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Subject: [Lingk] Bag.2-Fighting Back Newmont-Denver
Post
From: "Estee-FoE Indonesia-WALHI"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Mon, December 20, 2004 1:47 pm
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Di bawah ini artikel bagian ke-2 dari seri artikel
Denver Post yang
pada
kali ini menyoroti perlawanan masyarakat di Peru dan
Indonesia terhadap
dampak operasi tambang Newmont.
Lebih lengkap artikel dapat diakses di link yang
tersedia di bawah ini.
Artikel kali ini selain dilengkapi grafik dan peta,
juga dilengkapi
oleh
lebih dari 30 buah foto.
Salam,
Estee (Komunikasi International--WALHI)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article Published: Monday, December 13, 2004
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~23827~2594109,00.html
part two
Fighting back
At mines in Peru and Indonesia, Denver-based gold
company Newmont faced
bitter, sustained opposition and discovered
By Michael Riley and Greg Griffin
Denver Post Staff Writers
In early September, as thousands of Peruvian peasants
blocked access to
Newmont Mining Corp.'s richest gold mine high in the
Andes, the
company's
Denver-based managers scrambled for a solution. They
evacuated the
families of managers and dropped workers into the
mine by helicopter.
As the environmental protest wore on, Newmont's stock
price plunged 7
percent in two weeks.
By November, company officials had made a nearly
unprecedented
decision:
They shelved plans to expand the Yanacocha mine into a
protected zone
known as Cerro Quilish, abandoning indefinitely the
more than $1
billion
in gold that lies beneath the mountain.
To some eyes, the peasants' victory was a key moment
in modern gold
mining
and a major setback for Newmont, a global giant that
historically
could
move not just mountains of rock but foreign economies
as well.
"It's a nightmare for Newmont. If they don't wake up
after something
like
this, they are really going to find themselves in a
difficult
situation,
not only with the (environmental) community but also
with
shareholders,"
said Lauren Compere, chief administrative officer of
Boston Common
Asset
Management, a progressive shareholder group with
holdings in Newmont.
Meanwhile, the company's nightmares are spreading.
In Indonesia, claims that Newmont has polluted a bay
with millions of
tons
of mine waste have grown from a stubborn irritant
into a corporate
crisis. Five mine managers were jailed for a month in
September and
October, and the Indonesian government recently said
it would file
criminal charges against the company.
Villagers say they relinquished land for the Minahasa
mine under
pressure
from the Indonesian military and police, and were paid
too little for
it.
In Peru, villagers complain of fish kills and
foul-smelling water that
animals won't drink. In the nearby city of Cajamarca,
the Yanacocha
mine
has brought jobs and other economic benefits, but also
prostitution,
crime
and social ills.
For many, Newmont's decision to halt expansion at
Cerro Quilish may be
the
clearest example yet that what mining companies call
"the social
license
to operate" is real.
Northern Peru's offices in Combaya. The organization
claim that the
Minera
Yonacocha mining operation has contaminated all the
water supplies in
the
area.
While governments can give companies legal permission
to mine, angry
communities, environmental scandal and anxious markets
can effectively
combine to negate that right.
WhileIn Indonesia, the mine closedwas closing by the
time the
controversy
erupted, but the crisis has dramatically changed the
obstacles any new
project will face. Earlier this month, the government
said it will
apply
tougher permitting standards to the tailings disposal
method at the
heart
of the controversy, a process in which mine waste is
dumped on the sea
floor.
Industry experts say the move may effectively ban the
method for any
new
project in that country.
"When somebody asks me what our biggest challenge is,
I look at the
technical problems, I look at how you manage the
environmental impacts,
that's all science, that's relatively easy for us,"
Newmont chief
executive Wayne Murdy told the Chamber of the
Americas at a Denver
luncheon in October.
"We don't always get it right on the social side,
because that's hard.
That's very hard," he said.
Newmont's chief recognized that his company now faces
a global network
of
increasingly sophisticated and digitally linked
opponents. What happens
in
company mines in Indonesia and Peru now affects local
perceptions of
Newmont mines as far away as Turkey and Ghana.
And while the requirements of a "good mine" 20 years
ago were that it
produced tax revenue and foreign exchange for
cash-strapped
governments,
communities are now demanding that those benefits be
more fairly
disbursed.
In Indonesia, Newmont's adversaries are squatters who
have been cut out
of
mine jobs given to other communities and who claim
the bay they live
on
has been polluted.
"When people see wealth taken out of the ground as it
is in the case of
Newmont and Yanacocha, they want to see it coming back
to the region,"
said Kent Lupberger, who oversees mining investments
for the
International Financial Corp., a lending arm of the
World Bank, one of
Newmont's partners in the Peruvian project.
While Newmont officials say they have been stunned by
some recent
actions
of governments and local communities, in most cases
the events of the
past
six months have been preceded by years of protests,
court cases or
studies that showed mounting environmental concerns
and growing
community
unrest.
Safrudin Wangko, an Indonesian farmer, says he was
expelled more than a
decade ago from land Newmont wanted for its mine by
Indonesian police,
who
threw him into a ravine when he resisted. He and
dozens of other
farmers
have unsuccessfully sued the company, saying Newmont
paid too little
for
the land.
Murdy said Newmont has always had a policy of paying a
fair price for
land
and doesn't ally itself with security forces in
foreign countries. "We
have always been extremely careful about not getting
the army involved
in
our operations," he said.
Wangko was among 80dozens of villagers who met in
September with Chris
Anderson, Newmont's head of external relations, in a
meeting arranged
by
Global Response, a Boulder-based environmental group.
Anderson conceded that many of the residents appeared
sick, but he
blamed
skin rashes and other maladies on bad sanitation
rather than the nearly
5
millioncq tons of mine tailings the company poured
into Buyat Bay over
the
life of the Minahasa mine.
"Mining companies hardly ever communicate well enough.
We try the best
we
can," said Anderson, who has a Ph.D. in anthropology.
"We probably rely
on
science too much. We assume people know how science
works. But most
people don't trust science."
Many also don't trust Newmont.
Newmont is "reaping its historical behavior. They are
reaping (the
results) of their lack of attention to these kinds of
issues," said
Compere of the Boston shareholder group.
Distrust in Peru
Newmont paid $16 million to clean up a mercury spill -
and was
challenged
by the World Bank for its handling of the substance.
The September blowup in Peru was the culmination of
almost a decade of
sour relations between locals and a mine that
devoured a hillside and
now
annually sprays millions of gallons of cyanide
solution over heaps of
gold-laden ore.
Peasants say fish have disappeared from streams that
animals now avoid.
They claim that some irrigation canals fed by rivers
and streams
leading
from the mine have dried up.
Probably the most comprehensive study of the mine's
impact on the
area's
water was done by Stratus Consulting Inc., a
Boulder-based hydrology
firm,
at the request of the World Bank.
One stream leaving the mine, Quebrada Honda, showed
consistently high
levels of arsenic, lead and selenium, according to the
Stratus study.
Ann
Maest, the study's co-author, said those levels would
be prohibited
under
the Clean Water Act if the mine operated in the United
States.
The contamination isn't at a level that would
immediately kill people
or
make them sick, according to the Stratus report, in
part because
contaminants were diluted by surrounding streams. It
is enough to kill
fish, the report concluded, and investigators found
that drinking the
water over the long term could cause harm to humans.
Though water concerns were at the heart of the
explosion of unrest in
September, critics say they were also part of a long-
running pattern
of
suspicion and distrust between locals and Newmont,
which has been
inflamed
at intervals by company mistakes.
In June 2000, a Newmont contractor carrying containers
of mercury
spilled
330 poundscq of the chemical over 25 miles of roads
and towns. The
mercury
was picked up by locals who thought it was valuable.
Some of them
boiled
it on kitchen stoves looking for gold.
The spill affected 1,100 people and required a
massive,
multimillion-dollar cleanup effort by Newmont that
included digging up
streets and the floors of homes.
A later World Bank investigation found that Newmont
had stopped using
an
Environmental Protection Agency-approved container for
the mercury;
that
the mercury had been loaded incorrectly on an open
truck; and that
company
officials initially misrepresented the size and
seriousness of the
spill,
hampering emergency response efforts.
"We didn't meet our standards, and we would be the
first to tell you
that," said Doug Hock, Newmont's spokesman. The
company has since
spent
$16 million on cleanup and health care for those
affected.
Though ultimately Newmont's response to the spill may
show the
company's
willingness to correct errors, the 11-year history of
Yanacocha reveals
a
company by turns aggressive and conciliatory. The
apparent
inconsistencies
are the result of differences among the mine's major
partners,
insiders
say, but also a difference of opinion within Newmont
itself over how
much
opponents should be accommodated.
Before the protests, the company had begun two
dialogues with local
opponents, but each has foundered. A main sticking
point was whether
the
mine would allow - and pay for - independent
monitoring of streams and
rivers.
When the opponents were invited to discuss objections
to the
exploration
of Cerro Quilish - a mountain that the nearby town of
Cajamarca had
declared off limits to mining - they arrived to find
the doors of the
meeting spot locked, said Martin Scurrah, regional
director in Lima
for
Oxfam, an environmental and social activist group.
Neither the company
nor the Peruvian government showed up.
"Whether there was a fear the moment was not right to
negotiate, or
whether there was a hope that if they just froze them
out, nothing
would
happen, I'm not sure. But there was an opportunity
missed to resolve
the
issue before it got confrontational," Scurrah said.
Newmont has spent millions of dollars on community
projects over
several
years to repair soured relations. It has set up
small-loan programs,
taught residents jewelry making and funded soccer
teams.
It also paid $154 millioncq to the Peruvian government
in taxes last
year,
but the central government's shortage of cash and
bureaucratic
inefficiencies mean that little of that money helps
locals.
Even for the World Bank, which owns a 5 percent stake
in the mine,
Yanacocha has moved from a lauded example of Third
World development to
a
model of what not to do.
The mine was among the first to open after Peru's
liberalization in the
early '90s. It was seen as a critical source of tax
revenue and foreign
exchange and led the way for the World Bank's renewed
investment in
gold
mining.
But by 2002, the mine was brought up in a closed-door
World Bank
meeting
as a negative example of community relations, meeting
notes obtained
by
The Post show.
"They made mistakes and we made mistakes not bringing
these things up
sooner," said Lupberger, the World Bank administrator.
"But clearly one
of
the things we've learned about mining projects is
that their success
is
increasingly dependent on the support of the broad
community."
A firestorm in Indonesia
The swell of negative opinion stuns Newmont officials,
who say their
mine-waste disposal method can't harm humans.
Perhaps nowhere does Newmont face more opposition than
in Indonesia,
where
the government is preparing to file a criminal
lawsuit against the
company.
Newmont faces potentially hefty government penalties,
possible jail
terms
for its employees and an uncertain future for its
massive Batu Hijau
gold
and copper mine.
The problems stem from Newmont's now-closed Minahasa
mine, located on
the
Buyat Bay in a remote region of north Sulawesi island.
The firestorm erupted last summer after residents of a
small fishing
village on the bay filed a $543 million lawsuit
against Newmont.
Newmont used a controversial method called submarine
tailings disposal
to
get rid of its mine waste, pumping nearly 5 million
tons of the
tailings
to the ocean floor about a half- mile from shore
during the mine's
eight-year life.
Local fishermen and environmental groups say the waste
polluted the
bay,
causing rashes, headaches and tumors - allegations
that Newmont
staunchly
denies.
Recent studies by the World Health Organization and
the Indonesian
Environmental Ministry confirmed Newmont's assertion
that metals were
not
migrating to the water or fish. But arsenic and
mercury levels in the
bay's sediments, also confirmed in the studies, have
alarmed
Indonesian
officials.
In Denver, Newmont's executives are dumbfounded by the
turn of events
in
Indonesia.
"As the facts have come out in that case, they're so
overwhelming that
it
just makes the claims look ludicrous," CEO Murdy said.
"Not only did we
meet the standards, but we far exceeded the
standards."
Murdy maintains that the tailings disposal system
performed well and
that
the company is being persecuted by environmentalists
determined to drum
Newmont out of Indonesia.
But company documents show that the system hasn't
always worked as
Newmont
predicted. The pipe that delivered the tailings to
the sea floor burst
in
1998, Newmont said. And in a study earlier this year,
Newmont found
that
tailings had settled in an area of the bay 100 feet
higher than
anticipated.
Meanwhile, regulations in the U.S. and Canada make the
kind of system
Newmont used to dispose of waste in Buyat Bay very
difficult, if not
impossible, to deploy in North America.
The Indonesian government approved Newmont's plan for
Minahasa in 1994.
Newmont said the disposal system was the best solution
where rainfall
and
seismic activity were high. At Buyat Bay, it maintains
that because the
water and fish in the bay aren't contaminated, the
system has worked.
No countries have enforceable standards on metal
contaminants in marine
sediments, said Newmont environmental chief David
Baker. It's what gets
into the water and fish that matters, he said.
But environmental regulators in most developed nations
have identified
threshold levels at which contaminant levels in
sediments are
considered
dangerous to marine life. Newmont's own research found
arsenic levels
in
the tailings in Buyat Bay at levels 15 times the U.S.
thresholds.
Indonesian environmental groups, and now the
government, say that these
harmful metals are getting into the food chain through
worms and other
deep-sea bottom-dwellers known as benthos.
The study by the Indonesian Environmental Ministry
says that mercury
levels in benthos in Buyat Bay are higher than in the
surrounding
sediments, indicating that the metal is accumulating
in the organisms.
Newmont officials reject the notion that metals can
migrate from the
tailings to marine life.
But a company study in 2001 determined the risk of
arsenic and mercury
passing from the tailings to humans from benthos
"could not be
eliminated."
Baker said the company has since done new research
that determined
there
is no danger of the metals getting into the human
food chain.
Newmont isn't alone in characterizing scientific
research to its own
advantage. Environmental groups first attacked the
company's Buyat Bay
operation for allegedly causing Minamata disease, a
central nervous
system illness related to mercury poisoning. The
World Health
Organization study discredited those claims.
Nonetheless, the Environmental Ministry's study
determined that
consuming
fish from Buyat Bay is risky for local villagers.
That study did not find higher arsenic levels in fish
and water than
the
World Health Organization did. Instead, it based its
conclusion on an
estimate of average daily fish consumption among
villagers of nearly 1
pound.
That's roughly eight times the amount of fish the
average Indonesian
eats,
according to United Nations figures, and more than
double the average
per- capita consumption in fish-loving Japan.
Still, the Environmental Ministry study, which remains
unpublished, is
likely to cause big problems for Newmont as it fends
off rising legal
challenges.
Among its findings, the study concludes that Newmont
operated the
underwater waste-discharge system without a proper
permit between 1996
and
2000. Newmont officials say they obtained permission
in 1994 but had
to
reapply in 2000 when the government added new
permitting requirements.
The government study determined that Newmont's
detoxification process
for
the tailings sometimes failed to lower contaminant
levels. Even though
this showed up in Newmont's own monitoring data, the
report alleges,
Newmont did nothing to fix the problem.
Newmont maintains that there has been no contamination
of water or fish
in
Buyat Bay. Anderson, Newmont's external relations
chief, said some of
the
company's problems in Indonesia are a result of poor
community
relations.
Though Newmont has worked closely with a handful of
villages around the
bay area and maintained the support of their leaders,
it largely
ignored
the squatters' village where the problems have
arisen.
Had Newmont been able to supply jobs and
infrastructure in the village,
the issue may never have gotten to this point,
Anderson said.
Staff writer Michael Riley can be reached at
303-820-1614 or
[EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Staff writer Greg Griffin can be reached at
303-820-1241 or
[EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Staff researcher Monnie Nilsson contributed to this
report.
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