Photo courtesy of Brad Sigurdson
Hundreds of professionals in the mining industry have gathered for a two-day conference in Saskatoon.
The Saskatchewan Mining Association (SMA) is hosting the forum, which will look at ways to lessen the environmental impacts of the mining process.
The forum began on Wednesday and is bringing together professionals from across the mining industry to discuss best practices related to environmental sustainability.
Brad Sigurdson, the Manager of Environment Safety with SMA, says over 50 presentations are expected from local, national and international experts.
“Both safety and environmental performance are key values for our members, so we want to make sure we are always keeping up to date with the latest and greatest,” says Sirgurdson. “We want to ensure everybody has an opportunity to share what they learned, both good and bad.”
Sigurdson says an entire day of the conference will be devoted to tailings and waste rock management, the process of storing waste material after the mining process.
“We have had issues around tailings management in some jurisdictions and we want to take these opportunities to get together and really dig down into the issues and figure out what happened and share,” he says. “This forum is a great opportunity for that.”
Other presentations will look at climate change, water management and wildlife.
This is the second biannual SMA Environmental Forum.