Where STD is Practiced, and Proposed Sites
The first mines to use STD were the Atlas Mine, in the Philippines, and the Island Copper Mine, in Canada (both in 1971) and the Jordan River Mine, in Canada, and the Black Angel Mine, in Greenland (both in 1972.) In all of these cases, the mines dumped at relatively shallow depths and experienced serious problems with wider than predicted dispersal (spreading out) of tailings, turbidity, and metal leaching.
Even after it became well known that these mines were damaging marine environments, the Island Copper Mine, the Black Angel Mine, and the Atlas Mine continued using STD into the 1990s. (The Atlas Mine is still operating.)
STD is currently being practiced in the following places:
• In Chile at the Huasco Iron Pelletising Plant operated by Compania Minera del Pacifico
• In Indonesia at Minahasa Raya and Batu Hijau mines both operated by Newmont Corporation
• In Turkey at the Cayeli Bakir Mine operated by Inmet Mining
• In Papua New Guinea at the Lihir Mine operated by Lihir Management Company and Rio Tinto
• In Papua New Guinea at the Misima Mine operated by Placer Dome
• In England at the Boulby Potash Mine operated by Cleveland Potash
• In the Philippines at the Atlas Mine operated by Atlas Consolidated Mining and Development Corporation
Additional Reading – both from Mining Watch Canada’s STD Toolkit