-laterite project in New Caledonia, the company has just completed a 2-year environmental baseline study of the area, which is surrounded by the world’s second largest tropical coral reef. The study focused on the physical and biological components of the marine and terrestrial environment, water quality and sediments, bio-diversity conservation, social components, rehabilitation, revegetation and mine closure plans. Falco is partnered at Koniambo with French government-owned Socit minire du Sud Pacifique.

– The communities surrounding the town of Bonao in the Dominican Republic continued to benefit from Falcondo’s assistance in researching and developing a continuous and reliable potable water supply, including aqueducts and reservoirs sourced from mountain streams.

One of Falco’s most-significant industrial accidents occurred in March, when a train transporting tanks of sulphuric acid derailed near Temagami, Ont. Of the 25 derailed cars that contained sulphuric acid, 12 leaked a total of 780 tonnes of acid. Emergency response teams from Kidd and from Noranda’s Horne smelter, in Rouyn-Noranda, Que., were called to the site, where they helped neutralize the area and remove any remaining acid.

A follow-up assessment, by consultants, of the affected Hornet Lake eco-system indicates that fish and other aquatic populations have returned to pre-spill conditions. No long-term effects are expected.

As a result of the derailmant, Noranda is working with the American Association of Railroads to improve tank-car safety.

In November 2000, Ontario’s ministry of the environment charged Kidd’s metallurgical division with periodically exceeding legal limits for concentrations of zinc, copper and suspended solids in its water-discharge system.

The company admits that over the past two years the water has, on occasion, failed to meet all regulatory requirements, though it has made significant and continuing investments in its tailings-storage and water-treatment facilities.

Still, the company says, metals were released during “extreme” weather conditions when there was not enough time for solids to settle in existing ponds.

Since 1966, the division has been using a combination of water recycling, storage and treatment to control effluent quality. To remedy the situation, Kidd is building an additional $4.5-million pond that will triple the discharge system’s settling capacity. The new pond will cost $4.5 million and be completed by the fall.

At all its operations in 2000, Falco released 20.2 tonnes of metal to water, including: 119 kg arsenic; 233 kg cadmium; 65 kg cadmium; 522 kg cobalt; 1,240 kg copper; 970 kg lead; 6 kg mercury; 3,328 kg nickel; 41 kg silver; and 13,659 kg zinc. In 1998 and 1999, respectively, the company released 15.8 tonnes and 18.3 tonnes of metal into water.

According to a preliminary estimate of air emissions in 2000, Falco released 274 tonnes of metal in 2000, including: 1,645 kg arsenic; 2,015 kg cadmium; 351 kg chromium; 448 kg cobalt; 66,330 kg copper; 35,263 kg lead; 2 kg mercury; 126,220 kg nickel; 230 kg silver; and 41,540 kg zinc. This compares with 332 tonnes and 283 tonnes released in 1998 and 1999, respectively.

Falco has set the following environmental and safety goals for the coming years:

– To cut in half, by 2005, the amount of metals released into the air per tonne of metal produced, and reduce, by 35%, the amount of SO2 released per tonne of metal produced. These reductions are based on 1996 levels.

– To “assist Canada in meeting its commitment to Kyoto” by reducing “energy intensity” by 1% per year. (Canada’s actual commitment is unclear, since not a single industrialized country has ratified the treaty.)

– To improve lost-time, injury-frequency and injury-severity rates by 10% per year, based on a 3-year rolling average.

– To halve, by 2005, the amount of fresh water used per tonne of metal produced and reduce, by 40%, the metals discharged into water per tonne of metal produced, based on 1996 levels.

– To certify all its operations to the ISO14001 standard by 2002. In 1999, Falcondo became the first nickel operation in the world to have its environmental management system certified to this standard. Two more of the company’s operations — Nikkelverk and Collahuasi’s oxide plant, pipeline and Patache Port — have since been certified.

In the larger view of the complete life cycle of its products, Falconbridge collaborates with the Nickel Development Institute, the Nickel Producers Environmental Research Association and the International Copper Association to develop standards to ensure that customers and their employees are aware of potential health and environmental effects of its products.