VALE: Protesters burn vehicles, buildings at New Caledonia nickel mine

REUTERS, 27/05 09:15 CET

http://www.euronews.com/newswires/2520788-protesters-burn-vehicles-buildings-at-new-caledonia-nickel-mine/

By Cecile Lefort and Melanie Burton

Photo Thierry Perron

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Rioters torched vehicles, equipment and buildings at Vale’s nickel mine in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia over the weekend, as anger boiled over about a chemical spill in a local river.

The $6 billion Vale plant at Goro in southern New Caledonia was closed earlier this month after some 100,000 litres of acid-tainted effluent leaked, killing about 1,000 fish and sparking renewed protests at the mine site.

The Vale plant has a production target of 60,000 tonnes of nickel at full capacity, compared with global supply of around 2 million tonnes. But it has been beset by problems in recent years, including several chemical spills and violent protests.

Tensions between the local population and Vale escalated over the weekend with young protesters frustrated at the latest spill by the Brazilian-based giant and a lack of response from indigenous Kanak chiefs, according to local media. Television footage showed images of burnt mining vehicles and equipment.

“There was damage at the site, but no damage to the plant. We had burned vehicles, one administration building was damaged, but no damage to the plant itself,” Vale spokesman Cory McPhee told Reuters.

Peter Poppinga, an executive director at Vale, told Les Nouvelles Caledoniennes newspaper that damage to the mining site was estimated at at least $20 million to $30 million, including the destruction of perhaps one third of the truck fleet.

“If there is no activity for several months, we will shut the plant, but that’s not the case. The closing of the plant is not on the table,” Poppinga was quoted as saying.

The scale of the damage could not immediately be independently verified.

Nickel mining is a key industry in New Caledonia, which holds as much as a quarter of the world’s known reserves. Vale’s plant is the second-largest employer in the southern province, with some 3,500 employees and contractors, including a large number of Filipino workers.

PLANT HALTED

New Caledonia’s southern provincial government ordered an immediate halt to operations after the spill earlier this month and started legal proceedings under its environmental code.

The local government, which changed leadership last week, said it would not lift the production suspension until safety procedures were revised, an oversight committee was reinstated and an independent expert’s report was completed.

“We got to this point because, clearly, part of the local youth, particularly from the southern tribes, reject the perspective of maintaining the plant in activity, even with the reinforcement of safety procedures,” Philippe Michel, the newly elected president of New Caledonia’s Southern Province, told local television on Monday.

Global nickel prices hit a 27-month high earlier this month and are up by about 40 percent this year, driven by a decision by Indonesia to halt exports of raw nickel ores and news of the Goro closure. Indonesia’s ban left nickel buyers in China and Japan scrambling to secure supplies amid a fear of shortages.

“Vale’s got lots of issues in the country,” said Tom Price, a mining analyst at UBS in Sydney. “Nickel has recovered back to the marginal cost of production. It’s inviting for them to continue to invest, but it’s been a world of pain for them for quite a few years.”

Given market expectations of Goro production of just 15,000-20,000 tonnes this year, any impact on nickel prices from the closure would be sentiment driven, Price added. LME nickel prices rose 0.7 percent to $19,745 a tonne on Tuesday.

The Goro mine produced 4,100 tonnes of nickel in the first quarter, up 41 percent on a year ago. Vale is the world’s second-biggest nickel producer, but Goro made up just 6 percent of its nickel output in the first quarter.

The mine employs high pressure technology and acids to leach nickel from abundant tropical laterite ores.

“There is an inherent risk in Goro’s type of operation,” said Gavin Mudd, a professor of environmental engineering at Monash University in Melbourne.

(Additional reporting by James Regan; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Richard Pullin)

Strike at World’s Largest Nickel Mine - International Solidarity

Source: The Bullet

International solidarity organizes against Vale Inco, 2nd largest transnational mining giant in the world

Marc Bonhomme

In France’s south Pacific colony of New Caledonia, a small delegation of Vale Inco strikers from Sudbury, in Northeastern Ontario, most of them Franco-Ontarians, met in October with the union at the island’s Vale Inco nickel mine, due to open in 2010 although it threatens a UNESCO nature reserve. The newspaper Nouvelles calédoniennes reported the encounter, in its October 31 edition:

“In the face of the global economy, the labour movement is looking to internationalize. In Canada, 3,500 workers at Vale Inco are currently on strike. Their union, the United Steelworkers, has launched a crusade to visit every Vale Inco site on the planet, for the purpose of forging alliances. In New Caledonia, union representatives met with the unions that represent the workers at the plant located in the south. ...

For the past three and a half months, ...workers at Vale Inco in Canada have been engaged in a test of strength with the Brazilian multinational that absorbed Inco, the Canadian nickel giant which initiated the Goro Nickel project in Caledonia. ...

They are accusing the Vale group of taking advantage of the global crisis and lower profits to make underhanded cuts in employees’ wages, pension plans and social assistance programs. They are also organizing visits to all of Vale Inco’s sites in Brazil, Indonesia, Australia and New Caledonia, to create a sort of worldwide alliance between the various unions that represent the multinational corporation’s employees.”[1]

The strike at Vale Inco began in mid-July at Sudbury, a city of 150,000 inhabitants, one third of them Francophone. In early August the strike was joined by workers at the Vale Inco refinery in Port Colborne, on Lake Erie, and the mine at Voisey’s Bay in Labrador. Vale is engaged in a frenzied competition with BHP-Billiton, an Australian-British company and the world’s largest, Rio Tinto, the third largest, and other mining giants in a process of concentration and centralization of the international mining industry. They are seeking to profit from the exponential rise in metal prices in recent years as a result of the explosive growth in demand in the emerging economies, and to strengthen their position with the major purchasers, above all the Chinese government and the big new producers in those countries.

Vale, too big to be defeated in a single country

In a push for diversification, Vale, a leading iron ore producer, purchased the Canadian nickel transnational Inco two years ago. The current economic crisis suddenly forced down raw materials prices, particularly for nickel. Vale, which had earlier settled for contract improvements with its employees in Thompson, Manitoba, is now demanding that its other workers agree to a three-year wage freeze, a defined contributions pension plan for new hires (the current plan is defined benefits), a major reduction in the annual production bonus (which has averaged 25% of the base wage), now to be pegged to the firm’s profitability, and a weaker wage indexation clause.

But unlike its major rivals, who have experienced liquidity problems resulting in major layoffs – Rio Tinto-Alcan in Quebec, for example – Vale has remained quite profitable despite the collapse in prices and has not carried out massive layoffs, although it did dismiss a few hundred Inco employees after buying this company. In Brazil itself, it plans to increase its workforce by 12% in 2010 following major investments demanded by the Brazilian government; the state-owned banks are significant financiers of Vale. In Brazil, as in New Caledonia, wages are lower, and perhaps the environmental constraints as well.

In 2008 Vale made a profit of US$13.2-billion. Its subsidiary Vale Inco made more profits in two years (2006-2008) than Inco did in ten (1996-2006): US$4.1-billion. In the third quarter of 2009, together with the new rise in nickel and iron ore prices, its profit doubled from the previous quarter although it was only a third of what it was in the same period in 2008. The company was so proud of this result that its directors had planned to go to the New York and London stock exchanges for media events in late October. Unfortunately for them, they had to cancel when small delegations of strikers came to disrupt the events with the help of local union members linked with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) – about twenty strikers in New York supported by U.S. steelworkers but also some teachers.

Vale was so optimistic at that point that it announced it would be distributing $2.75-billion in dividends in 2009 – more than the cost of the wages and benefits of its 100,000 plus employees in 35 countries worldwide. But the strike has been relatively effective. Nickel production in the third quarter of 2009 is down by 45% from the second quarter and by 55% from the equivalent quarter in 2008, not to mention the direct cost of $200-million for the strike. However, the new rise in nickel prices has somewhat offset the lower volume, and the production of nickel (and copper, which Vale Inco extracts concurrently) is a marginal component of the transnational’s overall operations, while it was central for the old Inco.

Vale profits from the severity of the crisis in Ontario

Since its privatization in 1997 – it was a state-owned corporation in Brazil, founded during the Second World War – Vale has been systematically fighting its workers. In Brazil, its employees have no job security; the company dismisses them without cause and fires most once they have three to five years seniority in order to hire at a lower wage, which explains why the majority are on fixed-term contracts. In the current strike in Canada, Vale has hired strikebreakers and required its other workers to do the work of the strikers. The New Democratic Party (NDP) sought unsuccessfully in the Ontario legislature, with the applause of strikers in the visitors’ gallery, who were expelled, to present anti-scab legislation like that in Quebec. The NDP, a social-liberal party linked to the trade-union movement, is the most left-wing party in the Ontario legislature. It divides the northern and northeastern seats, which are very blue-collar, especially outside the few major urban areas, with the governing Liberals, although it has only 10 out of the province’s 107 MPPs.

The relative isolation of the strikers from the major metropolitan centers in the south of the province has not facilitated efforts to build solidarity. However, it is worth noting the solidarity of other Steelworkers locals and the Ontario branch of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), known for its vanguard role in the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign in support of Palestine, and for its municipal worker locals in Toronto and Windsor, which waged hard-fought strikes this summer to fend off concessions demanded by the municipal authorities including the so-called progressive city council in Toronto. These politicians sought to benefit from the crisis in the automobile, steel and financial industries that has hit hard at the Ontario economy, which accounts for 40% of the Canadian GNP. It is no accident that the conflict at Vale Inco began this summer while these major strikes were taking place.

Nevertheless, this solidarity consists at best in visits by a few leaders, sometimes with cheques in support, and the mobilization of limited pockets of militants when strikers visit Toronto, for example to agitate at Queen’s Park, the site of the Ontario legislature, or to respond to the invitation of the iconoclastic film director Michael Moore when he was in Toronto for the premiere of Capitalism, a love story. Until quite recently the international mobilization has remained quite modest: letters of support from unions in less than a dozen countries and tours in Germany and Sweden accompanied by international leaders to convince certain companies not to import nickel ore from Vale. Even the big rally in late September with international guests, including the president of the CUT, the major Brazilian trade-union central, drew only 3,000 persons, slightly less than the total number of strikers in Sudbury.

A possible turning-point in October

It appears, however, that things took a turn for the better in October. The women’s strike support committee, which played such an important role in the very militant nine-month strike in 1978-79, was re-established with the help of former activists. Working with the recently constituted support committee, it will be organizing a series of family activities in November. The Ukrainian community in the region has also become involved. The spirit of 1978-79 could be regained. There appear to be some changes as well in terms of international solidarity. In addition to the trip to New York, a small delegation has returned from Australia, where Vale purchased several coal mines in 2007, and New Caledonia, where Vale Inco will soon open a new nickel mine. Dozens of Australian miners expressed their sympathy with the delegation, as did their leaders. But their contract terminates only in 2011.

In New Caledonia, there was remarkable media coverage and a warm reception from the Kanak elected representatives. The Kanaks are the first nation in this French colony, although they now make up only 45% of the total population. Did the Kanaks sense they had a lot in common with the Franco-Ontarians in the delegation – two nationalities suffering oppression of their language, their economic conditions and their lack of territorial autonomy? Oddly enough, the Steelworkers web site devoted to this conflict, from which most of the information in this article is derived, is bilingual – in English and Brazilian Portuguese. And the publication materials are English-only. But the Sudbury region itself is strongly Francophone, and is not far from the Quebec border. Will this uniform and formal unity strengthen the capacity for mass mobilization? Is this the best way to build a pan-Canadian movement? Internationalism, to be effective, must begin at home.

It is in Brazil, Vale’s economic base by far, where the situation is most promising. The miners in the company’s largest Brazilian mine, and two other mines, staged a two-day strike, October 26-27, around their own demands. A few days later, at two other mines affiliated with the smallest union central, Conlutas, which is known for its militancy, the bargaining committee symbolically invited the woman representing the Canadian steelworkers to be part of their bargaining team, to the anger of the employer’s negotiators who threatened to break off the talks. And 700 workers in these two mines signed a letter to the company calling on it to settle the strike in Canada, where negotiations have not resumed since the strike began. In a release issued November 4, the union’s leaders said:

“Vale fears more than just the possibility of victory in the strike by Canadian brothers and sisters, a possibility strengthened by this gesture of solidarity. It also fears the growing international unity which is being built among Vale workers and also people in communities around the world where Vale’s profits have resulted in environmental disasters, degradation of the natural environment and community disintegration.”

Internationalist optimism and bureaucratic contradiction

This optimism is justified. But so far the development of international links has been primarily at the initiative of the union bureaucracies. Their willingness to develop an internationalist response should not be under-estimated. They have been caught off guard by this strike and the membership’s willingness to take on a powerful transnational corporation capable of holding out through even a militant strike as long as the workers are isolated. They realize that the usual bureaucratic methods of bargaining supported by a national strike limited to picketing and controlled from above will inevitably result in some setbacks. When the union ranks hesitate to fight back in the face of a difficult objective situation, as in the automobile industry, the leaderships can force through some concessions. But there may be a high price to pay in terms of credibility once the threshold of an unlimited strike has been crossed. To defeat Vale, there must be a certain degree of international coordination in strikes, except perhaps in Brazil, where a national inter-union coordination might suffice.

The need for the union bureaucracy to mobilize the ranks to some degree, or to let them mobilize themselves without too many impediments, opens the door to self-organization. Has the women’s committee given the cue? The need to develop international links and an openness toward working-class internationalism, particularly with the Brazilian unions, forces the bureaucrats to restrain any temptation to engage in the kind of chauvinist language characteristic of a small imperialist power that we hear so often in Canada – “defending our middle-class, anti-ecology status” while allowing Vale to chip away at the wage scales and working conditions of its employees elsewhere.

The Steelworkers are styled an “international” union, although they have locals only in the USA and Canada. So when the “international” president of the union called for nationalization of Vale at the big strike support rally in late September, to the standing ovation of the strikers, there was a note of ambiguity. If nationalization means a takeover by the capitalist state in order to escape Brazilian living conditions, that is a setback for internationalism – and an economic illusion, for the nickel market is worldwide. A state corporation would do as Vale does. However, nationalization can signify the first step in the takeover by the workers collectively, as the Zanon workers took over their plant in Argentina.[2] The self-managed collective would confront the state with the need to provide financing, technical assistance and guarantees of international markets, if not conversion of the company and retraining of the workers. It would make the undertaking an integral part of the community, and in the case of a firm that is intrinsically an exporter, would also link with the workers in client and competitor firms abroad in support of their demands and their struggles, within a perspective of collaboration for joint marketing in the context of a levelling upward of living conditions. It would be a first step toward internationalist self-management.

Irrespective of whether it goes forward or is worn down, this strike against Vale gives some idea of what the strike movement will be like in the 21st century. Global strikes against transnational corporations will be an essential pillar of internationalism. They are just beginning. •

Marc Bonhomme is an economist and member of Québec solidaire. Translated from the original French by Richard Fidler.

Footnotes

1. www.fairdealnow.ca/?cat=17. Retranslated from the French.

2. A strike made famous by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis in their film The Take. For recent coverage of the Zanon struggle, see “Zanon workers win major legal battle”

Resources

• The web site of the Vale Inco families and community members may be accessed at www.fairdealnow.ca
• Bullet #253: Down in the Vale, by Petra Veltri

Vale anuncia paralisação no Canadá; governo quer explicações

Fonte: Folha Online
19/04/2009

O governo canadense exigiu neste domingo explicações da mineradora brasileira Vale sobre a paralisação da produção na mina de Sudbury, em Ontario, operada pela subsidiária Inco. O governo diz que examina todas as opções para garantir que a companhia respeite suas obrigações.

A Vale Inco anunciou na semana passada uma interrupção durante dois meses --entre 1º de junho e 27 de julho-- das operações em Sudbury. O motivo é a queda de mais de 80% no preço do níquel em dois anos.

Antes da parada (durante o mês de maio), as unidades vão passar por manutenção. "Adicionalmente, as plantas de processamento de metais preciosos --um subproduto da mineração de níquel de Sudbury-- em Port Colborne, Ontário, também será paralisada de 1º de junho a 27 de julho", afirmou a empresa em comunicado neste mês.

"Nos próximos dias, vamos examinar todas as opções possíveis e legais para remediar esta situação", disse o ministro da Indústria, Tony Clement. A Vale anunciou no mês passado o corte de 900 postos de trabalho em todo mundo, sendo 400 no Canadá, onde a empresa comprou a mineradora Inco em 2006.

A companhia emprega 4.700 pessoas na unidade de Sudbury.

A mineradora anunciou na semana passada novas medidas para ajustar sua produção de níquel à demanda mundial mais fraca. Entre outras iniciativas está o adiamento do projeto Onça Puma, no Pará.

"Tendo em vista o cenário recessivo global, a Vale utiliza suas opções de gerenciamento da produção e execução de projetos de acordo com sua avaliação sobre as condições de mercado", informou o comunicado.

Segundo comunicado enviado à CVM (Comissão de Valores Mobiliários), a mineradora brasileira decidiu "desacelerar a conclusão" do projeto de níquel Onça Puma, programado para iniciar em janeiro de 2010. "Dado que uma licença ambiental se encontra pendente, o início do projeto Onça Puma será adiado em, no mínimo, um ano", informou a Vale.

Vale Inco tem atividades suspensas na Nova Caledônia após trágico vazamento de ácido

Usina de níquel da brasileira Vale-Inco, na Nova Caledônia

Fonte: Agencia France Press

As atividades da usina de níquel da brasileira Vale-Inco na Nova Caledônia, em fase de testes, foram temporariamente suspensas após um vazamento de ácido que atingiu uma zona próxima a um recife de corais reconhecido pela UNESCO como Patrimônio da Humanidade.

A província sul ordenou nesta sexta-feira a suspensão, por um período que pode ir de seis a oito semanas, de 80% das instalações da usina hidrometalúrgica de níquel.

As autoridades também obrigaram o grupo siderúrgico a depositar a soma de 126.000 euros correspondente ao valor dos trabalhos que seriam realizados no local.

Em 1º de abril, um incidente técnico provocou o vazamento de ao menos 2.500 litros de ácido sulfúrico concentrado a 98% em um rio. A província sul deu em seguida quatro dias à empresa brasileira para realizar estes trabalhos, com garantias de segurança, mas este prazo não foi respeitado.

"Estamos avaliando o impacto destas suspensões no calendário inicialmente previsto", declarou Jean-François David, diretor-geral delegado da Vale-Inco Nova Caledônia, destacando que os trabalhos de construção continuam.

Este gigantesco complexo industrial, de uma capacidade de 60.000 toneladas anuais de níquel-metal, deve normalmente iniciar a produção em julho próximo, talvez na presença do presidente frances Nicolas Sarkozy, que tem visita programada à região nessa época.

A poluição atingiu um rio, que desemboca na baía de Prony, zona tampão do Grande Lago Sul, um dos seis locais do recife de corais, inscrito em julho passado no patrimônio mundial da Unesco. Milhares de peixes e crustáceos morreram.

A demora da Vale em comunicar as autoridades e o fato de ela ter continuado os testes com ácidos desatou uma grande polêmica na Nova Caledônia.

"O que aconteceu é escandaloso e a Vale-Inco reagiu mal", declarou à AFP, Yves Dassonville, alto comissário da República na Nova Caledônia, lembrando que o Estado é garantidor das convenções relativas à biodiversidade, assinadas na inscrição do lago no patrimônio da Unesco.

Em uma carta, ele pediu à Vale uma informação pertinente sobre as circunstâncias do incidente, uma descrição dos danos e dos impactos constatados ou potenciais na zona tampão e o bem inscrito no patrimônio mundial".

Quarta-feira, centenas de pessoas manifestaram junto a organização ecológica para pedir que a Vale deixe a ilha.

O presidente da província, Philippe Gomes, destacou os erros e os procedimentos incorretos internos da empresa brasileira.

"Assumimos todas as consequências", declarou Jean-François David, negando qualquer intenção de dissimular o ocorrido e "qualquer desordem de procedimento" na gestão desta crise.

Desde o início, a obra da usina química da Vale-Inco, que lançará dejetos no lago, vem gerando polêmicas entre as populações locais.

O clima havia se acalmado, no entanto, em setembro passado com a assinatura de um pacto para o desenvolvimento sustentável, de 85 milhões de euros em 30 anos.

Police in New Caledonia investigate massive acid leak / Polícia da Nova Caledonia investiga grande derramamento de ácido

By Radio New Zealand International

The police in New Caledonia are investigating a massive acid leak at the Vale Inco nickel plant that killed thousands of fish and other species.

Thousands of litres of sulphuric acid spilt into the North Bay River last Wednesday, but news of the leak took some time to become public.

Technicians have managed to neutralise the high acid levels, but environmental organisations say the damage has already been done.

Our correspondent, Claudine Wery, says the police are trying to find out what happened as there’s uncertainty.

“There’s an investigation by police. Vale said that the leak was about 1 to 5000 litres of acid. Little by little people have learned what happened at the unit. And in fact it could be 20 000 litres of acid.”

-----------------------------------------------------

A polícia da Nova Caledonia está investigando vazamento de ácido em projeto de niquel da VALE, que resultou na morte de milhares de peixes e outras espécies.

Milhares de litros de ácido sulfúrico foram derramadas no North Bay River na última quarta-feira, mas as informações sobre o vazamento demoraram um certo tempo para virem a público.

Técnicos têm tentado neutralizar os efeitos, diminuindo a alta quantidade de ácido, mas organizações ambientalistas dizem que o dano já está consumado.

Nossa correspondente, Claudine Wery, diz que a policia está tentando desvendar o que de fato ocorreu.

“Uma investigação está sendo conduzida pela polícia. A Vale disse que o vazamento foi algo entre 1 e 5.000 litros de acido. Pouco a pouco as pessoas têm se dado conta do que realmente aconteceu como um todo. E, pelo que se tem, podem ter sido uns 20.000 litros de ácido.”

A Watchdog with No Teeth?

January 23, 2009

Mining company involvement in Sudbury Soils Study contaminates findingsby

Shailagh Keaney*

Source: The Dominion

SUDBURY–Mounting concern about heavy metal contamination in Sudbury, a city whose landscape is so choked by slag and smoke that it was once used by NASA as a training site for their astronauts for moon landings, led to the creation of the Sudbury Soils Study**. But some community members feel that instead of providing accurate data on pollution, the results of the study whitewashed the degree of soil contamination in the region.

For the last 122 years, nickel mines have been operating in the region now known as Sudbury. The companies involved in the extraction were among the world's biggest and most powerful players in the mining industry: the International Nickel Corporation and Falconbridge, among others. Today, the Sudbury basin sources a large portion of the world's nickel, for which the extraction process involves roasting and reduction, producing waste products in the form of slag, tailings and air emissions, all of which contain significant amounts of waste metals.

Before a smokestack was built in 1987 to carry the airborne byproducts further away, the blanket of waste on the ground choked life and prevented new vegetation from growing, thus giving Sudbury its infamous moonscape appearance.

"I don't trust what's in my vegetables. I don't know how much lead, copper, nickel is in the soil," says Tanya Ball, a community organizer and mother who used to garden in Greater Sudbury community of Wanup.

In May of 2008, the first part of the Sudbury Soils Study, the Human Health Risk Assessment, was finally released. The study concluded that there exists "little risk of health effects on Sudbury area residents associated with metals in the environment."

"The SARA [Sudbury Area Research Association] group announced that 'there is no unacceptable risk', despite the fact that there are levels of toxins that are found to be high in Falconbridge, Copper Cliff, Gatchel, West End, Central Sudbury and Garson. Together, these six geographical areas comprise a large percentage of the city's population," says Ball, who now lives in Central Sudbury.

"It doesn't take a genius to see the prevalence of chronic illnesses in Sudbury," she says.

Many in the community, like Ball, remain unconvinced by the results of the Soils Study. The participation of mining heavyweights in the process may explain why.

The Technical Advisory Committee (TC) of the Sudbury Soils Study was formed in 2002 in order to direct a research project that would determine human and environmental risk arising from soil contamination in the Sudbury region.

The TC hired a scientific research partner and set the research parameters for the study, but some, like Homer Seguin, a local health and safety advocate and former president and staff rep with Steelworkers Local 6500, feel the study was compromised from the beginning because of the the role that mining companies play on the TC.

Vale Inco contributed $7 million and Falconbridge contributed $3 million to the study. Of the six Committee seats on the TC, two are held by the two locally-operating mining companies, with the other four being made up of government and health organizations.

The Ministry of the Environment decided that the companies should pay for the study, but instead of having the companies give the money to the Ministry, the companies themselves took part in overseeing the study.

"They caused the pollution, they should pay. But my view of them paying is that they should be giving the money to the Ministry of the Environment, who's responsible for the environment, and the Ministry should oversee the study," says Seguin.

Despite holding a minority of seats on the TC, the mining companies gained a great deal of control when TC members agreed to make decisions according to consensus. As a result, any decision could be vetoed by any one member of the committee, including either of the mining companies.

The community was kept out of the process from the outset, and neither media nor public observers were allowed to witness the committee's process. In a gesture towards the community, the TC established a Public Advisory Committee (PAC) soon after the scientific studies commenced in 2003. Vale Inco and Falconbridge representatives participated actively in the public meetings.

During one of the public meetings of the TC, Seguin made a presentation on the health of mine workers.

"The first meeting where I had made a presentation to the PAC, one of the members actually attacked me, verbally attacked me and the union, saying that the union could have done some more. As if it was the unions' responsibility" he recalls.

"In my opinion, they set up this PAC as an attempt to fool the public that somebody was a watchdog over them so [the public] did not have to worry."

Franco Mariotti is the independent process observer for the Soils Study. He refutes the notion that mining-company representatives bullied participants at the PAC or TC meetings.

But the weight of mining companies in the process may explain why some of the testing procedures were, by federal and provincial standards, mild.

SARA, which was hired by the TC to conduct the study, was instructed to only make note of lead concentrations in Sudbury soil that were upwards of 400 parts per million (ppm), well above the federal standard of 140ppm, or the Ontario provincial standard for post-industrial cleanup sites of 200ppm. Lead is a known probable carcinogen with no known threshold. Even the recommended maximum levels of exposure may increase cancer risks.

When the SARA group announced their conclusions, community activists, academics, labour organizers and other community members, including Seguin and Ball, countered the "little risk" findings by forming the Community Committee on the Soils Study (CCSS).

Joan Kuyek, chair of the CCSS, explains that the goal of the Committee is to involve the public as much as possible in decisions that affect them with regards to the Soils Study. Currently, the Committee is calling for the Ontario government to provide further testing and analysis such as blood and hair testing, and more extensive testing of gardens. This is data that the community has requested and that the Study is not providing, Kuyek says. The CCSS is also expanding and holding public events in order to involve more people in the Committee's analysis and response to the Soils Study.

In addition, the CCSS is seeking an independent review for the Soil Study's next portion - the Environmental Assessment - which is expected to be released in early 2009.

"The reason why I am present [in the Community Committee] is because I want to keep this from happening to my son," Ball says in regards to living with heavy metal contamination in the Sudbury area. "I can't leave this mess for another generation to clean up."

In the fall of 2008, a union-sponsored report prepared by Environmental Defense Canada poked holes in the methodology used in the Sudbury Soils Study.

Environmental Defense's report, Human Health Risk Assessment, outlines key concerns for people living in the Sudbury area. It states that SARA's own conclusions are that lead, nickel and arsenic are above recommended exposure rates in a number of communities in the Sudbury region. Further, it reveals that the Soils Study does not take into account the compounded effect of multiple routes of exposure, nor does it consider how the environmental contaminants might interact with one another in the human body.

The report points out, for instance, that the levels of nickel found in the air are higher than recommended exposure limits for non-cancer and cancer effects in three communities. SARA dismissed the risk, stating that it was within acceptable range because it fell within a "margin of safety," when in fact margins of safety are intended to protect people who are more sensitive to contaminants, as well as provide a buffer for uncertainties in the data. They are not intended to discount the risk associated with higher levels of toxins.

Nickel has serious implications for health; in large enough quantities it increases chances of development of lung cancer, nose cancer, larynx cancer and prostate cancer, respiratory failure, birth defects, asthma and other conditions.

"In Sudbury, we have cancers that are 11 per cent higher than the national average. We have chronic obstructive lung disesases at 85 per cent higher, all this stuff that would be caused by these extra [contaminants]," says Seguin.

Another lingering topic of concern is the fact that the study's model subject in the calculation of health risks is a baby female born in Sudbury in 2005. While this model can be used to explore the health impacts on a vulnerable population, it also excludes anyone born prior to 2005, as well as workers who have been exposed to higher concentrations of metals and toxins in the smelters and mines.

Unions have been advocating a change in this approach since the formation of the TC was announced. The only reply from the TC has been that health risks that affect workers are the domain of the Ministry of Labour, not the Ministry of the Environment, and that they will therefore not touch the issue.

Seguin himself suffers from chronic obstructive lung disease resulting from his work as a labourer at Inco. The fact that many people in community have not responded to the soils study process affects him deeply. "When I get on this topic, I get very emotional about it. I take it to heart. I find it a hard thing to understand, how Sudburians would allow that to happen," he says, coughing and clearing his throat.

Currently, Vale Inco is applying for legal exception from new provincial legislation that requires that they reduce their nickel emissions, pushing for an alternate standard for nickel emission levels until 2015.

*Shailagh Keaney is from Sudbury, in occupied Atikameksheng Anishnawbek territory.

** The first sentence needs clarification - the Apollo-manned lunar exploration program brought NASA researchers to Sudbury to study shatter cones, a rare rock formation connected with meteorite impacts. But it became popular belief that NASA was doing research in the Sudbury area because of its barren moonscape resemblance, a result of sulfur dioxide emissions from the Sudbury smelters. I think the rest of the article is quite informative.

News: Make Vale Inco comply: activists

Company wants exemption for new nickel emission limit

By DENIS ST. PIERRE, THE SUDBURY STAR

Community activists are renewing calls for the Ontario government to enforce new air-pollution standards on Vale Inco.

"Vale Inco has no right to exceed pollution limits," stated a news release issued Monday by a coalition of groups including mining unions, pensioners, academics, health-care professionals and environmental activists.

The news release was issued to bring attention to a public meeting Wednesday in Sudbury, scheduled by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment.

The meeting was scheduled to allow public input on Vale Inco's request for an exemption of up to five years from a new limit on nickel emissions in Sudbury.

The environment ministry plans to impose a new standard for nickel emissions in little more than one year -- on Feb. 1, 2010.

Last fall, however, Vale Inco requested a temporary exemption from the new standard, arguing it needs more time to make the changes within its operations to meet the new rule.

The company's request for an exemption drew criticism from several residents who attended a public meeting on the issue last October. The response prompted the environment ministry to schedule another meeting to provide the community with "an opportunity to learn more about the ... standards process and the framework for the ministry's review of the request that was recently submitted by Vale Inco," the ministry stated in a public advisory.

"The ministry is also willing to host further public consultation meetings over the next year at specific milestones during the review process," the advisory stated. "The purpose of these meetings would be to ensure that the local community is involved in the ministry's review to the extent possible, and is kept informed of the status."

Wednesday's public meeting will be held at Tom Davies Square, Room C-11, beginning at 7 p. m.

The coalition of activists arguing against Vale Inco's exemption request is known as the Community Committee on the Sudbury Soils Study.

Coalition members allege an exemption for Vale would allow the company to produce nickel emissions more than seven times higher than the new standard proposed for next year.

"The ministry needs to enforce environmental standards," said Julien Dionne, a committee member and representative of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees.

In 2007, Vale's Copper Cliff Smelter "released 31 tonnes of nickel and nickel compounds into the air," Dionne said. "This is unacceptable. The ministry needs to have Vale Inco comply with the new provincial air regulations and not allow the five-year delay they are applying for.

"We strongly recommend that members of the public come to the meeting and voice their concerns over Vale Inco's request to extend the time limits to meet the industry's new and improved standards."

Vale Inco has the time and resources to meet the tougher emission limits proposed by the province, said Homer Seguin, a veteran Steelworkers activist and member of the Community Committee on the Sudbury Soils Study.

"Vale Inco has known that this regulation was coming for several years and they still have 13 months to come into compliance. We feel that is ample time," Seguin said. "In the last couple of years, Vale Inco made record profits so they can't plead financial hardship to comply with the new regulations."