The next year, though, Filipinos discovered just how environmentally risky an anticipated boom in open-pit mineral mining could be. On March 24, 1996 a tailings pond breached at the Marcopper open-pit copper mine on Marinduque, an island southeast of Manila. Millions of tons of toxic mine sludge roared down the Boac River, flooding communities, wrecking the river and contaminating the sea 27 kilometers (16.7 miles) away. The Canadian company closed the mine. It is now one of the 14 abandoned open-pit mines in the Philippines that are surrounded by acres of bare and eroded hillsides and big pools of toxic acidic water contaminated with high concentrations of heavy metals.
https://news.mongabay.com/2017/04/philippines-bans-new-open-pit-metal-mines/
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