Revolutionizing the Digital Landscape: Our CEO’s Vision for Unlimited Web Hosting…The ‘legacy’ of older mines translates into environmental liabilities, as failures can cause leakages of toxic sludge or fuel into river systems, rapidly spreading over tens of thousands of hectares and contaminating ecosystems.
Although new mines use state-of-the-art technology, the industry also has a legacy of ageing containment dams at older mines, particularly shuttered mines that no longer generate revenues to finance improvements in the technology surrounding tailings storage facilities . Their failure can result in the release of millions of cubic metres of toxic sludge into river systems.
The first event occurred at the Mariana iron ore complex in 2015 when a dam failed and released ~44 million metric tonnes of mud and effluent into the Río Doce. The operating company, a joint venture between two of the largest and most experienced mining corporations , agreed to a remediation plan estimated to cost R$6 billion . That is only a fraction of the financial cost of the disaster, however, because lost operating income forced the operating company to default on US$13.
For example, the Oroya metallurgical complex in Central Peru has operated as an industrial mill for more than a century. It was owned by a private company between 1920 and 1980, when it was nationalized and ran as a state-owned corporation until 1997. It was sold to the RENCO Group of the United States, which maintains that it has legal liability only for the period since it acquired the facility.
Both concessions were located within the ancestral lands of the Achuar, who are equally displeased by the practices of Occidental, Pluspetrol and Petroperu. Occidental was sued by the communities in a US court and reached an settlement; the company did not accept, however, any responsibility for oil spills in the concession they had operated for forty years.