A new report from Dalhousie University reveals shortcomings in the environmental review process for mining operations in Canada: Researchers found that data for 20 per cent of the projects they reviewed was incomplete or completely missing from public records.
The report compiles all available environmental impact assessments of mining projects since 1974—that's 266 assessments for 227 projects over 50 years. However, the researchers encountered problems. Some provinces, such as British Columbia, had a fully digitized and accessible system; records from other jurisdictions were much more difficult to access or were simply unavailable.
Without complete environmental assessment data, researchers cannot properly assess how the mine impacts the surrounding community. And regulators cannot set a baseline to measure environmental damage.
“When we talk about launching new projects, there's something called a 'cumulative effect,'” Alana Westwood, the report's lead author, said in a recent interview. “Contamination or contamination from a mine can accumulate over time, reaching a dangerous threshold.”
Exceeding the thresholds could lead to species extinction or serious contamination of groundwater, leaving communities without clean water, she said.
“If we don't have baseline data, we don't know where we started and we can't assess or understand the potential consequences.”
NS gave an estimate of the cost of providing access at $6,000.
In one case, researchers submitted a request to Nova Scotia for access to environmental assessments conducted before 2000. Nova Scotia began requiring environmental assessments in 1989, but until 2000 they were conducted manually.
“We submitted our request (freedom of information request) and were told it would cost $6,000,” says Ben Collison, a Dalhousie graduate student and co-author of the report. “Our lab doesn’t have $6,000 in funding and years of waiting for this to happen.”
Westwood and Collison also found that provincial and federal environmental assessments for the same project did not agree in two-thirds of the cases they studied. The assessments looked at separate parts of the project or used different terms, making it difficult for researchers to get a full picture of the mine's environmental risks.
Canada's mining industry is a large industry, accounting for about six percent of the country's economy. But the mining industry also leaves a big mark. The report shows that there may be more than 10,000 abandoned mines across the country that continue to pollute the environment without any oversight.
Several active mines operate on a huge scale. For example, the Star-Orion diamond project in Saskatchewan is more than 850 times the size of the Rogers Center in Toronto. The entire mine is about the size of the town of Camrose, Alta.
The researchers' report is publicly available
Westwood says environmental assessments are an invaluable tool for mining projects, but the current system is not used effectively. Collison, meanwhile, says provinces and the federal government need to better agree on what elements of a project should be studied and what work should be done.
However, Collison says governments need to ensure they don't relax rules when provincial and federal analysis is accelerated or streamlined.
“If that's the case, I think we run the risk of making decisions that aren't supported by the evidence.”
Westwood and Collison made their report publicly available and is searchable. They say they hope that by doing so they can encourage provinces to work together to improve environmental assessments.
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