Winds sent particles of mine waste blowing over Hudbay’s tailings pond last weekend, with both the company and a union official confirming none of the material left the property.
A concerned resident supplied The Reminder with a photo and video of the incident. Both show a wide, thick haze of red dust hovering over the tailings pond area near Creighton.
Rob Winton, vice-president, Manitoba Business Unit for Hudbay, said company personnel and contractors took action to mitigate the “dusting event” of Sunday afternoon, Feb. 28.
“Our team did not see evidence of the dusting leaving Hudbay property as their mitigation efforts and quick weather changes limited the impact,” he added.
Tom Davie, president of USW Local 7106, Hudbay’s largest union, said the union’s health and safety representative also said none of the particles left company property.
This was a “very lucky” outcome, Davie said, considering the material is toxic with high metal levels.
Winton said the dusting involved Hudbay’s two tailings impoundments, the main tailings pond and ZPL (zinc pressure leach) tails, the latter of which caused the red dust.
He said the incident stemmed from weather conditions over the previous three days, which saw a melt of surface tailings followed by a sharp drop in temperatures and 50-plus km/h winds.
The result was sublimation – ice transforming from a solid to a gas – at the surface, which exposed fine particles that were picked up by the wind, Winton said.
Hudbay personnel and contractors took “many measures” to mitigate the event, he said, including the placement of salted sand, wooden pallets and snow / wind fences.
The company “did not receive any community complaints or concerns on Sunday through our communication tools,” Winton said. “We did reach out to a Creighton resident to discuss Sunday’s event and they did not believe there was any community impact. All fine particles that are airborne are a concern from a health perspective and why we focus great effort on controlling this potential from our operations in Manitoba.”
The Reminder offered the Saskatchewan Ministry of Environ-ment the opportunity to comment on the incident but as of press time Thursday had not heard back.
A previous dusting incident in late 2002 saw tailings dust blow into Creighton. At that time, Hudbay, then known as HBM&S, hired a crew to clean up affected public areas and lent out power washers and shop vacuums to residents, among other initiatives.
“We have an extensive dusting mitigation plan that has improved greatly since the 2002 event,” Winton said. “These programs cover the operation of the tailings ponds from a deposition perspective, covering exposed tails with sand, hay, etc. Each time a new weather or other phenomenon occurs, we learn and continually improve our practices to reduce the risk of dusting events.”
Tailings are the slurried material left over after minerals are removed from ore.
