Environmental Protection After Bougainville1

APPENDIX A: ENVIRONMENTaL PROTECTION AFTER BOUGaINVILLE1 Today, environmental understanding and government regulation have moved on and it is highly unlikely that regulators and investors would approve a mine which depended on riverine tailings disposal. Regulation of mining is an area where the World Bank’s Mining Division has provided valuable technical assistance to countries such as Papua New Guinea (PNG), and as a result the PNG authorities and the authorities in other countries have a much stronger capacity to monitor the effects of mining on the environment and to demand remediation when and where necessary or to withdraw the company’s mining permit.2 The history of Freeport’s mine in Indonesia which uses riverine tailings disposal shows what can happen when a well-resourced government and a mining company work together to understand and minimize adverse environmental impacts. Forty years ago riverine tailings disposal was a risk that both the government of PNG and the mining companies were willing to take in order to generate tax and royalty revenues and to provide jobs. Rather than going ahead with mining others would doubtless have voted to leave the minerals in the ground as was the case with Canford. At the time when Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL) and Ok Tedi were per- mitted, NGOs were not as influential in the decisions that were made about tailings disposal as they would be today. Moreover, the monetary fines andcompensation now levied on environmental offenders provide a brake on risk taking. © The Author(s) 2017 207 G. Cochrane, Anthropology in the Mining Industry, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-50310-3 208 AppEndiX A: EnVironmEntal ProtEction AftEr BoUgainVillE1 Contemporary attitudes and the record suggest that BCL and Ok Tedi should not be used to characterize all mining because BCL and Ok Tedi risks were unique both historically and geographically and because not all mining produces toxic waste that requires impoundment. For BCL and Ok Tedi riverine disposal of tailings was seen as the best option since mining was located in a remote mountainous seismically unsta- ble terrain—the famous Pacific Rim of Fire—which made reliance on dams or on transportation of tailings by long pipelines extremely risky. Building massive tailings dams at BCL and Ok Tedi and then having them catastrophically fail in an earthquake would have been a worse outcome than riverine tailings disposal.3 THE SaMaRCO IRON ORE MINE (MINas GERaIs STaTE), BRaZIL The Samarco tailings dam failed in November 2016 killing 14 employees and contractors and 5 community residents from a small village downstream, which was partially buried in tailings and largely destroyed. The dam is in the upper reaches of the Rio Doce. Muddy water took a few days to travel all the way to the mouth of the Rio Doce, 650 kilometer downstream, and created a plume offshore. There were large fish kills all along the river caused by extremely high turbidity and low oxygen levels in the muddy water. The oxygen levels rose again within several days but the turbidity levels have taken months to gradually drop down and approach normal levels. Fish began returning after a few weeks (there is no public domain data on pre- and post-dam break fish populations yet). Villages and towns that relied on the river for water supplies were provided with alternative potable sources by the company until turbidity dropped enough for water treatment plants to cope again. All the environmental impacts were physical and not chemical, that is, deposition of smothering material on river banks and in the channel, and high suspended solids (turbidity) in the water reducing light (for algae and plankton). The iron ore tailings are chemically inert and comprise the fine fraction washed from the run-of-mine iron ore and as a result although there was considerable physical damage, there were no ongoing problems with toxicity. There is an agreement to institute remedial environmental and community works to the value of R$20 billion (US$5.5 billion) over 5–10 years. Apart from that, there are court cases for damages and compensation due to impacts, and criminal charges pending Samarco, Vale, and the AppEndiX A: EnVironmEntal ProtEction AftEr BoUgainVillE1 209 dam inspection company (but not BHP Billiton) in relation to possible negligence relating to the reason the dam failed. The Brazilian Justice approved on Thursday, 5 May, the agreement signed between Samarco, its parent companies Vale and BHP Billiton, the federal government, the state governments of Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo, and other government entities. Signed on 2 March, the agreement has 41 programs of social, environmental, and economic rehabilitation of the areas impacted by the Fundão Dam burst. “The approval is the recognition by the courts of our commitment to the recovery of the impacted areas. This agreement represents a breakthrough in the way of dealing with major issues involv- ing the public power and the private sector, in defense of the interests of society and of populations impacted by accidents like this,” said Roberto Carvalho, Samarco’s CEO.4 PaPUa NEW GUINEa In 1999, BHP reported that 90 million tons of tailings was annually discharged into the river for more than ten years and destroyed downstream villages, agriculture, and fisheries. Mine wastes were deposited along 1000 kilometers (620 miles) of the Ok Tedi and the Fly River below its confluence with the Ok Tedi, and over an area of 100 square kilometers (39 square miles). BHP’s CEO, Paul Anderson, said that the Ok Tedi Mine was “not compatible with our environmental values and the company should never have become involved.” As of 2006[update], mine operators continued to discharge 80 million tons of tailings, overburden, and mine-induced erosion into the river system each year. About 1588 square kilometers (613 square miles) of forest has died or is under stress. As many as 3000 square kilometers (1200 square miles) may eventually be harmed, an area equal to the US state of Rhode Island or the Danish island of Funen. The mining operation Ok Tedi discharged tailings into the river because there was no impoundment.5 The mine is still in operation and waste continues to flow into the river system. BHP was granted legal indemnity from future mine-related damages. The Ok Tedi Mine was scheduled to close in 2013. In 2013, the PNG government seized 100 percent ownership of Ok Tedi Mine and repealed laws that would allow people to sue mining giant BHP Billiton over environmental damage. Ok Tedi Mining Limited launched the OT2025 proj- ect that was focused on transitioning the business to a smaller operation in preparation for Mine Life Extension.6 210 AppEndiX A: EnVironmEntal ProtEction AftEr BoUgainVillE1 PHILIPPINEs The Marcopper Mining Disaster occurred on 24 March, 1996, on the Philippine island of Marinduque, a province of the Philippines located in the Mimaropa region in Luzon. It remains one of the largest mining disas- ters in Philippine history. A fracture in the drainage tunnel of a large pit containing leftover mine tailings led to a discharge of toxic mine waste into the Makulapnit-Boac river system and caused flash floods in areas along the river. One village, Barangay Hinapulan, was buried in 6 feet of muddy floodwater, causing the displacement of 400 families. Twenty other villages had to be evacuated. Drinking water was contaminated killing fish and freshwater shrimp. Large animals such as cows, pigs, and sheep were overcome and killed. The flooding caused the destruction of crops and irrigation channels. Following the disaster, the Boac river was declared unusable.7 The toxic spill caused flash floods that isolated five villages, with populations of 4400 people each, along the far side of the Boac river. One village, Barangay Hinapulan, was buried under 6 feet of muddy floodwater, causing 400 families to flee to higher grounds. Sources of drinking water were contaminated with toxins. Fish, freshwater shrimp, and pigs were killed outright. Helicopters had to fly in food, water, and medical supplies to the isolated villages. The inhabitants of 20 of the 60 villages in the province were told to evacuate. SPaIN The Doñana Disaster, also known as the Aznalcóllar Disaster or Guadiamar Disaster, was an industrial accident in Andalusia, southern Spain. On 25 April 1998, a holding dam burst at the Los Frailes mine, near Aznalcóllar, Seville Province, releasing 4–5 million cubic meters of mine tailings. The acidic tailings, which contained dangerous levels of several heavy metals, quickly reached the nearby River Agrio, and then its effluent reached the River Guadiamar, traveling about 40 kilometers along these waterways before they could be stopped. The Guadiamar is the main water source for the Doñana National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the largest national parks in Europe. The cleanup operation took three years, at an estimated cost of €240 million. The Los Frailes mine is owned by Boliden-Apirsa (formerly Andaluza de Piritas, SA), the Spanish subsid- iary of Boliden, and produces about 125,000 tons of zinc and 2.9 million ounces of silver per year.8 AppEndiX A: EnVironmEntal ProtEction AftEr BoUgainVillE1 211 HUNGaRY European environmental groups had long fretted about an aging industrial sludge pond near Ajka, Hungary, containing caustic waste from the process that converts bauxite to aluminum. That all changed around lunchtime on 4 October, when a corner of the sludge reservoir gave way after weeks of heavy rains, letting loose a tidal wave of thick red sludge that oozed its way over garden fences, onto front porches, and into middle- class living rooms in Kolontar and Devecser, where lunches sat waiting on tables.

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