REGINA – Fifty million tonnes of potash tailings piled at the Kalium Canada mine near Belle Plaine, Sask., will be eliminated, but it could take 40 or 50 years, a company official said.
The waste salt tailings have been accumulating at the site, about 40 kilometres west of Regina, since it opened in 1964. On Dec. 14 the company and the province signed an environmental agreement that will see the pile become smaller.
Greg Honey, human resources officer for Kalium Canada, said both parties will look into methods for removal of the tailings.
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Right now some salt is sold to the Canadian Salt plant across the road and is cleaned for use as table salt. But there isn’t a high enough population base to support sales, Honey said.
“We’ll be looking at reducing the amount (of tailings) we get in the first place,” he said.
Another possible solution is putting the salt back where it came from. Honey said the salt does not pose any immediate or long-term environmental hazard because it sits on a clay base and there are no usable aquifers nearby.
In the past 10 years Kalium says it has reduced its volume of waste by 50 percent.
