The new provincial minister of environment is doing a bang up job as spokesperson for the private sector, in this case Vale.

When the tailings leak at Voisey’s Bay mine was first reported Mr. Wiseman stated that it was the company, Vale, that had the responsibility for clean up and monitoring. Now Wiseman is out front and center acting as what seems to me a private mouth piece.

He sure has that special gift needed to be a PR person for the private sector.

Saying the leak is not substantial belies the facts that the minister himself has spoken to, if in fact they are the true facts.

The figures given out by the company and repeated by the minister are: 600 cubic meters of tailing leaked onto the camp pond.

600 cubic meters equals 600, 000 liters, not an unsubstantial amount.

Then in a lengthy interview with CKOK [audio clip included] yesterday Wiseman first stated 600 cubic meters then later in the interview he stated either 15 or 16 thousand square meters, that equals 1.6 hectares. Not an unsubstantial area.

The leak was not discovered for 12 hours according the Wiseman, but this is not a big problem he says, two automated safety checks failed and he defended the company policy of a visual check every 12 hours.

Wiseman also defended the location of the tailings line in relation to the camp pond stating that; all environmental standards where adhered to back in the day [paraphrased]. Which is sort of like saying that maybe the location of the line in relation to the water supply would not meet today’s standards. Plus this is not the first problem with the tailings line.

All in all a good smoke and mirrors job to date, if this happened out on the Island you could be assured of the MSM being all over this story with relentless vigor. CKOK with its limited means and limited access has done a good job to date.

Another bothering thing about Wisemans interview; he stated that the clean up should not take long and to make sure all contaminates are taken up they will go down beyond the contaminated area just to make sure.

How does one clean up an area of contaminated frozen water with large pieces of construction equipment without disrupting the potable water beneath one wonders? And how do these large pieces of equipment reach out several hundred meters from shore to grab and differentiate contaminated from non contaminated ice. It would make an interesting video.

Updated: Things are not going too smoothly for the Nutrition North program in the fare north.

On that note I wonder when we will hear anything from the two NG representatives handling the NN program, who by the by do not live in the area.