A second life awaits the 800 million tons of asbestos waste left abandoned in Quebec. A mineral deemed “critical and strategic” by the government can be extracted from these mountains of sterile residues inherited from the last century.
The Ministry of the Environment announced Thursday the creation of a “National Asbestos Observatory” to design a method to “upgrade” these huge piles of asbestos mining residues that litter the region of Thetford Mines and Val -des-Sources (formerly Asbestos). Quebec hopes to extract from these mining discharges “millions of tons” of magnesium, a mineral deemed “critical and strategic”, as well as nickel and silica.
At the peak of its production, between 1966 and 1978, the asbestos industry in Quebec extracted nearly 3 million tons of minerals per year. Recognized as dangerous to health in the 1980s, the use of asbestos then rapidly declined until it was banned in 2019.
In its action plan unveiled Thursday to tackle the problem, the government says it wants to “decontaminate, rehabilitate and reclaim” land polluted by the mining industry. Just over $38 million will be used to fund this research in the Thetford Mines and Val-des-Sources region by 2025.
“The closure of the last asbestos mine in Quebec in 2012, as well as the various prohibitions and legislative and regulatory restrictions established in Quebec and Canada with respect to asbestos to protect the health of populations and workers, have not however, eliminated the presence of this material in our environment, particularly in Val-des-Sources. We had to find a way to transform this liability into an asset, taking into account the economic, health, social and environmental aspects of the problem,” commented André Bachand, MNA for Richmond, when presenting this action plan. .
Some studies suggest that nearly 1.2 billion tonnes of mine tailings lie dormant in Quebec, contaminating an area of 22.5 km2.