Adams Mine
Adams Mine is an abandoned open pit iron ore mine located in the Boston Township of the District of Timiskaming, 11 km (6.8 mi) south of Kirkland Lake in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is situated on the Canadian Shield.
The mine was developed in 1963 and closed in 1990, with the resultant job losses leaving the region in economic hardship from which it has never fully recovered. Perched at one of the highest elevation points in the region, the mine stretched over 4,000 acres (16 km2) and had six pits, the largest measuring over 1.6 km (0.99 mi) in length and the deepest being 183 m (600 ft), placing it below the water table; it is currently half filled with water.
Over 27 years of mining, the pits sustained numerous blasts daily, which some geologists claim have added to natural faults in the rocks. Other geologists and hydrogeologists have claimed that the site is well-situated for hydraulic containment (i.e. water flows in, but doesn't leach into surrounding groundwater or surface water systems).
There are significant tailings left from the manufacture of ore concentrate at the site. The Ontario Northland Railway operated a line into the Adams Mine facility during its years of operation.
The mine is currently owned by an American investor named Vito Gallo, through a number company incorporated in Ontario, and is the subject of a NAFTA Chapter 11 arbitration between Gallo, on behalf of the numbered company, and the Government of Canada. The claim is that the Government of Ontario failed to pay proper compensation when it passed legislation that revoked the permits that it had previously granted for the site to be operated as a landfill.
Before the mine had shut production in the early 1990s, waste management planners from the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto were examining its potential for a massive landfill, with waste to be shipped north in sealed intermodal shipping containers by CN and Ontario Northland on a 700 km (430 mi) route. It would be a municipal solid waste (MSW) facility on fractured bedrock using hydraulic containment and no landfill liner.
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