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Golden Bear Ceramics Excluded From West Coast Green Expo
Published on Mar 12, 2007 - 8:16:00 AM
By: YubaNet
West Coast Green Conference and Exhibition (www.westcoastgreen.com) held its annual green building conference and exposition in San Francisco on Sept. 28-30. Eight thousand people packed the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium to learn about environmentally-friendly home improvement products that have been deemed clean, green, nontoxic, low impact and sustainably produced via West Coast Green's rigorous vetting process. Environmentalist/author Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was the keynote speaker.
Among the 200 vendors participating was Golden Bear Ceramics from Grass Valley, Calif. (www.goldenbearceramics.com). The company claims it has the technology to recycle a wide array of mine waste into floor and wall tile, roof tile, paving stones and building cladding using a proprietary manufacturing process called Ceramext (short for "ceramic extrusion"). The process involves heating mine waste and forming it into ceramic products.
Next September Golden Bear Ceramics won't be back. According to spokesman Ian Bryan, West Coast Green has decided to end its association with Golden Bear Ceramics.
"Although we are inspired by the potential of the Ceramext process and the business concept presented by Golden Bear Ceramics, West Coast Green has not invited Golden Bear to return as an exhibitor for our 2007 conference and tradeshow. While the Ceramext process shows remarkable promise as a green product, certain issues related to the potential reopening of a hard rock mine in Grass Valley prompted a review of all factors contributing to the final product to be offered by their company. West Coast Green reserves the right to exclude products from our tradeshow floor that do not meet our stringent green criteria, which include external factors such as materials sourcing, community impact and indirect environmental concerns. We wish Golden Bear Ceramics well and encourage the continued development of the Ceramext process, "said Bryan.
Apparently, what Golden Bear Ceramics neglected to mention to conference organizers is that the raw material (feedstock) for Ceramext would come from yet-to-be-produced cyanidized mine tailings and waste rock created by its parent company, Emgold Mining Corporation (www.emgold.com), a junior mining company from Canada.
In sum, West Coast Green attendees had no way of knowing that the availability of Golden Bear Ceramic's "green" products is entirely contingent upon the opening of a controversial hardrock gold mine in the Sierra Nevada foothills.
Given West Coast Green's commitment to creating sustainable communities, this is not a frivolous detail. Whatever anyone thinks of gold mining, it is the prime example of boom and bust development. Even miners don't call it a sustainable enterprise.
"We're serious about showcasing green products and manufacturers," said Bryan.
Bryan said West Coast Green implements one of the most rigorous examination/elimination processes in the green events industry. He shared the following criteria:- Natural or minimally processed
- Efficient resource utilization
- Minimal contribution to global warming
- No contribution to ozone depletion
- Eliminates or minimizes use of PVC
- Low embodied energy
- Diversion of material from land
- Minimal habitat destruction
- Minimal use of biocide, pesticides, etc.
- Low impact on air quality
- High durability, long lifespan.
When asked to comment on West Coast Green's decision, Dave Watkinson, VP of Golden Bear Ceramics and Idaho-Maryland Mine Corporation, said "no decision has been made yet," contradicting West Coast Green's information. He again acknowledged (see below) that if the gold mine doesn't open, Golden Bear Ceramics won't build a factory in Grass Valley to process waste from other companies.
Emgold filed its application to reopen the old Idaho-Maryland Mine with the City of Grass Valley in Feb. 2005. After their revised application is submitted sometime this month, an environmental impact report (EIR) for the combination gold mine/ceramics plant proposal can be completed. It will be months before a draft EIR is ready for public review. Should the mine open, it will be Emgold's first mining operation.
Ceramext has not been demonstrated to work on a commercial scale. Nevertheless, Emgold is confident that the technology will be able to deal with 20 years-worth of mine waste it will generate at the Idaho-Maryland. The mining company has already invested $6.56 million U.S. in Golden Bear Ceramics, which plans to build a 193,000 square-foot tile factory on the proposed mine site, if the mine project gets a green light from the city. Presently, Golden Bear Ceramics is operating a pilot/demonstration plant inside Emgold's 45,000 square foot office building in Grass Valley and doing lab work on a variety of industrial waste materials, according to Watkinson.
Emgold is seeking investors for Golden Bear Ceramics, in order to separate the financing for its subsidiary. Emgold President and CEO Bill Witte explained why in a Nov. interview with YubaNet: "The reason for the restructuring of GBC into a separate entity, said Witte, is because "we live in 2-sided world, with investors in gold and investors in ceramics. The old time gold funds want their investment to go to gold only. Investors interested purely in gold are not too keen in paying for the development of a ceramics company. Analysts like to work with specific bonds for specific commodities."
Emgold has been trading on the Toronto Venture Exchange since 1989.
A business viability report commissioned by the city recommended caution in regards to Ceramext. Conducted by Bay Area Economics (BAE) in Berkeley, the report says, "Given the scale of the ceramic tile operation that is proposed, the Ceramext process should be considered an unproven technology until it is successfully put into commercial scale production. As such, BAE recommends that the City of Grass Valley request that Emgold produce a contingency plan for the disposal of mine tailings in the event that the Ceramext process does not prove viable as a means of disposing of mine waste."
With gold prices the highest they've been in almost two decades, junior mining companies are eyeing old mines, looking for gold left behind and using cyanide to extract microscopic particles from low-grade ore. Emgold is hoping to strike it rich at the Idaho-Maryland Mine, which closed in 1956. Plans include excavating 2000 feet deeper than the original mine, or down to 5,000 feet. Seventy miles of flooded shafts would have to be dewatered and treated mine water would be dumped into Wolf Creek, a tributary to the Bear River, which empties into the Feather and Sacramento River. While the local community bears the greatest environmental risk, water from Wolf Creek eventually makes its way to San Francisco Bay.
Concerns by locals include 24/7 truck traffic and transport of hazardous materials on city roads, dust, noise and light pollution, contamination of ground and surface water, cyanide accidents, acid mine drainage both above and below ground, aquifer and private well depletion due to dewatering, artificial flows to Wolf Creek and the effect on riparian flora and fauna, decreased residential property values, and a host of compatibility issues related to operating a hardrock metal mine within the city's borders.
Residents have good reason to be wary. According to the EPA's most recent Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), hardrock metal mining is the most polluting industry in America, responsible for a quarter of all toxics released by all U.S. industry combined. In addition, new scientific research published in December found that "faulty water quality predictions, mitigation measures and regulatory failures result in the approval of mines that create significant water pollution problems. Despite assurances from government regulators and mine proponents that mines would not pollute clean water, researchers found that 76 percent of studied mines exceeded water quality standards, polluting rivers, and groundwater with toxic contaminants, such as lead, mercury, arsenic and cyanide, and exposing taxpayers to huge cleanup liabilities."
It takes from 20 to 100 tons of rock, blasted from underground or in open pits, to yield one ounce of gold, a luxury metal with few practical uses. Gold-bearing ore is then crushed into a powdery consistency and processed using heat and cyanide. Tailings are the talc-like waste remaining after ore processing. Waste rock is the material excavated in order to expose any gold-bearing ore.
Because tailings and waste rock usually contain high concentrations of heavy metals and arsenic that can leach into the ground and waterways when exposed to air and water, their storage and disposal pose a dilemma, particularly for Emgold. Due to the mine's location on Wolf Creek, as well as surface space limitations, tailings and waste rock can't be stored on site.
That's where Golden Bear Ceramics comes in. Emgold says Ceramext can spare investors the expense of impounding and storing the tailings, or transporting them to Nevada for processing and reclamation. Emgold is also depending on Golden Bear Ceramics to produce a mining byproduct to help the company weather decreases in gold commodity prices over the projected 20-year lifespan of the mine.
Ross Guenther, the inventor of Ceramext , says he can heat all the tailings and waste rock and re-form them into ceramic products for the green building industry. But just how "green" the manufacturing process is remains a matter of debate.
Both gold mining and the Ceramext process are resource intensive. In 2005 Guenther told YubaNet.com that the ceramics plant is capable of processing 2400 tons of mine waste daily. In order to turn that much tonnage into tiles, the manufacturing process would burn 2.1 billion cubic feet of natural gas per year, said Guenther. According to Pacific Gas & Electric, that's enough energy to supply 25,000 to 50,000 households for a year. Grass Valley has 13,000 residents.
Guenther is fond of saying that the mine would have no leftover waste - "We're using the whole buffalo, so to speak," he told Doug Mattson, author of YubaNet.com's 5-part special report on the mine.
However, it now appears that Emgold intends to recycle only half of that buffalo into consumer products, with the other half going right back into the ground.
In February, YubaNet talked with Dave Watkinson, a few days after Emgold sponsored a public presentation on the mine. He said plans now call for converting only 1200 tons of feedstock daily into Ceramext product, even though the gold mine will still generate 2400 tons of waste a day.
Of those 2400 tons, 1200 tons will be used for Ceramext feedstock, and 1200 tons (a combination of mine tailings and waste rock) will be backfilled into the shafts, said Watkinson.
Backfilling tailings and waste rock is controversial, with no guarantees that acid mine drainage won't develop underground years after a mine closes, according to geochemist Ann Maest, Ph.D and co-author of "Comparison of Predicted and Actual Water Quality at Hardrock Mines," and "Predicting Water Quality Problems at Hardrock Mines: Methods and Models, Uncertainties, and State-of-the-Art," published early this year
Over time, Maest told YubaNet for our special report on the Idaho-Maryland , a mine's acid potential can outlast its carbonates and other neutralizing minerals. "When you excavate the rock, in most cases, you're breaking it into small pieces and exposing it to oxygen and water. There's kind of a clock that starts ticking. The severity of acid mine drainage depends on how much sulfides are there and what types of sulfides are there, and how broken up the rock is and how exposed the rock is in there," she said. "If the mine is located near a surface water or groundwater, and this acid gets into streams, especially smaller streams, it can overwhelm the neutralization capacity of the stream water and make the stream water go acid."
"Generally," Maest said, "carbonate dissolves at a faster rate, so you have to take time into account. If you have a lot of carbonate around, it could neutralize the acid for a certain amount of time. Acid-based accounting tests often don't take this into account. They don't tell you how quickly each of these minerals will weather over time."
Watkinson was cavalier about even the potential for acid formation, saying it's "impossible because of the kind of rock at the mine." He also said that the cyanide would be removed from the tailings at a "cyanide destruction plant," prior to backfilling.
Watkinson said the reason why only half of the 2400 tons will be used for Ceramext feedstock, instead of all of it as originally proposed, is "to save energy." With tile production cut in half, "50% less will still be a challenge to process and sell as product," he said.
In spite of the 50% reduction in Ceramext production, Watkinson foresees the need for the same number of employees originally projected: 200 in the ceramics factory and 200 in the mine.
In Nov. 2006, Emgold had announced that it was reducing its Golden Bear Ceramics operations and seeking new investors for its subsidiary. Watkinson confirmed that Golden Bear Ceramics is not yet split-off from Emgold, but said they are talking to potential investors and planning how to structure any future spin-off. After the recent cutbacks, Watkinson said 2 people are currently employed by Golden Bear Ceramics, as engineers who are testing product. Four people were moved to the Idaho-Maryland Mine payroll and seven were laid off.
YubaNet.com asked Watkinson what would happen to Ceramext if, for whatever reason, the Idaho-Maryland Mine didn't reopen. Would Golden Bear Ceramics recycle mine waste for other mines? "No, the two are hinged together, to handle waste here," said Watkinson. "They are tied at the hip," he said. He also said it will be another two years before Ceramext products, made from Idaho-Maryland mine waste, would be available for sale to the public.
Watkinson told YubaNet that Golden Bear Ceramics is not currently recycling any other mine's waste. They are, however, making test product from a variety of industrial waste material, including quarry fines which Watkinson defined as "fine particles, or sand-like material left over from making aggregate." A local company provides the quarry fines, which they "pick up in 5-gallon buckets." He also said they are testing product made from "fly ash from a coal plant in Nevada." Watkinson would not share the name of the quarry or coal plant.
The last time Emgold tried to open the Idaho-Maryland Mine, back in the mid-90's, a similar plan was hatched to market a mining byproduct. Emgold, operating under the name Emperor, planned to bottle treated mine water pumped from the shafts during dewatering and sell it as spring water. But the price of gold dipped below a profitable level and mining plans were scrapped.
There are approximately 500,000 abandoned mines throughout western North America, many of which continue to pollute aquifers and waterways. A clean technology that can transform legacy mine waste into safe consumer products, without creating more waste in the process, would be a welcomed innovation by the kind of consumer who counts on West Coast Green to guide their purchasing decisions.
According to a news release by Emgold, Golden Bear Ceramics will be an exhibitor at the Green California Summit and Exposition on March 13th and 14th at the Sacramento Convention Center. The conference targets primarily state and government agencies. However, admission is free and open to the general public. For more information, go to www.green-technology.org.
Related Articles
Emgold Forms "Newco" to Raise Capital for Golden Bear Ceramics
Emgold Scales Back Funding for Golden Bear Ceramics, Reduces Operations
Golden Gamble in Grass Valley: YubaNet's 5-part special report on the Idaho-Maryland mine.
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