Sustainability / Environment / Environmental incidents
Environmental incidents
Our ultimate goal is for no significant environmental incidents to occur at Xstrata operations. To work towards this, we aim to progressively reduce the number of incidents that occur. Where incidents do occur, we have procedures in place to monitor, report, investigate and remediate them, and use lessons learned to try and prevent them from happening again.
We rate incidents on our own scale, according to the severity of their impact and our target is for no category 3 (significant), 4 (major) or 5 (disastrous) incidents. To date, Xstrata operations and projects have never experienced a category 4 or 5 incident.
Sites report category 3 and above environmental incidents to the Executive Committee and Board HSEC Committee on a monthly basis. Any high potential risk incident that had the potential to cause a category 4 or 5 incident is also reported, even if the actual impact was less significant. We learn important lessons from these near-misses and use them to improve risk identification and management processes. Where appropriate, we amend our environmental procedures and guidelines to specifically address reasons for near-misses and ensure they do not happen again.
In 2008, the number of category 3 environmental incidents at Xstrata sites fell to 8, from 11 in 2007 and 23 in 2006. The decline is partly due to improved stormwater management systems at our Mount Isa operations, where stormwater discharges off-site have presented a challenge in previous years.
Three of the eight category 3 incidents that occurred in 2008 were caused by severe storms and heavy rainfall in South Africa, which resulted in dam overflows or breaches at coal operations. We implemented action plans for all eight incidents and have fully remediated the moderate environmental impacts that the incidents caused.
| Date | Commodity business | Operation | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01/2008 | Alloys | Lion, South Africa | Stormwater discharges off-site |
| 04/2008 | Nickel | Cosmos, Australia | Ground contamination |
| 07/2008 | Zinc | Brunswick smelter, Canada | Water contamination |
| 08/2008 | Nickel | Falcondo, Dominican Republic | Ground contamination (oil, 4,800 litres)* |
| 08/2008 | Coal | Tweefontein (2), South Africa | Water contamination |
| 08/2008 | Coal | iMpunzi, South Africa | Ground contamination |
| 10/2008 | Nickel | Nikkelverk, Norway | Water contamination (chemical, 1,500 litres)* |
| * Significant spill under GRI G3 guidelines | |||
Fines
We aim to incur no environmental fines or penalties. In 2008, we did not achieve this target and incurred four environmental fines totalling $25,300, all relating to category 2 incidents. We implemented remediation plans to mitigate the minor environmental impacts of the incidents and prevent them from occurring again.
Last Modified on July 21 2009, 14:02:24 PST
