Old mines never die…they become garbage dumps

Canadian mining communities have for years pondered, with considerable dread, what would happen when the motherlode runs dry. But the ascendancy of environmental protection as the political issue of the 1990s has provided at least some mining companies with an alternative to simply walking away from abandoned sites. With proper hydrogeology — not to mention a sympathetic community and a number of other political factors — at least two abandoned mines, both in eastern Ontario, could become destinations for solid waste from the greater Toronto region.

It is estimated that each of the 3.5 million residents of the greater Toronto area produces a tonne of solid waste a year. Within a very few years, experts predict, both the population and the amount of garbage it produces will have swollen dramatically. Recycling goals are not being met and, as a result, landfill sites are filling up at an alarming rate. Two years ago, local politicians began casting about to find both short-term and long-term waste disposal sites, a process that has met with mixed results at best.

Two Pits Converted

The process has generated a number of options, including the conversion of two abandoned open pit mines in Ontario — one at Kirkland Lake, in the north, and the other near Marmora, about 40 km north of Belleville — into landfill sites. Both produced iron ore, but there ends much of the similarity; while Kirkland Lake is actively courting metropolitan Toronto’s waste, Marmora appears dead set against it. For that reason, plus the fact that Kirkland Lake’s potential capacity is much greater than Marmora’s, the two proposals are a good study in contrasts.

The 225-metre-plus Armbro mine in Marmora, which closed in 1978 because of decreasing demand for iron ore, has since come to be half-filled with water clean enough for fish to spawn in. But local residents worry that the dump would contaminate their drinking water and scare off the tourists who now form the largest single source of revenue for the area.

Those fighting the proposal say their concerns are being addressed neither by Metro Toronto nor by the high-powered committee called the Solid Waste Interim Steering Committee (SWISC), made up of the chairmen of Metro and the abutting municipalities of Halton, Peel, York and Durham. SWISC’s mandate is to find willing hosts for both interim and long-term landfill sites, meaning the communities must accept Metro’s garbage without reservation. But Marmora is not a willing host, says village reeve Andre Philpot. “We just don’t want Metro’s garbage,” he says. “It’s that simple.

“A lot of the people who worked at that mine still live in this area, and they know what happens to rock when you blast it for 25 years. Half of that pit is filled with water, and the water is coming from somewhere. You don’t have to know a lot to understand that water plus garbage equals leachate, and that’s what we’re concerned about.”

The Adams mine in Kirkland Lake, owned by Dofasco of Hamilton, Ont., closed in March of this year, throwing 348 people out of work and ending 22 years of production. Mayor Joe Mavernack says its conversion to a landfill site still depends on a number of factors. “We have said all along that we will only take it if it can be proven to be environmentally viable, and if it is accompanied by a recycling station and some funding for research. If it’s just a landfill site, we don’t want it in any way, shape or form.”

Kirkland Lake and surrounding communities, with a total population of about 18,000, stand to reap substantial economic benefit — a minimum of C$600,000 a year — if the landfill site and other installations proceed. “The C$250,000 in research and development is what excites me the most,” Mavernack says. “We’re hoping that, in addition to providing some new jobs in the area, the funding will attract private sector financing along the same lines. This is very much a part of our overall strategy of economic diversification.”

Gordon McGuinty is president of Notre Development of North Bay, Ont., the company negotiating to buy the Adams mine from Dofasco. He won’t discuss the asking price but says the conversion plan makes sense both economically and environmentally. “It narrows as you go gown, so the possibility of leachate leaking out is minuscule. And it will be pumped out from the bottom on a regular basis anyway, so it won’t have a chance to leak.”

David McRoberts, waste management co-ordinator with Pollution Probe (a research and advocacy-based organization in Toronto), says both options reflect the wrong motivation in dealing with the garbage crisis.

Waste Haulage Expensive

“Between 40% and 50% of Metro’s garbage is paper,” McRoberts says. “It just drives me nuts to think of filling railway cars with paper products and products made from minable commodities that originated in the north, and then sending those trains to the north to dump the waste back where it started.

“We have been saying for 20 years that governments should redirect some of the money used as incentives — in areas such as flow-through shares in the mining sector and low stumpage fees such as forestry — into finding ways to reduce, re-use and recycle. Waste haulage is an extremely expensive proposition, costing on average C$362 a tonne, compared with C$100 a tonne to recycle. That is what we must do to save our environment, and we’re confident it will happen eventually.” But it means changing the infrastructure and changing the nature of our economy, and those things won’t happen overnight.