Your photo above is a stock photo taken in 1994, long before a single Prius had ever been build. See my standard reply to Demorro's article below. The GM Canada link on Sudbury also details how some of the landscape came to look like this and provides some stunning before/after pictures of how much better Sudbury looks today.--Scott

The original article is an opinion piece for a small college newspaper. The whole article is garbage.
1. Take the "spitting distance" mileage, for example. The new EPA combined mileage put the Chevy Aveo at 26 mpg, the Toyota Prius at 46 mpg. So I guess 20 miles more per gallon is "spitting distance."
2. The "Dust-to-dust" study is from a marketing firm, not a science journal. It arrives at an artificially high cost for the Prius by assigning it an arbitrary lifespan of 100k miles, and a Hummer 300k miles. There's Prius being used as cabs that have 200k on them now: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8839690/
And, insofar as a car lasting, what car do you expect to repair less? A Toyota Prius or a GM Hummer? You can check Consumer Reports for the answer to that one. A good analysis of the flaws in dust-to-dust is available at:
http://www.truedelta.com/blog/?p=48
3. The Sudbury info is seriously outdated, and the comment about moon buggies (like, when did Nasa test moon buggies — early 1970’s) ought to have given the author a clue. Sudbury was polluted by a century of mining (1870 on). In fact, some of Sudbury’s nickel went into making the Statue of Liberty. Currently, the mine is owned by INCO (not Toyota), and produces 100,000 tons of nickel a year, of which Toyota buys 1% (1000 tons). Nickel, by the way, is primarily used to make stainless steel. The Mail on Sunday newspaper, which ran the story the college article is a thin re-write of (visible here http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/...n_page_id=1770 ), used a stock photo from 1994 to illustrate the pollution (visible here http://www.photoboy.com/bin/Cklb?vmo=1173985067754 ). There were, of course, no Prius in existence or being manufactured in 1994.

Sudbury is no longer as polluted, as INCO and the city have planted over 8 million trees there since 1979. The best history online of the Sudbury devastation/reforestation comes from GM Canada (the trees were all cut down in 1871 to help rebuild Chicago after the fire), and it provides telling photos of some of the reclamation from 1979 to present.
http://www.gmcanada.com/inm/gmcanada/english/about/MissionGreen/Daily/Sep22.html

The acid rain problem David Martin of Greenpeace is talking about in is the situation pre 1972. INCO on regreening and SO2 emissions
http://www.inco.com/development/community/profiles/sudbury/default.aspx

 

Here is a link to a recent CBC report about the greening of Sudbury.

http://www.cbc.ca/clips/rm-hi/mackin...dbury070312.rm