OPINION — Finding solutions together

Canada was founded on the strength of its resource industries, and these sectors remain the cornerstone of the national economy.

Canada’s minerals, metals and energy industries, for example, account for more than one-tenth of our gross domestic product and more than a quarter of our exports by value.

The Canadian mining industry alone employs 63,000 people and contributes $4.8 billion annually to the country’s trade surplus.

But Canada’s resource industries are also facing some of their fiercest challenges in recent years. This is perhaps no more true than for the Canadian mining industry.

Relatively low world prices for minerals coupled with a global recession have taken a toll on the industry. The survival of Canada’s mining community is due, in part, to its ability to develop and adapt technologies to remain competitive while respecting the environment and the health and safety of its workers.

One area in which the Canadian mining industry has joined forces with government is the control and prevention of acidic drainage, considered to be the largest single environmental problem facing the industry today. It has been estimated that the cost of cleaning up existing and future acid-generating tailings ponds and waste rock piles at non-ferrous metal mine sites will be $3-6 billion during the next 20 years.

Recognizing that new technologies were needed to find permanent and economic solutions to the problem, the Canadian mining industry teamed up with the federal government and five provinces in 1988 to establish the Mine Environment Neutral Drainage (MEND) program.

Technologies developed under MEND are expected to reduce, by hundreds of millions of dollars, industry’s liability at company-owned waste sites, and governments’ liability at abandoned waste sites, says Grant Feasby, manager of the MEND secretariat. The Canada Centre for Mineral and Energy Technology (CANMET) in Ottawa provides the secretariat and, in conjunction with other MEND participants, contributes funding, research and management. One of the most promising technologies for preventing acidic drainage, says Feasby, is the use of water covers.

Studies on the effect of depositing fresh reactive tailings under water at four Canadian locations have shown that tailings do not react under water. Experiments to date indicate that the dissolution of heavy metals from the tailings and overlying sediments is minimal, uptake of metals into the flora and fauna is negligible, and the water over the wastes can and does support thriving biological systems.

A year ago, the MEND budget was increased to $18 million from $12.5 million and the project extended for four more years, until December, 1997. Another area of mining technology in which Canada has excelled is the alleviation of rockbursts in underground mines. This development is largely the result of a co-operative project involving the Ontario underground mining industry, CANMET and the Ontario government.

Through the Canadian Rockburst Research Program, these partners have worked together to transfer technology, as it is developed, to the industry. As a result, Canada, which once ranked well behind other Western nations in research, now stands second only to South Africa in research activities to alleviate these sudden, violent rock failures.

Since the program’s inception in 1984, it has saved the mining industry in Canada more than $200 million by developing technologies to improve mine design and by decreasing production losses caused by downtime. This collaboration between industry and both levels of government has been hailed as a model for dealing with rockbursts.

The sharing of technology and expertise avoids duplication of efforts and leads to the maximum use of limited resources — concepts that are as crucial in business as in government.

— From a recent issue of CANMET’s “Technology Focus.”