GUEST COLUMN – Stifling mine development

How ridiculous can some of those vociferous, head-in-the-clouds environmentalists, including our own public servants, get?

A case in point would have to be a charge against Maybrun Mines, a small isolated former copper-gold producer in northwestern Ontario, mothballed since 1978.

It was served with a pollution prevention order by the Ministry of the Environment requiring it to disconnect, drain and triple-rinse the transformers in its mill building. The PCB-

contaminated oil and rinsing material was then to be put in approved steel drums and stored in a specially constructed separate building. Stained concrete under the transformers was to be chipped out and similarly stored, as well as any stained soil, wood or metal. Oh yes, the storage building to be constructed was to be fenced, all within seven days.

Patrick Sheridan, who controls the company and who takes on the establishment at the drop of a hat if he feels wronged, virtually ignored the order which he considered so unjustified and unreasonable as to be wrong. “Sheridan is a familiar protagonist of the Ministry of the Environment (also the Ontario Securities Commission and The Toronto Stock Exchange), which may explain the absence of a co-operative relationship between the ministry and the defendants,” Judge John Fraser of the Ontario Court of Justice says in his 27-page judgment which came down strongly in Sheridan’s favor. “By the spring of 1987, the ministry knew there was scientific consensus that PCBs were not the environmental villain first suspected,” the judgment reads. Indeed, reams of evidence were presented suggesting environmentalists are way off base on their assessment of conceived dangers.

M. Hayes of the University of Toronto, a professional defence witness, with a curriculum vitae as long as your arm, testified PCBs are way too high on the priority list as a cause of human health and environmental problems, and less harmful than many other liquid wastes such as diesel fuel or common salt. “Based on evidence called, there is a broad scientific consensus that PCBs are not direct carcinogens nor are they carcinogen promoters in humans,” the judgment reads. “There is no evidence available that would justify a finding they have an adverse effect on humans based on realistic exposure levels.” What conceivable grounds could Ontario’s environmental director have for requiring completion of his absurd orders within seven days considering the remoteness of the mine site far from any community?

“We are dealing with a bunch of loonies, forcing us to fight pollution that didn’t exist,” Sheridan told me, adding that this 20-month battle cost his little company “a lot of money” and Ontario taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The company was convicted only of failing to clean up a small amount (perhaps a pailful) of PCB-contaminated soil. And the ministry was left with egg on its face, with a strongly worded warning to be more careful in the future, wrote Dianne Saxe in the article “Mine successfully challenges PCB cleanup order” in Hazardous Materials Management. She’s a Toronto lawyer with a doctorate in environmental law.

These all-too-frequent kinds of happenings are shackling and discouraging mine development in Ontario today.

“We would reopen the mine tomorrow if we could move it to Manitoba,” Sheridan says. “There’s not a single mine operating in the entire Kenora district — one of Canada’s great greenstone belts.”

There is a 500-ton mill on the property which operated for 18 months prior to closure when the price of copper slumped and fuel oil rocketed. There was no road to the site at that time. There is still over a million tons of open pit ore available grading 1.2% copper and 0.045 oz. gold per ton, with at least another million tons underground grading 1.4% copper and 0.15 oz. gold. There is a shaft to 300 ft., with several encouraging drill intersections to depths of 2,000 ft.

The operation was dependent on high-cost diesel-generated electricity. But just 4,000 ft. away is a potential hydroelectric site. “We applied for approvals and assistance to construct a small hydro-generating station 14 years ago,” Sheridan says. “We are still waiting.”