Vagnini comes out against chromite smelter for Coniston

In a statement released to the media Monday, Ward 2 Coun. Michael Vagnini says he's opposed to building a chromite smelter near Coniston, as the city is proposing to do as part of its bid package to Noront Resources.

The brownfield site in Coniston was the site suggested in the bid the city submitted last month. Sudbury, along with Timmins, Sault Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay, are all vying to host the shelter.

Noront is looking for a site to process chromite from the Ring of Fire when the deposit eventually goes into production. 

Mayor Brian Bigger led a delegation to Tornio, Finland earlier this year to get a first-hand look of how it operates under European Union regulations. The delegation came back convinced it could operate safely and cleanly in Coniston.

But a meeting last month in Coniston brought out concerns about whether the smelter would lead to toxic pollution that would endanger the health of residents.

In his statement, Vagnini admits he knew nothing about the smelter until very recently and declares “I’m not an armchair, 10-minute expert on the subject. I know that there is a lot more for me to know and understand. I must declare recent reports have me very concerned!

“Based on everything I have had access to in recent weeks, I must declare that I am totally against the current promotion of Coniston as a site for a chromite smelter.”

He wrote that a group of “seven recognized scientists in the field, and working as a group, authored a technical paper in July of 2017 about the Ring of Fire confirming that, in their opinion, hexavalent chromium(VI) is produced in the processing of chromite ore.” 

Three of the authors are from South Africa, Vagnini's statement said, a country that produces 47 per cent of world chromite ores and concentrates; two are from Finland, which produces three per cent; and two are from Canada that currently produces none.

“They can’t all be wrong,” Vagnini writes.

In their paper, they present a four-step lead-in process before decisions can be made, he writes, adding, “I am not aware of any of these steps having been done for the Coniston site … 

“There has been insufficient consideration of the risks to the community. 

In Tornio, Vagnini's statement said the impact on human and environmental health has been minimized by “geography, isolation from habitation and air/land cleansing by natural weather into massive quantities of sea water. In spite of this, reports indicate that plant life within the circle is becoming contaminated.”

More details on Vagnini's position, he wrote, will be available through a video to come from his adviser, Tom Price.