Rio Algom Limited

1 1 2 Rio Algom Limited: 3 Application for the renewal of its 4 Class 1B Waste Facility Operating 5 Licence 6 7 05-H18.1 / 05-H18.1A 8 Oral presentation by 9 Rio Algom Limited 10 11 MS. WIBER: Thank you, Madam President. 12 Hello to the Commission Members. My name is Maxine Wiber, 13 Vice-President of Closed Mines. I’m an officer and 14 director of Rio Algom Limited. To my right is Art Coggan. 15 He is Projects Manager, and you have met Art before, I 16 think, at least year’s hearing. Art is actually taking 17 retirement and helping us through the transition to our 18 new manager, Debbie Berthelot, on my left. 19 Debbie is familiar with Elliot Lake from 20 past experience, has a strong technical background and is 21 really well suited for the position of Manager of 22 Reclamation for Elliot Lake, and I am delighted to 23 introduce Debbie to you today as well. Debbie and Art 24 will assist in answering questions of the Commission as 25 they come up. 2 1 Today we are here to present our submission 2 for renewal of our licence for an indefinite term for the 3 operation, care and maintenance of the Elliot Lake 4 properties. The physical work of reclamation has been 5 finished now for about five years and during that period 6 we have been able to show data that demonstrates the 7 performance of the systems, improvements in environment 8 quality, and these things are supporting, I think, our 9 indefinite term. 10 The overview will include a quick reminder 11 of the locations and properties, our site activities, the 12 management frameworks that we use at the sites, our Cycle 13 2 results. This is an important program. We would like 14 to spend a few minutes describing some of these results 15 where we look at the effects on fish, water quality 16 sediments and macron vertebrates that live in the 17 sediments. 18 We will also talk about our Public 19 Information Program and changes we made since last time 20 that included the results of a community survey where we 21 tested people’s perceptions of the company and how they 22 were receiving information, if it was too much and in what 23 way. And so we were able to make improvements that we 24 will show you. 25 And lastly, just to touch on the rationale 3 1 for indefinite term. 2 We are showing here the Elliot Lake area 3 which is about 150 kilometres due west of Sudbury in the 4 north channel of the Great Lakes. 5 The next diagram is showing us the Serpent 6 River watershed and all of the sites except Pronto 7 discharge into the Serpent River watershed. Pronto is 8 further to the south and discharges directly to the north 9 channel. 10 But up here we can see the Ten Mile Lake at 11 the very top-left corner, and this is our reference 12 stations or reference lakes that we used to monitor 13 background and make comparisons to. 14 And then in pink is shown the tailings 15 areas, and in most cases little arrows are showing the 16 direction of flow, and at the very top of the watershed is 17 the main water body, Quirke Lake, and into Quirke is our 18 Quirke and Panel sites, as well as the Dennison site and 19 our Spanish American. These four sites discharge into 20 Quirke Lake that flow along here through Whiskey and into 21 Pecors. At Pecors is joined by discharges from Stenrock 22 that flows through this system, through Huff and Pecors, 23 and Stanleigh, which discharges through McCabe and into 24 Pecors as well, and then these all come together in 25 McCarty, where the discharges from Lacnor, Nordic and 4 1 Milliken flow through the Elliot Lake chain and join into 2 McCarthy. 3 So later in the presentation I will show 4 you some data from Quirke Lake, Pecors and McCarthy. 5 The next slide is showing photographs of 6 the water cover sites. Just one is missing, a small one 7 called Spanish American that we saw. The direction of 8 arrows is showing the water flow and in most cases, I 9 think all cases, the final effluent points are shown. 10 This is the sediment ponds at Quirke, at Panel the 11 discharge from the second pond below the treatment plant, 12 and at Stanleigh, discharge at the treatment plant to 13 McCabe. 14 The vegetated sites, Milliken is actually a 15 combination of water cover and sand and gravel cover, but 16 the tailings themselves remain saturated. So there is no 17 oxidation of sulphide, so the water quality here is good 18 without treatment, and then Lacnor Nordic where we have 19 vegetated sites and lime treatment plants and Pronto where 20 we have similar vegetated sites and lime plant. 21 Our activities include the monitoring 22 programs for radiation safety, occupational safety, 23 monitoring water quality in the tailings areas themselves, 24 the discharges from tailings and the watersheds, emergency 25 response and contingency planning. We do training 5 1 annually and testing of our emergency plans and 2 notification systems, public consultation and 3 communication that we will come back to later. 4 The program also includes operation and 5 maintenance of the tailings. That is more the physical 6 inspection of tailings operations and the operation of 7 water treatment plants. Reporting to regulatory agencies, 8 our internal company and community reporting and a self- 9 assessment where we use a risk-based management program 10 and we identify controls to manage risk and be proactive 11 risk management. So we have assessments of are we 12 applying the controls to manage risk appropriately. And 13 then internal audit, both financial audit as well as 14 health, safety, environment and community audit. 15 The organisation is here with the Vice- 16 President of Closed Mines for Rio Algom and reporting to 17 that position is Debbie Berthelot and the responsible 18 authority here is the Corporate Audit Systems and 19 reporting to Debbie, Denison Environmental Services 20 providing the care and maintenance contract, 21 administrative and accounting support and reclamation, 22 specific contractors like the environmental contractors of 23 physical work where we have to do scraping or moving 24 material. 25 We have owned and operated these sites for 6 1 50 years. There is a great store of information and 2 knowledge. The monitoring programs we have are quite 3 robust and they allow us to detect trends and monitor very 4 closely performance and we do have very strong management 5 systems, I think, in all areas of health, safety, 6 environment, community and management operations. This 7 refers to the knowledge base which is captured in a 8 documentation system that includes our reference 9 documents, engineering reports, design reports, our 10 environmental data and also project files on specific 11 projects. 12 The Cycle 2 Program, I am going to spend 13 the next few slides describing that program and some of 14 the results. We do this every five years and the last 15 work was done in October of 2004. So we have this recent 16 result that compares performance or results with the 1999 17 data and we test, as I mentioned before, the upstream. If 18 you recall, that is the Ten Mile Lake area and then we 19 look at some of the affected lakes, McCarthy which is the 20 combination or cumulative effect of all the mines. It 21 comprises water quality and there are some details here, 22 sediments in depositional environments in the lakes and in 23 the river systems, looking at physical characteristics as 24 they affect the habitat for Benthic invertebrates, and 25 these are creatures that live in the sediments, and sport 7 1 fish, testing also sport fish for tissue analysis for 2 health-related consumption targets. 3 Some of the results -- we won’t show them 4 all; we don’t have time -- but some important results in 5 water quality for radium-226 and sulphate, some of the 6 more important contaminants in the effluents, these are 7 showing really very good reduction trends. These are as 8 we expect and they do fall within a range of levels 9 expected in the Environmental Impact Statement that was 10 updated in 2002. So we are very pleased with these 11 results. 12 The blue line is Quirke which is the first 13 affected lake and then Pecors is receiving the influence 14 from the Denison and Stanleigh Mine, and then finally 15 McCarthy Lake in yellow showing the cumulative effects of 16 all the mines. So we are quite pleased with this result. 17 On sediment quality for uranium, we also 18 see a dramatic reduction where it is showing us that the 19 inputs of uranium are reduced significantly and that's 20 reflected in the results we have in sediment. 21 For benthic invertebrates, the slide has 22 some pretty complex ideas. Benthic sampling is done in a 23 way that allows very sophisticated statistical evaluations 24 and comparisons of data based on abundance and diversity 25 indices and what we see, both in 1999 and in 2004, are 8 1 very good benthic communities, healthy communities. We 2 saw very significant improvements in fast-flowing streams 3 where the abundance and diversity of sensitive species was 4 increased.

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