United Nations calls out Canadian mining companies for catastrophic spills - VICE News

The United Nations is calling out mining companies worldwide for spilling toxic chemicals into the environment, with the 2014 Mount Polley disaster in B.C. cited as an example of corporate irresponsibility.

More than 40 spills from mining operations have released toxic chemicals into the environment over the last decade, said the United Nations Environment Programme report, including seven which made international headlines. These spills occurred in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, China, the U.S. and Israel.

The increasing number and size of tailings dams, which store mining waste, is magnifying risk, the report says. Although the number of dam breaches have decreased in the last decade, the number of serious failures have increased, the report found. Canada alone has had seven major tailing spills in the last decade, with most of those being serious dam failures, according to the U.N.

For example, the Mount Polley copper and gold mine in British Columbia, owned by Imperial Metals, spilled 25 million cubic metres of tailings and wastewater into a lake in 2014, the U.N. said, calling it “the largest environmental disaster in Canadian mining history.”