Rio Tinto Truth: $15 Million Won’t Buy Our Silence

By
Dylan Rose
– November 17, 2011Posted in: Blog, Clean Up Kennecott, Current Campaigns, Events, Featured, Get Involved, News

 

RIO TINTO TRUTH: $15 Million Won’t Buy Our Silence

Tonight was the Grand Opening of the new Natural History Museum of Utah – made possible by the $15 million that Rio Tinto donated to the project, boasting it’s name on the front of the building.  Peaceful Uprising and Rio Tinto Truth gathered at the entrance of the Museum to let Rio Tinto know that it can’t immunize itself from public criticism by sponsoring the Museum!

Gas-masked paper mache owls, a prominently displayed sign saying: “WE LOVE THE MUSEM”, protestors with dust masks with “Rio Tinto Truth” painted on them, and a giant 20 ft banner welcomed guests as they poured into the Museum.  Handouts were distributed by a Smoke-Stack head in a suit and phrases like, “We love the museum, we just don’t like the Rio Tinto name” could be heard amongst the crowd.   The majority of guests attending the event (including Museum employees) were not angry – the opposite.  They were GRATEFUL!  Many said ‘Thank You” or “Good for you!”  Education, creativity, empathy and joy and resolve were at their finest tonight – and as we packed up to leave, the Museum staff brought us out cookies on a tray.

The Museum is a beautiful asset to Utah communities, but the cost of ignoring the health problems caused by Kennecott are too serious to overlook.  Rio Tinto’s donation won’t buy our silence, and $15 million can’t buy back our health.

www.RioTintoTruth.com

  • Rio Tinto/Kennecott is responsible for about 1/3 of the air pollution in the Salt Lake Valley
  • Utah residents breathe pieces of the mountain mined and smelted by Rio Tinto every single day
  • Some of the serious health problems associated with the kind of air  pollution in Salt Lake include: asthma, lung disease, leukemia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, autism, diabetes, breast cancer, and more
  • Salt Lake City is the 9th most toxic major metropolitan area in the USA.  The Rio Tinto/Kennecott Bingham Canyon copper mining and processing complex is the largest single source of the 650 toxic compound tracked in the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory database.
  • Rio Tinto provides less than one quarter of 1% of the jobs in Salt Lake and Utah Counties, but about 30% of the air pollution
  • Rio Tinto wants to extend the life of its Bingham Canyon Mine operations to 2028 to extract about 700 million tons of ore, expanding the pit 1,000 feet and digging 300 feet deeper.
  • The proposed Rio Tinto/Kennecott expansion would increase Salt Lake Valley air pollution by 12-14 percent.
  • The proposed expansion would provide jobs for only a few hundred employees at best, while the air pollution impacts would be felt by about 1.8 million people