Exxon Promotes Junk Science

September 28, 1997
To: The Forest Republican

From:
Al Gedicks
210 Avon Street # 4
La Crosse, WI 54603
(608) 784-4399

The Crandon Mining Company (a subsidiary of Exxon and Rio Algom) would like us to believe that poorly managed tailings, or mine wastes, simply do not happen any more (paid ad, 9/24/97). The evidence does not support this claim.  The most recent report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on mine wastes shows that tailings ponds from currently operating mines are causing environmental damage from acid mine drainage. Of the 60 Superfund cleanup sites, more than half have been active at some point since 1985, showing that at least some of these problems are caused by modern practices ("Risks Posed by Bevill Wastes").

Exxon's ad shows what appears to be a tupperware container and claims that they will isolate the tailings from water and oxygen so no harmful acids are produced. There is no mention of the sheer volume of the wastes which will cover an area the size of 350 football fields, piled 90 feet high at the headwaters of the pristine Wolf River. And that is just what will be deposited on the surface! Exxon proposes to backfill the excavated mine shafts with another 22 million tons of sulfide wastes that may generate acid and poisonous heavy metals as it comes into contact with water entering the shafts.

We are assured that this is the same basic technology that now protects groundwater under modern landfill sites. This is highly misleading. The nature of the waste in a typical municipal landfill and in a tailings pond is quite different. According to Dr. David Blowes, a mine waste expert with the Waterloo Centre for Groundwater Research in Ontario, Canada, "all of the tailings produced will have an extremely high acid-generating potential." Exxon's proposal to add lime to the tailings pond to prevent acids from forming has not been supported from field experience cited by Dr. Blowes.

Exxon's then assures us that there are multiple safeguards in the top and bottom liners of the tailings pond. But according to former Crandon Mining Company president Jerry Goodrich, the plastic liner under the tailings pond will dissolve in 140 years (Post-Crescent, 12/3/95). If the mining industry believed that acids and heavy metals would not leak out of the tailings pond, why did their lawyers demand that the industry be exempt from groundwater protection standards up to 1200 feet from the tailings pond?  Exxon's ad says that Wisconsin's mining laws will protect our ground and surface waters but they fail to mention that the mining industry has been exempted from the groundwater rules that apply to all other industries.

The only way to protect Wisconsin's precious ground and surface waters is to require the mining industry to demonstrate that their waste containment technologies have actually prevented contamination at existing mines and at mines that have been closed for at least ten years. So far Exxon has not been able to cite even one example of a mine in a sulfide ore body similar to the Wolf River deposit that has operated for any significant length of time that has not caused extensive pollution. Exxon thinks they can substitute a multi-million dollar lobbying and public relations campaign for sound science. The overwhelming public support for the mining moratorium bill says Exxon is wrong.
 

Al Gedicks is the director of the Center for Alternative Mining Development Policy in La Crosse and the author of The New Resource Wars.