Days of Our Droplets: The Story of Water

Happy World Water Day! Held annually on March 22, World Water Day is an international day centered around the importance of our freshwater resources, and brings awareness to how we manage those resources sustainably.

Goldcorp’s Towards Zero Water Strategy (H2Zero) is our commitment to optimizing and reducing freshwater consumption at all our mine sites. A product of the 2016 Sustainability Summit, H2Zero is a multi-year water reduction strategy.

To date we have made strides toward these goals at multiple sites with some ambitious and innovative projects. For example, recycled truck wash water at Penasquito, UV water treatment and recycling system in the underground at Musselwhite, the reclaimed water project at Porcupine, and the advancement of our study of EcoTails, a potential breakthrough in tailings and waste rock management.

This year for World Water Day we decided to get creative and introduce you to a story about water! Days of Our Droplets combines an explanation of where water comes from and where it goes at a mine site with a story about some of the unfortunate potential consequences of poor water management that you may have heard about in the news.  We then go on to show how good water stewardship combined with innovative water-saving technology helps solve these problems in our industry. These animations and water characters will help us communicate with our stakeholders in a fun and easily understandable format on the different types of water found at mine sites and how the water moves throughout a mine, a topic that can be quite complex.  The story also helps us communicate how we are confronting some of the water management risks at our mines.

Water usage and availability is one of the most important topics to local communities and our stakeholders.  As members of the ICMM, we are dedicated to improving our environmental performance in water stewardship, in alignment with #miningwithprinciples. Also, as supporters of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, we understand the importance of water conservation and reprocessing, and the fundamental human right that all people have access to clean water and sanitation. SDG 6 has been, and will continue to be one of our priorities as a responsible mining company.

We hope you enjoy watching the videos as much as we enjoyed making them.  Watch the first episode of Days of Our Droplets now!

In the first episode we introduce you to Diamond Diva, Hippie H20, Dewatering Dave, Recycling Rita, Sticky Sam and Contamin-8. Together they make up all the different types of water found at a mine site.

Diamond Diva is the purest form of water. You can find her in lakes, rivers and streams. She is often pumped into the mine and put to work. Using Diamond Diva in the mine is very expensive and not good for the environment.

Hippie H2O occurs naturally in the environment and lands in the mine with the rain and snow. Both Hippie H2O and Diamond Diva can be easily contaminated when they come into the mine’s water system.

Recycling Rita is the mine’s marathon runner. She has been in the mine system for a long time. She works hard and moves through the mill and tailings. Mines want to keep lots of Recycling Ritas as they reduce the need for Diamond Diva.

You can find Dewatering Dave all over the mine. He is the water that comes from our need to keep our active mining areas dry for equipment and personnel. He is not usually the most desirable water, but with a bit of polish, can be used in mining equipment and the mill.

Sticky Sam and his evil gang Contamin-8 are the bad guys. They are found in the tailings pond, looking for new droplets to contaminate.

To find out what happens next, stay tuned for Episode 2 and 3 of Days of our Droplets, released on our YouTube Channel March 23 and 24.