Case Name :      Don’t Just Dump It!: Saving Sandy Pond

Authors :           Robert W. Sexty, Natalie Slawinski, Kristen C Baker

Source :             North American Case Research Association (NACRA)

Case ID :            NA0223

Discipline :        Business Ethics

Case Length :    19 pages

Solution sample availability : YES

Plagiarism : NO (100% Original work)

In July 2009, Vale NL began building a $2.17 billion nickel refinery in Long Harbour, Newfoundland and Labrador. The refinery would bring economic prosperity by creating 1,600 to 2,000 jobs during construction and 400 to 500 permanent jobs in an area of high unemployment. The project’s environmental assessment process began 2006 and the company had successfully completed the required environmental impact statements for the government. A major environmental issue was the disposal of tailings from the refinery, and the approved solution was to store them in a natural lake known as Sandy Pond. Members of several environmental NGOs had opposed the use of the lake as a “tailings impoundment area” and formed the Sandy Pond Alliance for the Protection of Canadian Waters (SPA). The use of natural lakes was allowed, but SPA believed that the regulation that permitted the use was inconsistent with environmental legislation. SPA had to decide how to challenge the use of tailings ponds at Long Harbour and elsewhere in Canada, and whom to target in its efforts. Instead of being designed as a management decision-making exercise, this case places students in the position of environmentalists as they decide what course of action to initiate.