Taseko sustainability initiatives benefit water quality, conservation

As part of our BC Mine 2023 report, we wanted to give a Canadian mining company an opportunity to highlight their achievements in sustainability. Read more about what Taseko Mines Ltd. has contributed to their communities in the last year.

By Stuart McDonald, President and CEO, Taseko Mines Ltd

In the Spring of 2024, Taseko Mines Limited will publish its annual Sustainability Report. This year, it’s entitled H2O & ESG to highlight the significant initiatives underway across the company to address what many believe to be our most valuable natural resource – clean water.

Comprehensive disclosure of Taseko’s sustainability performance in a manner that provides consistency, transparency, and comparability with our peers is important. It’s more than just a reporting exercise, however, as we fundamentally believe Taseko’s business success is built on the pursuit of continuous improvement in our operational, safety, environmental and social performance.

Last year, our Gibraltar mine near Williams Lake, BC produced 123M lb of copper and 1.2M lb of molybdenum. These production figures represent a 26% and 9% increase over the prior year.

Also in 2023, Taseko received the final authorization required to advance our Florence Copper project in central Arizona to commercial production. Construction at Florence is now well underway, with the expectation that first copper from this low GHG intensity operation, will be delivered in late 2025.

 ^{© Taseko Mines Limited. All rights reserved. Used with permission. The Tailings Storage Facility at Taseko’s Gibraltar Mine.} 

Although Taseko is proud of its overall performance on sustainability metrics, in recent years the twin issues of water quality and water conservation have come to the fore.

That’s appropriate for our company. Taseko prides itself on focusing its attention and investment on those issues and opportunities that generate the greatest value for our shareholders, employees and operating communities.

At a time when changes in weather patterns are producing pervasive drought conditions in both of Taseko’s operating jurisdictions – British Columbia and Arizona – it only makes sense to focus our sustainability efforts on water conservation and ensuring that clean water is available for multiple user groups.

So what are we doing and what have we achieved?

• In 2023, Taseko implemented a novel biological water treatment initiative at our Gibraltar copper mine in BC’s Cariboo region, utilizing naturally occurring microbes within the tailings storage facility (TSF) to reduce nitrate levels to below permit requirements. This in-situ water treatment solution has facilitated the ongoing discharge of surplus water to the Fraser River without generating any waste by-products, adverse chemistry, or unnecessary legacy infrastructure.
• Through a variety of means, Gibraltar has reduced the volume of surplus water in its tailings storage facility by 77% over the course of a decade, and the total volume of water stored on site by 17%. This progress has moved the open pit copper operation much closer to its optimal TSF water volume, reducing effects on downstream water courses.
• In addition, last year Gibraltar secured permits for the construction and operation of a new reverse osmosis water treatment plant, expected to be operational in 2026. We are now studying opportunities to make treated surplus water available for a range of beneficial uses – such as supplementing natural flows in nearby creeks and streams, and even for irrigation.
• Although commercial operations at Florence Copper won’t begin until late 2025, and the facility is already forecast to use 78% less water per unit of production than a typical Arizona copper mine, Taseko is taking steps now to further enhance its water management performance. Florence Copper is seeking approval to irrigate on-site alfalfa fields with surplus process water from operations. The initiative has potential to offset a volume of water equivalent to the demand from more than 5,000 Arizona homes each year and make more water available for other users in the region.

Taseko is understandably proud of each of these water quality and water conservation initiatives, and the benefits and opportunities they provide to our neighbours and operating communities.

These programs were all achieved in collaboration with our employees, business partners and Indigenous communities, without whose efforts Taseko’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives would not be possible.

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