Biodiversity Crisis: Evidence-Based Climate and Environment Impact

Reference Number
221
Text

The documents submitted to support the proposed Beaver Dam Gold Mine fail to address many critical environmental and economic concerns raised by past and current Altlantic Gold ventures in Nova Scotia, a number of which are being disputed in the courts at this time.

Specifically, the proposal is not transparent about how and in what timeline Atlantic Gold will  fund the cost of relocating the Moose River Gold Mines Provincial Park (https://novascotia.ca/just/regulations/regs/ppkmooseriver.htm) that was created to commemorate the 1936 mine disaster. The park is  located where the open pit is now.  
 

Further the proposal does not provide transparent information on how - or who - will be responsible for funding the installation of power lines, access roads, and the renewal fees Atlantic Gold is required to pay for its thousands of mineral exploration claims in the province, and its refundable reclamation bond.
 

The proposal includes these expenses as 'benefits' to Nova Scotians, but fails to outline how they benefit anyone other than Atlantic Gold.

Specifically, the proposal neglects to address WHO will be funding the following costs in relation to the Beaver Dam mine:

  • Legal Costs Defending Encironmental Charges. These include Nova Scotian and International cases including but not limited to the 32 environmental charges (https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/environment/atlantic-gold-is-going-to-court/) laid by Nova Scotia Environment for alleged infractions around the mine and its exploration sites between February 8, 2018 and May 9, 2020.
  • 3 charges against the Fisheries Act for alleged non-compliance between September 27, 2018 and April 29, 2020.
  • lawsuit filed against Atlantic Gold by John Perkins for Wrongful Arrest (2019)
  • legal fallout of Atlantic Gold’s failure to comply with all the terms of its 2008 Environmental Approval (https://novascotia.ca/nse/ea/MooseRiver/MooseRiver_Conditions.pdf) and its 2014 Industrial Approval (https://novascotia.ca/nse/ia/pdfdocs/2012-084244-08.pdf), which required it to identify 265 hectares of “conservation land” to give to the province or else pay a security of half a million dollars.

 

It appears, even to a member of the public like me, that the information provided to the EIA of Canada regarding the environmental impact of the Beaver Dam mine remains incomplete, at best. For example:

Record of environment Standards: records Show that at the time of this application Atlantic Gold was consistently failing to meet environmental standards and its conditions of approval for existing NS mines once a month on average from February 18, 2018 through to May, 2020. It appears that even the information Atlantic Gold provides to Canada’s Impact Assessment Agency is deficient and incomplete.

  • The IAAC assessment of the Beaver Dam mine project (https://iaac-aeic.gc.ca/050/evaluations/proj/80111) began in 2015. there have been 2 federal and provincial requests for more accurate information. These requests remain in substantial part unfulfilled.
  • Atlantic Gold’s revised EIS for the Beaver Dam mine (https://iaac-aeic.gc.ca/050/documents/p80111/128094E.pdf) earned itself 203 critical comments from Nova Scotia government scientists and experts (https://iaac-aeic.gc.ca/050/documents/p80111/131129E.pdf), some  scathing, (see report in Halifax the Examiner December 2020) but this submission shows many substantial concerns remain unaddressed.
  • 4 mines. 1 shared processing ans tailings. Why separate environmental assessments?  Atlantic Gold has, in past applications, and in parent company records, referred to Beaver Adam as one of the four mines in its “Moose River Consolidated Project,” . This term has disappeared from its website (https://stbarbara.com.au/our-operations/atlantic-gold/) and been replaced by “Atlantic Operations”. Like many members of the public I am concerned that the renaming of these mines as separate operations has been done by Atlantic Gold to avoid the requirement for a single environmental assessment of the cumulative effects of four large open pit mines along the Eastern Shore - mines that will share a single processing and tailings facility. 
  • Lost Community, and Expropriation of Private Land, Distruction of Public Infrastructure . In 2012, Charlie Parker, then minister of natural resources, issued vesting orders that led to the expropriation of private land in Moose River that was handed over to DDV Gold for its Touquoy mine, That land included Moose River community. However, Atlantic Fold did not compensate Nova Scotians for this loss or the substantial and ongoing environmental distruction. On the contrary, 
  • Coastal Waters, Coastlines, Tourism If this mine goes ahead we will be adding to what is already a catastrophic environmental impact of mining for our marine life. For example, the recent proposal whale sanctuary on the Eastern Shore has been cancelled due to the long and short term impacts of Atlantic Gold's gold mining operations: Citing provincial studies, Marineland (the sanctuary operator) said the site in a bay near Port Hilford, N.S., has been contaminated by two toxic tailings dumps left behind by gold mines that operated between 1860 and 1939 in the historic Wine Harbour Gold District.“Huge volumes of arsenic and mercury were dumped into open mine tailings for decades throughout the district…(and) the safety and stability of the two tailings dumps sites are not known, but it is believed they do not meet any modern environmental standard,” the study says “Extensive, independent scientific studies in and around the proposed site…demonstrate dangerous toxic levels of arsenic and mercury in the area of the proposed sanctuary…on land and in bivalve shellfish in the water.”

    Charles Vinick, executive director of the non-profit sanctuary project, challenged the allegations, saying his group is aware of the mines and is studying the water and the sediment in the bay.

    “In our studies to date, we’ve found very little levels of arsenic,” he said in an interview from California. He confirmed some arsenic was found in a nearby freshwater pond, but not in the saltwater bay where the whales would live.

    “If we find that there are toxic levels of any chemical – arsenic and mercury included – then we would have to do mitigation or not proceed,” he said. “We wouldn’t be able to get a permit for this site if it cannot be demonstrated that it’s safe for the animals to be there.”

  • Water Safety and Foodchain "Ninety-nine per cent of what they’re pulling out of that open pit is toxic waste that will live on the land in perpetuity,” Moore said. “That’s a giant heap of mine waste that poisons water in perpetuity.” Moore pointed out that mining companies, like people, do not live forever, and therein lurks another big risk: this EIA APPLICATION does not address the fact that the waste will be there forever.

 

Submitted by
Individual
Phase
N/A
Public Notice
Public Notice - Public Comments Invited on a Revised Summary of the Environmental Impact Statement
Attachment(s)
N/A
Date Submitted
2021-12-17 - 7:09 AM
Date modified: