Photographs by José Luis Aranda

The Wirikuta mountain range in the Chihuahua desert in central Mexico. Photo by José Luis Aranda.

Under a heavy afternoon sun, the desert landscape in central Mexico lays long into the horizon, interrupted only by railroad tracks, roadrunners racing beside cars, and every once in a while, a cluster of houses and shops. But towards what some consider the sacred heart of the desert, new features begin to emerge: new age hippies and fellow travellers compete for rides on the side of the road, and in the distance, a dramatic mountain range rises from the plane.

Stretching from Arizona to San Luis Potosí, the Chihuahuan desert wraps around two of Mexico’s largest mountain ranges, laying claim to over 450,000 square kilometers of territory. While at first glance the topography might appear dry and barren, it is in fact home to a fifth of the world’s species of cacti, as well as a host of birds and other creatures.

But there’s one plant in particular that’s an essential part of the region’s draw: peyote. A small, circular cactus, divided into sections that look like a light green cross section of a mandarin orange, it pushes its way out from under the hard dry earth, sometimes into the direct sun, other times under the sparing shade of gobernadora plants.

In the southern reaches of the Chihuahuan desert is an area known as Wirikuta, a sacred site for the Huichol people. Every year, hundreds of Huichol people, whose name for themselves in their own language is Wixáritari, leave their communities in Jalisco, Nayarit and other parts of Mexico and begin a pilgrimage to Wirikuta.

“For us it’s like a temple,” says Marciano de la Cruz Lopez of Wirikuta. He’s one of the few Huichols making a home in the small, mining-cum-tourist town of Real de Catorce.

Wirikuta’s 140,000 hectare site was recognized by the state government as a Natural Protected Area and Sacred Site in 2000. It also includes a 146-kilometre path through the landscape named the Historic Route of the Wixárika People. In 1998, UNESCO declared Wirikuta as one of the world’s 14 natural sacred sites in need of protection.

“It’s a sacred site where we can leave our offerings when we do ceremonies there in the mountains, or when the pilgrims come,” says de la Cruz. “It means everything to us, as Huichol people.”

Alberto Hernandez Gonzales, a Huichol guardian of Wirikuta. Photo by José Luis Aranda.

The Huichols are among the few indigenous groups in Mexico who were never successfully converted to Catholicism by Spanish colonizers, and their fidelity to their traditions is celebrated throughout the country. “I congratulate all of you, the traditional governors, the Wixárica union from the ceremonial centres of Jalisco, Durango and Nayarit, to all of you, for defending these holy places, these marvellous places,” President Felipe Calderón said in a 2008 speech, while dressed in a traditional Huichol pullover and feathered hat.

Huichols believe that Cerro del Quemado, the stunning mountain range that rises from Wirikuta, is the birthplace of the sun and of all life. At the mountain’s summit is a structure where the Huichols leave offerings of thanks as part of their ceremonies: feathers, arrows, water from sacred springs, and other precious objects.

But this historic spiritual site is now at risk, its ancient landscape threatened by modern industry. And for the Huichol people, the stakes couldn’t be higher: the prospect of mining for silver under their holy mountain not only endangers the safety of their water supply; it represents a spiritual affront. Imagine drilling for oil under the Vatican, or bulldozing Eden to make room for a golf course.

Miners working at the former La Luz mine owned by First Majestic Silver. Photo by José Luis Aranda.

First Majestic Silver, a Vancouver-based mining company, holds a series of concessions that overlap with Wirikuta, and the company’s plans to develop the mine have already been controversial locally and around the world.

First Majestic already owns three producing silver mines, in Durango, Coahuila, and Jalisco, and is preparing to bring a fourth mine online. The project at Real de Catorce is the earliest-stage project the company owns, and they have yet to begin the permit process. If First Majestic receives all the permits needed—which have not yet been acquired—they expect to start producing silver at the property in 2014. Technical studies carried out by the previous owners of the concessions at Real de Catorce indicate that mining the silver laden tailings left over from historic mines combined with opening up new mine shafts in Real de Catorce could net 33 million ounces of silver, as well as substantial quantities of lead and zinc. The company says they’ll employ at least 600 locals by the time production begins, and the mine could operate for as many as 15 years.

The common thread that unites the company and many of those opposed to the project is something that’s sorely lacking in the region: water.

“There’s a limited amount of water here,” says Humberto Fernandez, owner of the Hotel Real, perhaps the most prestigious accommodation in Real de Catorce. “The aquifer here is disappearing,” he says. We met Fernandez and his wife Cornelia over lunch in the restaurant of the hotel that he’s owned and operated for almost 35 years. From the right angle, with his grey hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing a green corduroy shirt and a peyote charm on his necklace, Fernandez bears a slight resemblance to Fidel Castro, and he talks a mean streak, too.

“Water is the main cause for concern that we’ve noticed among the local population,” he says, sitting straight up in his chair and talking over a steaming plate of pasta. “There’s been weeks without any water in the village.”

The local aquifer providing what scarce water there is in the region, is classified as “over-exploited” by the National Water Commission. The water problem isn’t new: when the local mines were operating at full tilt in the 19th century, there wasn’t enough water to run a mill in Real de Catorce.

“The water supply is still in the planning phase,” says Todd Anthony, head of First Majestic’s investor relations department, from his office in Vancouver. “but its not going to disrupt any supply to the local community there. We’ve got other plans in mind,” he says. He refused to elaborate on what those possible alternatives might be, however.

Interior of the former Santa Ana mine. Photo by José Luis Aranda.

The anti-mining fight in Wirikuta and Real de Catorce is far from the first flashpoint of resistance against Canadian mining companies in the Mexican state of San Luis Potosí. In fact, it is in many ways mirrors a struggle that has been going on in the equally picturesque village of San Pedro. Also a colonial mining town, the Cerro de San Pedro was of such importance in the region that it is featured to this day in the centre of the state’s official emblem.

Except the Cerro de San Pedro hardly exists anymore. Over the past four years, the hill has been blown to pieces and trucked to a cyanide treatment plant. Instead of rising like a tiny, stand alone colonial mecca half an hour by car from the city of San Luis Potosí, San Pedro today is surrounded by growling dump trucks and mountains of cyanide treated waste rock, by-products of a large scale, open pit silver and gold mine operated by Vancouver-based New Gold.

The abundance of new mining projects popping up across Mexico have generated enough problems throughout the country to prompt the creation of a Special Commission for Mining Conflicts in the national congress. Anti-mining activists and industry groups alike trace surge in investment in the mining sector back to the North America Free Trade Agreement.

“To facilitate what’s happening now, the pillaging of our country and the arrival to our country of a large quantity of companies— especially mining companies—it was necessary to have a working free trade agreement,” says Mario Martínez, a spry septuagenarian anti-mining activist from San Luis Potosí. Among the key changes in legislation NAFTA wrought were adjustments to Article 27 of Mexico’s constitution, which defines the legal framework for the ownership of land and the use of natural resources.

But Enrique Flores, an engineer working with First Majestic Silver, says things have changed for the better in the world of mining. I caught up with him on the company-owned hacienda in the village of La Luz, which lies just a few kilometres outside of Real de Catorce. He was animated and talkative, having just returned from a workshop at the Canadian Embassy in Mexico City on Corporate Social Responsibility.

“Mining investment is made for profit, but at the same time it provides work for people, and raises the standard of living here,” says Flores, who took the time to show me images of the proposed mining project, pointing out on a map where the company is going to work, and how. “For example, in the case of Canadian mining companies, the government of Canada follows very closely what their companies are doing in other countries,” he says.

But though corporate social responsibility and Canadian government oversight might sound like progress, there are no binding international standards through which Canadian mining companies can be held accountable for their actions around the world, says Jennifer Moore from Canadian mining watchdog group MiningWatch Canada.

This fact didn’t seem to ruffle Flores, who took me on a tour through the historic Santa Ana mine. A few dozen locals are already working for First Majestic to transform the abandoned mine into a museum—part of the company’s promise of long-term jobs to the community. Deep inside the hills, the cool, dark mineshaft widened in places and exposed large galleries that once featured the most upto-date technology in the country. In other places, traces of more primitive mining were visible, sometimes overlaid with red spray paint indicating that there’s still silver in the walls after all these years.

Humberto Fernandez, owner of the Hotel Real and opponent of First Majestic Silver's mining plans. Photo by José Luis Aranda.

Just how sacred is Wirikuta? “Wixárika culture is about living for ceremony, because that is the form of life, there is no other form of living,” says Javier Ignacio Martínez Sánchez, an anthropologist originally from Chiapas who has lived in the heart of Wirikuta, for more than a decade. “It breaks your heart to see how they dance, to see the corn that they come and leave here, or the blood of the deer, how much it took to go hunt it, how much it all takes,” he says.

Martínez cuts an eccentric figure: he pays the rent on the tiny adobe igloo in which he lives by giving massages, and his only possessions are a bed surrounded by musical instruments, a few neat stacks of books, an empty plastic cooler, and a smattering of feathers and other ceremonial items.

With a masters’ thesis on the use of peyote under his belt, Martínez has worked hard to integrate himself into desert society, and to help build links between the Huichol pilgrims and the communal owners of the land they must travel. He’s the first to point out that Huichols’ annual trek through the desert also carries great significance for others living in the area.“The [landowners] here already made the link between the presence of the Huichols and the arrival of the rains,” says Martínez from his perch on the edge of his bed. “They say that when the pilgrims arrive on foot, it meant that there would be a good harvest.”

The use of peyote at the end of the pilgrimage is of supreme importance to the Huichols, who are considered the guardians of the spiritual tradition of peyote use. Only after weeks of fasting and celibacy and a long walk through the desert armed with the blood of a freshly sacrificed deer, can the mythic cactus—more often referred to as “medicine,” or hikuri in the Wixárika language—be consumed.

The fact that there’s mineral wealth under such a special site didn’t come as a surprise to Marciano de la Cruz’s wife, Yolanda. “The shamans always said that where there are sacred things, there are mines,” she interjected, looking up for just a moment from the intricate combination of thread and beads between her fingers.

“Our medicine is like a teacher, because it teaches us many things,” says de la Cruz. While we talked, Yolanda continued with her beading, while his children shifted their attention between a plastic bowling set on the floor and a cartoon on the family’s small television set.

De la Cruz is also among those concerned about impacts on the water from the proposed mining operation, but for a more particular reason. “Here there’s not much water, they say it takes lots of water to wash the rocks in mining, for silver, after they do that the water can run underground and it can contaminate our medicine,” he says. “And then we’re going to eat the medicine, and it could affect us.”

The Huichol people are, of course, not the only ones to take advantage of the powers of peyote. The cactus, which contains the psychedelic alkaloid mescaline, is used by Indigenous peoples throughout the northern part of the hemisphere. The Native American Church is a registered organization in the US whose members have the right to use and transport peyote.

But its use by non-Indigenous people throughout the 1960s and 70s might just be that which has brought the most attention to the sacred plant. Peyote was a cornerstone of the beat generation’s hallucinogenic trips, inspiring part of Allen Ginsberg’s epic Howl, and figuring into the writings of other such as William S. Burroughs and Ken Kesey. Rock stars got in on the game too: Jim Morrison, legendary front man for the popular American rock band The Doors, was known to experiment with peyote.

The cultural legacy of psychedelic art influenced by mescaline still resonates today. Tourists from around the world, inspired by the far-out message of the beat writers, flock to the desert, and to Wirikuta, to sample the effects of the button-like cactus on their own consciousness.

Sol Rak is one such visitor to the region, who has made the trek from his home in Chiapas more than 10 times in order to participate in ceremonies in the mountains that separate Real de Catorce from the desert below. “I love going to Quemado,” says Rak, who travels with fire sticks and a Temascal drum.

But mass cutting and overuse of peyote by outsiders has led to its near extinction in some regions, and it’s forced the Huichol people to set up a system to oversee who enters and leaves Wirikuta.

One of these Huichol look outs is a simple cement house on the edge of Las Margaritas, where Alberto Hernandez Gonzales lives with his wife and two teenage sons. “My job is to be here watching to make sure there is no pillaging [of peyote],” says Hernandez, whose Huichol name is Mukieri Kuayumania, which means “from the feather of an unknown bird.”

The first time we tried to meet with Hernandez he was dead tired, having done a 24 kilometer patrol of the area on foot. He was appointed to the post for a three-year term by a community assembly in his home village. And though he says he’s managed to stop some peyote thieves from entering Wirikuta, he quickly adds that he and guardians like him are severely lacking in resources. There’s only three of them working when there should be six, he says, and he doesn’t even have a mule upon whose back he could more easily safeguard the area.

Under a strong wind that moved through the plastic notches hanging from Hernandez’s traditional hat, he recounted the five points of the Huichol universe from a notebook containing carefully written notes.

“We really need to take care of these sites, they are the historical patrimony of our ancestors,” says Hernandez, referring to the threat posed by First Majestic Silver. “The Wixárika communities don’t want these places to be destroyed.”

Flores, speaking on behalf of the mining company, says First Majestic will do its best to leave the Huichol’s sacred sites alone. “The company is, what do you call it, promising to respect the ceremonial centres of the Huichols,” he says. “In fact in a meeting with the Huichol gentlemen we’re going to propose that they take over this part, and we won’t touch it,” says Flores, pointing his finger onto a section of the map that includes part of Wirikuta.

But company’s claims that they won’t touch Cerro Quemado and will work underground instead of open pit mining don’t comfort Hernandez, who likens Wirikuta to his own body.

“The mountain, in any case, is ourselves,” he says. “Right now we’re alive because we are complete. If someone comes along and splits my stomach open and rips out my insides, I’m no longer alive.”

Shuffled off this mortal coil. Creative Commons photo by Flickr User Indoloony

The Alberta tar sands are a famously bad place to be a migratory bird. Turns out it’s even worse than we thought. From the Toronto Star:

A new study says birds are likely dying in oilsands tailings ponds at least 30 times the rate suggested by industry and government. […]

The 14-year median, including raptors, songbirds, shorebirds and gulls, is 1,973 deaths every year. That’s more birds than died in the April 2008 incident that saw Syncrude convicted of charges under the environmental protection legislation earlier this year.

And the total is probably higher than that, said [Dr. Kevin] Timoney. His study, which was funded by Dalhousie University, didn’t account for birds that landed and were oiled at night or that simply sank under the surface of the ponds.

Yes, that’s right: 30 times more dead birds than industry and government had originally been claiming.

If Dr. Timoney’s name rings a bell, it’s because he’s called out Syncrude and the Alberta government before, including once coming to This Magazine‘s aid when an Alberta government spokesperson tried to pressure us into retracting a blog post about the the tar sands’ true environmental toll. We know which pony we’re backing in this race!

Atrazine, a controversial herbicide ubiquitous in Canadian cornfields has been found to chemically castrate male frogs, turning them into egg laying females.

The Globe and Mail reported yesterday that when scientists at the University of California Berkley exposed male African clawed frogs to minute amounts of the toxin, just 2.5 parts per billion,the mutation occurred.

Of the 40 exposed male frogs, four were turned into females, four were normal males, and the rest were emasculated, with decreased testosterone levels, feminized larynxes, and decreased sperm production.

There has been no word on it’s affect on humans, both the weed killer’s Swiss Manufacturer, Syngenta AG, and Health Canada refuse to concede to any dubious effects. But Health Canada’s opinion doesn’t inspire the utmost confidence, a 2004 evaluation of the toxin found that Atrazine “[does] not entail an unacceptable risk to human health.”

Which of course demands the follow up: What would constitute an acceptable risk to human health?

The European Union banned the use of Atrazine in 2004 because of it’s persistence in groundwater contamination, North America has similar concentrations of contamination, but its use is still fairly universal.

It is strongly persistent and is one of the most significant water pollutants in rain, surface, marine, and ground water. Its persistence (it has a half-life of 125 days in sandy soils) and mobility in some types of soils because it is not easily absorbed by soil particles, means it often causes contamination of surface and ground waters. In the US for example, it has been found in the groundwater of all 36 river basins studied by the US Geological Survey and the USGS estimates that persistence in deep lakes may exceed 10 years.

Health Canada Actually allows up to 5 ppb in drinking water, double the dose used in the trials at Berkley. This means that amphibians actually could be exposed to greater levels of Atrazine in their natural habitat. The find could lead to answers over declining frog populations around the world.

Emily Hunter with one of the huge earth-movers that's instrumental to Alberta Tar Sands development. Watch her documentary tonight on MTV.

Emily Hunter, This Magazine‘s resident environmental blogger, took an MTV Canada documentary crew to Alberta’s Tar Sands over the summer to see the devastation that’s unfolding there for herself. She’s currently working on a feature story for the magazine, but the documentary she made is airing tonight on MTV Canada, at 8:30 PM EST. The show is part of MTV’s new “Impact” series of half-hour special documentaries by young journalists and activists. Tonight, Emily visits Fort Chipewyan, one of the most heavily affected and polluted downstream sites from the epic, landscape-scarring development happening around Fort McMurray. It’s an up-close look at one of the most important public issues in Canada, and is definitely worth checking out.

The doc also has a Facebook group; you can follow Emily Hunter on Twitter for more information about her upcoming projects, with This Magazine and elsewhere.

Click here for a full-screen slideshow

A child plays in the creek near Cosan

Admitting that I was a Canadian has never been as difficult as when I travelled to the Philippines to photograph two Canadian-owned open-pit mining sites last winter. The fact that I am also Filipino by blood didn’t help.

I went to the island of Marinduque and visited the Marcopper Mining site, operated by Placer Dome, which began mining in 1969. The mine was closed in 1996 following the Boac River spill, one of the world’s greatest mining disasters, where a dam breach spilled between three and four million tonnes of tailings, rich in toxic heavy metals. Canadian taxpayers, through the Canadian Pension Plan, have invested over $350 million into the Marinduque mine.

I went to this site to witness the long-term effects of mining. For comparison I also visited a newer mining site on Mt. Canatuan on the large southern island of Mindanao by Toronto Ventures Incorporated (TVI), which began operations in 2005. That year, community representatives travelled to Canada to speak to parliament about TVI’s human rights violations in Canatuan. The Liberals responded by setting up a committee to create guidelines for Canadian mining companies at home and abroad; they later rejected the committee’s recommendations. Despite the community complaints TVI receives Canadian tax-dollar funds through CIDA for livelihood programs.

The government of the Philippines claims that mining will bring prosperity to the people. The mining laws are geared toward increasing foreign-owned operations, to help the ailing economy. But the truth is that few jobs are created around large-scale mining, and many, many more are lost.

Personally this was a surprise — I expected to see thousands working manual labour jobs. But open-pit mining is not labour intensive and most of the jobs are in the office, or as heavy equipment operators. And as most of the communities that have mines are away from city centres, the majority of their populations are not highly educated nor do they have the training to operate the equipment. The few new jobs available are easily outweighed by the number of jobs lost to the mine, usually in fishing, farming, or as small-scale miners.

Profit from the foreign-owned mines doesn’t even stay in the Philippines, as the government grants companies long renewable tax holidays, and allows for 100 percent foreign ownership and 100 percent repatriation of capital and profits. On Marinduque, it’s been more than 10 years since the mine closed, but none of the three spill sites have been fully rehabilitated. Sometimes during windy days, toxic mine waste is picked up and dropped on nearby villages. The locals call this their “snow from Canada.”

Many people in Cosan have started experiencing mysterious skin rashes

The tiny hamlet of Cosan at the base of Mt. Canatuan is home to no more than 40 people. It’s the last remaining independent mining site just a few hundred metres downstream from TVI’s sulphide dam.

The men and children from Cosan have started experiencing mysterious skin rashes in the years since the open pit began. The rashes are always in the lower extremities. For the men this is because they are often wet from the waist down working as gold pan miners. For the children it’s because they play in the creek.

TVI says that the water they dump into the creek that runs by the hamlet is clean. The locals, pointing to their visible wounds, claim otherwise.

A soldier in the Special Citizens Armed Auxiliary

One of the jobs available to locals is that of security. The Special Citizens Armed Auxiliary (SCAA) is a force armed with fully automatic armalite rifles. This is just one more example of the divide-and-conquer technique used by mining companies.

According to TVI’s website, there are benefits to this security:”People are able to sleep without fear of attack,” and “people are not in fear from oppression coming from a small minority — it is only those that want to go back to the old ways of illegal activities and oppression that would like to see the military presence gone.”

Subanon elders hold an indigenous trial of the Canadian mining companies.

A Subanon ritual before the commencement of the gokum, a traditional indigenous trial. This assembly found the mining company guilty of illegal operations, but its verdict is not recognized by the government.

Canatuan Primary School has fallen into disrepair since the mines' arrival.

Canatuan Primary School was built by the small scale miners who lived on the mountain. This was where the president of the Philippines awarded the Subanon tribe an Ancestral Domain Title to the land. When TVI came this local school was closed.

The remains of the home of the chieftain’s aide is in the foreground of the photo. He left Canatuan in fear for his life and his family’s lives when he heard strangers under the floor of his home (which sits atop stilts).

The flag on the rock signifies a nearby gold ore find.

The flag you see on the rock signifies the presence of gold ore on the property of this Canatuan resident, a small-scale-miner-turned-farmer. The mine has reached the edge of his property and he has little doubt they will be at his doorstep soon.

The mining is heavily automated, leaving little work for locals.

What really surprised me about mining operations in the Philippines was how few visible miners there were. These operations were seemingly run by a few large machines and a few supervisors. Thus the potential for employment for the community is very limited.

Locals told me that even before TVI entered the land there were miners on Mt. Canatuan. At its peak, about 10,000 small scale Filipino miners were in the area. Today less than one hundred remain in the community of Canatuan on the side of the mountain.

Though small-scale mining was a source of conflict between these outsiders and the Subanon people, they have since come together as the effects of underground tunneling by these independent miners was nothing compared to those of open-pit mining.

These Filipino miners lost their livelihoods when TVI arrived. Accompanied by the company’s heavily armed private militia (trained and armed by the Armed Forces of the Philippines) all tunnels and equipment were destroyed or confiscated without compensation.

They soon turned to destroying homes in the path of the mine. Many residents, intimidated by the growing unrest and the heavily armed security force, left with little to no compensation. Some stayed out of necessity and became farmers, though this number grows smaller every week. Despite their lack of experience at farming, they turned to it as the only thing left to them to provide for their families.

Locals say the meager amounts offered by TVI as a payoff would not pay for a similar piece of land and a home elsewhere so to accept would result in worse poverty.

Part of the 7.5 km-long causeway of mine tailings flowing into Calancan Bay.

Twenty-four hours a day, from 1975 to 1991, Marcopper Mining (operated by Canadian Placer Dome — which has since been bought out by Barrick Gold) dumped 200 million metric tonnes of toxic mine tailings onto Calancan Bay at surface level. What you see in this image is part of the 7.5 km long tailings causeway, an artificial landmass made up of mine tailings (a mix that includes dangerous levels of arsenic, lead, and mercury). The causeway used to be 9 km long, but the rains and tide have been slowly eroding it into the ocean.

The result has been the death of the corals and much of the life in this bay. The poverty of the local people forces them to continue to eat what they can catch resulting in major health problems.

Maria Neryl Pigquerra, one of three children born in 2002 in Calancan Bay with microcephalis.

Five-year-old Maria Neryl Pigquerra is one of three children born in Calancan Bay in 2002 with microcephalis. This condition leaves her smaller than her four-year-old brother, unable to communicate (other than crying), and with virtually no motor skills. She is fed congee (Maria can only swallow pureed food) by her mother, who wonders how a family of fishers will be able to care for her in the future.

Heavy metal poisoning is intergenerational, thus metals are transmitted from mother to child.

Wilson Manuba shows the tumor-like wounds, attributed to the tailings.

This is Wilson Manuba of Calancan Bay. He used to accompany his father fishing as a young boy in the late ’70s. He told me about how much fun he used to think the mine tailings were (“it felt different than the sand and mud, I used to love playing in it”).

Unfortunately, neither he nor his father knew about its dangers. And so regular barefoot exposure, coupled with regular cuts and scrapes on their feet (a daily reality for fishers) resulted in severe heavy metal poisoning for the father and son.

One of Wilson Manuba's sons, who also suffers from tailings-related wounds.

They both suffer from open tumor-like wounds that won’t heal. Wilson’s poisoning was so severe that he almost died and was saved only through the loss of his leg. Despite it all, both continued on as fishers as it was their only means of livelihood.

Wilson recently quit fishing when MACEC, a local NGO, provided him with a sari-sari store (a small village store).

Wilson has three children, two of whom also have persistent open wounds on their legs.

Unlike oil spills, which produce sensational images of oil-covered ducks, uranium tailings spills are under-reported and quietly insidious. Here are some of the stories you might have missed:

Elliott Lake, Canada

Spill: Accidental. In August of 1993 a power failure at the Rio Algom’s Stanleigh mine allowed uranium tailings to spill into McCabe Lake and contaminate the water source.
Contamination: Two million litres of tailings entered McCabe Lake.
Effects: Tailing spills had devastated 90 kilometres of the Serpent River by the late 1970s. The Serpent River First Nations indigenous territory is thoroughly contaminated with radioactive waste.
Punishment or resolution: The Atomic Energy Control Board of Canada charged Rio Algom with one count of failure to provide proper training for employees, and one count of failure to prevent a spill. The mine has been decommissioned.

Mailuu-Suu, Kyrgyzstan

Spill: Pending. Kyrgyzstan was one of the primary sources of uranium for the U.S.S.R.’s Cold War arms race. Two million tonnes of toxic waste sits in 23 open pits around Mailuu-Suu. The tailings sit atop a mountainous fault line, making a toxic disaster nearly inevitable.
Contamination: In 2005, a landslide caused 300,000 cubic metres of material to spill into the Mailuu-Suu river, dangerously close to one of the tailing piles. The Mailuu-Suu river connects to water sources for civilians in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
Effects: Over 23,000 people are at immediate risk of overexposure to radon, with a potential risk for millions. Some cancer rates in the area are twice as high as the national average.
Punishment or resolution: None. In 2008 The Kyrgyz government created a special agency to deal with the cleanup of the tailings with the help of NATO and the World Bank, but to date little progress has been made.

Mounana , Gabon

Spill: Intentional. During 40 years of uranium mining in this former colony, French nuclear giant Cogéma opted to dump radioactive tailings into Ngamaboungou creek, polluting Mounana’s water supply.
Contamination: More than two million tonnes of uranium tailings were disposed of in the Ngamaboungou river valley.
Effects: To date the only data on the impact of tailings disposal is from Cogéma itself, who claim there was no real impact. Cogéma calculated that area residents, however, are exposed nearly three times the international guidelines for occupational exposure.
Punishment or resolution: None.

Kakadu, Australia

Spill: Accidental, repetitive.
Contamination: Over the course of its lifetime, the Ranger uranium mine in Northern Australia has released over 2000 cubic metres of contaminated water into the wetland and waterways surrounding Kakadu National Park. A trucking accident near the mine earlier this year spilled 17,000 litres of sulphuric acid into the wetlands—the largest chemical spill in local history.
Effects: Uranium levels in the nearby Corridor Creek are now 4,000 times the recommended drinking water standard. One recent government study found cancer rates among the Aboriginal population in the Kakadu region are twice as high as those living elsewhere.
Punishment or resolution: Ineffective. The Ranger mine has been repeatedly fined for failing to meet standard regulations, between $82,500 and $150,000 per incident. But tailing breaches continue to occur.