A spill from a tailings dam at a molybdenum mine in northeast China on Saturday has contaminated water up to 110 km (68 miles) downstream, environmental authorities said on Wednesday. Tailings dams are commonly used by mining firms to store waste remnants of ore but they have come under close scrutiny since the collapse of one in Brazil last year killed more than 250 people.
Testing of water in the Hulan river some 110 km southwest of the mining site in Yichun showed the molybdenum content was 2.8 times higher than standard levels on Tuesday, Heilongjiang’s department of ecology and environment said. The Hulan flows into the Songhua river, the fifth-longest in China, in a northern district of provincial capital Harbin.
A report posted on the website of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment said 2.53 million cubic metres of waste had been discharged from the tailings pond. The official Xinhua news agency said the leak was plugged on Tuesday. Yichun Luming Mining, a subsidiary of state-run China Railway Resources Group, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the production status of its mine.
Source: Reuters
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