Resources

Please note this is a living document.  We are still adding past publications.  Please feel free to suggest resources to campmorningstar@outlook.com

Please note CPS scrapped its plan for a sand frack mine after they failed to find a way to get their frack sand product to market.  After exploring barging as an alternative to crossing the Pine Falls Generating Station, they went back to the drawing board.

CPS is now pursuing financing for a float glass plant to be located in Selkirk. Most recently they have applied for an environmental license for the Selkirk Glass Plant, but appear to have not met any of the 98 conditions attached to the Wanipigow Sand license.  Please see 2022  updates below for more information. Media represents our early work as advocates.

  Please follow us on Facebook:

Camp Morning Star

What the Frac Manitoba

Camp Morning Star 2.0

Dennis LeNeveu, who has tirelessly critiqued the safety of the Canadian Premium Sand's mine thoroughly rebuked Canadian Premium Sand's CEO's inaccurate statements from a few days ago that was biased and lacking fact checks.

Published in the Winnipeg Free Press January 10, 2024

Project process inadequate

DENNIS LENEVEU

CAROL Sanders, in her article on the Wanipigow sand mine ( Hollow Water sand mine snagged by controversy at separate, unrelated project, Jan. 4) reports only statements from the proponent, Canadian Premium Sand (CPS). CPS claims to have community approval for the project.

A Wanipigow community-based group, Camp Morning Star (CMS), has opposed the project since its inception. The concerns of CMS include the increased risk of injury and death from sand trucks on the narrow road from Pine Falls to Wanipigow, exposure of residents and workers to silica dust that causes silicosis and cancer, and water pollution from acid drainage.

The licence for the sand mine, now under appeal, requires that CPS submit a Traffic Impact Study to Manitoba Transportation and Infrastructure. This study has not been released on the public project registry. Manitoba Hydro has not approved the CPS truck crossing of the hydro dam over the Winnipeg River at Pine Falls. On Nov. 10, 2022, CPS submitted a notice of alteration (NOA) report on the project public registry for the mining of silica sand for solar glass manufacturing. An updated air quality modelling study by AECOM reported that airborne limits for silica dust in nearby communities would not be exceeded.

The altered location of the mining for solar glass closer to the communities and inclusion sand stockpiles, which were disallowed by the original licence, counter-intuitively resulted in a decrease in the modelled airborne levels of silica fines.

The updated modelling did not use measured data specific to the Wanipigow sand. Rather, inapplicable literature values were used. No measured field or wind tunnel tests of air dispersion from Wanipigow sand were done to confirm the modelling results. No worker protection measures such as personnel silica dust monitors, protective clothing and respiratory protection are specified in the NOA or in the revised licence for the project.

No required community air monitoring for silica dust is specified in the revised licence. Unconfirmed, proponent-funded modelling does not justify inadequate protection and monitoring for exposure to deadly airborne silica dust.

The 2014 NI43-101 Wanipigow technical report, required by the stock exchange for investor protection, included laboratory results from acid base accounting tests of a composite Wanipigow sand sample.

The laboratory results clearly demonstrate that the Wanipigow sand, including sand from the solar glass area, is acid-generating. The laboratory results were supplemented with backscatter electron micrograph pictures of the Wanipigow sand that showed deposits of iron sulphides (marcasite and pyrite) on the sand. Iron sulphides, when exposed to air and moisture, form acid that in turn leeches heavy metals.

Red and purple discharge into Lake Winnipeg from the nearby abandoned silica sand quarry on Black Island gives further evidence of the acid drainage. I documented the evidence for acid drainage of the Wanipigow sand in my public comments on the project registry in April, 2019. The evidence was not adequately addressed.

The original Wanipigow licence recognized the acid drainage capacity for shale that covers much of the Wanipigow deposit. The licence specifies remedial measures for burial of excavated shale in clay-lined trenches.

The NOA of November 2022 did not mention the 2014 technical results, but a geochemist for AECOM recommended that comprehensive acid drainage testing be carried out in the area for solar glass. CPS, instead, proposes to conduct acid drainage testing during the extraction activities. Federal procedures require comprehensive acid drainage testing in the planning stage so that mitigation strategies can be determined beforehand, if possible. The revised licence does not specify requirements for acid drainage testing of the Wanipigow sand.

CPS had committed to hydrogeological testing that would determine the drawdown of the water table during extraction activities. Creation of a larger unsaturated zone from extraction drawdown could allow air from excavation faces to penetrate to acid generating shale layers adjacent to the solar glass area. Acid drainage into the groundwater from the shale would result. CPS has not conducted the hydrogeological study.

CPS claims the publicity concerning political interference in the Vivian Sand Extraction Project is adversely affecting the Wanipigow project, which has no connection to the Vivian project.

The connection to the Vivian project is the politicized, inadequate provincial approval process, which is biased toward development. This inadequate process allows the severe environmental, health and safety risks of the Wanipigow project, documented above, to remain unaddressed.

Dennis LeNeveu, M.Sc., was a participant in the Vivian Sand Clean Environment Commission hearing.

Published in the Winnipeg Free Press January 2024

First Nations need more access

Re: Project process inadequate (Think Tank, Jan. 10) I am an elder who has guided Camp Morningstar since its inception. I have supported and advised our community as they bring to light the very divisive, colonial mining practices that destroy the spirit of Indigenous communities in the quest to participate in the mainstream economy.

I appreciate Dennis LeNeveu’s scientific perspective on the Wanipigow Silica Sand mine, but there is another side. We live out here because Treaties pushed us from our Hecla homeland so settlers could benefit. We were invaded by cottage developments that gave us no benefit. However, no one lives here to obscure the stars with industrial light; start a campfire with industrial noise disturbing the hoot of the owl; or go into the sweat lodge ceremony while trucks carrying carcinogenic silica sand barrels down a gravel road, metres away. Then there are threats to air and water which Mr. LeNeveu detailed.

There is nowhere for the members of the reserve to go if they don’t want to live next to a mine. Cottagers can sell their properties at a loss. Reserve residents don’t have that right.

Other jurisdictions, like Ontario. have passed laws to prevent prospecting in populated areas. The government of Manitoba should conduct a land use map. Are we a sacred/recreational area or a mining area?

There are no procedures in the mining approval process to acknowledge the sacredness of the silica sand. In the Northwest Territories, Explor Silica relinquished its right to mine silica sand at Whitebeach when the elders identified it as sacred. The silica sand rights on the Eastern shore of Lake Winnipeg are an extension of the Black Island sacred site that Hollow Water First Nation Elders fought to have protected from logging and invasive tourism. The province responded by making it into a park.

We need free prior and informed consent. Start with free prior and informed conversations. Section 35 does not occur until too late in the process, if at all. The most recent designation of the Wanipigow Sand mine as minor meant there were no hearings for what amounted to a brand new mine.

The government needs to make sure First Nations have access to scientists and advisors to look at the adverse effects and deficits in the mine’s proposal before agreements are signed. Even former Minister Kevin Klein admitted he had no idea what the engineers were saying. Right now, the proponent or company communicates all information. The fox oversees the henhouse.

Hollow Water First Nation, Manigotogan, and Seymourville were offered trinkets and beads. When Canadian Premium Sand failed to make a go of the original frack sand mine, they returned with a new plan that took the bulk of the promised jobs and local improvements to Selkirk and left behind a community that quickly descended into an emotional tailspin brought on by increased rates of suicide and drug abuse. It has been five years. We will suffer all the devastation, with none of the benefits.

We need to acknowledge the system has failed Hollow Water First Nation.

MARCEL HARDISTY, ELDER

Wanipigow