Public hearings needed in Ring of Fire mining project. CPAWS demands greater scrutiny through regional environmental assessment. In Ontario’s far north, proposals for mega-mines are creating a massive new threat for carbon rich wetlands, clean, free flowing rivers such as the Albany and Attawapiskat, and habitat for threatened wildlife like caribou that local people still rely on for their livelihoods. Mining companies in Ontario’s ‘Ring of Fire’, located approximately 500 km northeast of Thunder Bay, have initiated several environmental assessment processes for major mines and infrastructure projects including all-weather roads, transmission lines, slurry pipelines and winter roads. All of this is at a scale and intensity that has not yet been seen in Ontario. It will cause massive, permanent changes to the Ontario's Far North sensitive ecosystems and to local communities. Scientists predict irreversible changes to aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. One of the first of the proposed mega-mines is called the Cliffs Chromite Project. http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2463/p/dia/action/public/;jsessionid=D2CBA80ADD1176946A8FF5DBC242F17D-n2?action_KEY=10722
