Grant: Engage Grants Program

The legacy of highly contaminated mine tailing waste from historical gold mines in Nova Scotia remains amajor issue for the province. The toxic mine tailings can contain elevated concentrations of mercury (Hg),arsenic (As) and other metals several times higher than federal guidelines. This affects economically andenvironmentally valuable land, with negative consequences for human and wildlife health. Typically soilamendments in the form of fertilizer and / or organic material have been used to help with revegetatingcontaminated mine sites. However, in the case of arsenic-contaminated soil, such amendments can actuallyincrease the bioavailability of As. We will be investigating the potential of native and wide-spread commonhardy plants as potential approach for remediation of gold mine sites. The goal is to see if native metal tolerantplant species can be used to anchor mine tailings and prevent wind-blown dust from impacting humandevelopment and decease leaching of contaminants from tailings. We will be doing a bench-top laboratorystudy to assess the feasibility and the growth of key local plant species in tailing material from a typical NovaScotia mine site with the goal of eventual extrapolation to field site studies and large-scale phytostabilization ofcontaminated gold mine sites in Nova Scotia.