Bucko has been in the news lately. Bucko Lake, that is. A company wants to dump waste tailings from a new nickel mining operation into the lake in northern Manitoba.
People who live near the lake and fish from it are firmly against the company's plans, as are environmentalists in the province's capital.
It seems to me that the mining company has an outdated approach to disposing of waste. In researching a magazine story, I've been talking to officials at BioteQ, a Vancouver-based company that has a system that cleans wastewater from mining operations so well that it can be released into the environment. What's more, metals extracted in the process can be sold on the market.
Xstrata (formerly Falconbridge) has used BioteQ's system with great success at a nickel operation in northern Quebec.
Perhaps government should be demanding that new mine and refinery operations use systems like BioteQ's. A poisoned, lifeless lake seems too dear a price to pay for another nickel mine.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
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