On August 18, the Ministry of Environment assessed Conuma $13,000 in penalties for violations to their environmental permit pertaining to excessive airborne dust. “As a result of the coal mining process, including blasting, crushing, earth moving, ore conveyance, ground disturbance, and hauling traffic, air contaminants in the form of particulate matter are released to the atmosphere,” says the decision from the Ministry of Environment.
Between January 2023 and June 2024, the company exceeded its allowed dust levels 32 times at Brule.
Under Section 1.3 of their Permit, “Conuma is required to manage its discharges such that Total Particulate Matter (TPM) discharge does not exceed a maximum concentration of 1.75 mg/dm2/day as a monthly average,” says the determination.
The government could have fined the company up to $40,000, though chose to issue a lower penalty as the “real or potential adverse effects” was judged to be “low to none. “Although elevated TPM concentrations can pose a risk to human health,” writes Stephanie Little in the determination, “the impacts to the environment are not well understood. The lack of measurable impacts to the environment and human health best classifies the actual or potential adverse effects of these failures as low to none.” Therefore, the company was issued a $5000 base penalty.
That was adjusted due to Conuma’s history of similar violations (24 warnings and nine AMPs (an additional $3500), $2,500 for Conuma failing to take action, an additional $1000 for Conuma being aware of the issue since at least 2020, (though the company has taken some action to mitigate), $1500 for financial benefits the company has gained by not taking action (in this case, the cost of hiring a water truck driver to reduce the amount of dust created). The penalty was reduced by $500 as the company has been taken steps to reduce the amount of air particulates, including: re-vegetating topsoil piles, constructing roads, shoulders, and stockpiles to reduce erosion, complying with speed limits within the pit, employing strategic drop heights from diggers into haul trucks, employing the use of water on roads for dust suppression during dry, windy days, providing continual road maintenance, including the application of crushed rock, as required, avoiding blasting during very low wind speed conditions, constructing coal piles with a flat overall or semicircular shape to minimize wind erosion and minimal heights where possible, and maintaining vegetative windbreaks and reduce vegetation removal and disturbance for continued root and soil stabilization, installing and changing spray heads and experimenting with different dust suppression chemicals,
The company has 30 days to appeal the decision, though the company chose not to make a submission when given a similar Opportunity to Be Heard when the Notice of Determination was issued to the company on July 2.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
