The recent pronouncement of the local government of Mati that it cannot stop the entry of mining in Davao Oriental is nothing but a lame excuse and could be playing blind on the track record of the BHP Billiton.

If the local government is looking for a clean track record of any mining company that will operate in their area, then they are wrong in allowing the BHP Billiton to operate in the Hamiguitan mountain range, which is a declared protected area.

The government is eyeing at least $1.4 billion of investments in the Pujada Nickel Project in Mati.

On February last year, then environment secretary Angelo Reyes approved the deed of transfer of BHP Billiton for the mining rights over Pujada Nickel Project from Hallmark Mining Corp. and Australasia Link.

The local government officials should know that BHP Billiton is facing a $5-billion civil damage suit in Papua New Guinea filed by 13,000 villagers seeking compensation for the destruction of their traditional lands along the 38-kilometer river.

According to reports in the internet, BHP dumped 80,000 tons of tailings (rock waste) containing copper, zinc, cadmium and lead directly into the Fly and Ok Tedi Rivers every day for two decades. This has ruined the lands of thousands of subsistence farmers, poisoned some 2,000 square kilometres of forest, polluted the Ok Tedi River and contaminated a section of the Fly River, PNG’s second biggest river system, severely depleting fishing stocks.

The Ok Tedi Mining Limited (OTML) gold and copper mine has been in operation 1984 and is scheduled to close 2012. In their years of operation, it has already affected at least 50,000 people and destroyed at least 2,400 acres of rainforest.

In 1999, then BHP, admitted that what had happened in Ok Tedi mine was an environmental disaster. It confirmed that fisheries in the Fly River have been damaged and mine wastes have spread down 1,000 kilometers of the Ok Tedi and Fly Rivers and across more than 100 square kilometers of land adjoining the river, killed large areas of forests and smothered village vegetable gardens.

According to Mining Watch Canada, the Ok Tedi mine dumps 80,000 tons of contaminated waste rock and tailings per day from the mine-site into the Ok Tedi and Fly Rivers. According to OTML, mine waste could impact up to 1,350 square kilometers along the rivers.

If this has happened in Papua New Guinea, this could also happen in Pujada Bay, where they would possibly dump their waste using submarine tailings disposal method.

Should they dispose the mine waste into the sea, this would surely destroy the marine biodiversity in Pujada Bay – a home to sea cows (dugong) and sea turtles. Seventy five percent of the villagers living in the area are also largely dependent on the bay.

The mining claim originally covers Gov. Generoso, San Isidro and Mati towns in the province. But due to strong opposition of the local government, Gov. Generoso and San Isidro have been temporarily excluded.

Silent on waste disposal

Since the mining companies have started their exploration activities in the area, the villagers relayed that the local partners – Hallmark and Austral-Asia– of BHP Billiton are silent to the waste disposal issue.

But mining giants are usually using the submarine tailings disposal method in dumping their wastes to the ocean.

In 1985, Placer Dome’s Dick Zandee wrote about their surface disposal system into Calancan Bay in the Philippines that, “operation of the current sea-disposal system costs less than half as much as the operation of the tailings-pond system.”

Victor Aying, chair of the anti-mining group called  Multi-Sectoral Alliance for Integral Development (MMSAID), also said that the BHP Billiton’s local partners have not yet disclosed anything about waste disposal.

“Wala man sila ga-ingon sa amoa kung unsa ila plano bahin ana. Basta kami di gyud mi sugot anang mina dire sa among kabukiran,” Aying stressed.

Even the local government of San Isidro town, also in Davao Oriental, rejected the offer of putting up the nickel processing plant in the municipality because they are not ready of the impacts particularly the waste disposal.

What is STD?

The Australia-based Mineral Policy Institute said that ‘STD is used more and more by mining companies from rich countries in their operations in poorer countries, where they can often get around environmental restrictions and are not accountable to local communities.’

It also added that ‘STD is effectively illegal in the USA, Canada and Australia. The world’s biggest mining companies like Newmont, Placer Dome, Rio Tinto and BHP are based in these wealthy countries. Yet these same companies are operating or planning STD at mines throughout the Asia-Pacific region that would clearly not be permitted in their own countries.’

But the mining companies operating in Mati are silent as whether what type of waste disposal method would be used in Pujada Nickel Project,

Even if BHP Billiton would use tailings-pond system in disposing its mine waste, it would still pose a grave danger to the communities.

Disaster waiting to happen

The local government should also learn from the experience in Surigao del Norte after the dam failure in 1987 resulting in a spill of an unknown quantity of cyanide tailings causing fish kill.

Eight years later, a dam foundation failure at tailings pond No. 5 of the Placer copper-gold project occurred due to heavier than normal rainfall. The incident left 12 people dead.

Then, in April 1999, yet another tailings spill from a damaged concrete pipe in tailings pond No. 7 occurred, again due to heavy rains. This resulted in the release of about 700,000 tons of cyanide tailings and the burial of 17 homes.

Aside from structure failures, the local government and mining company should also consider that Davao Oriental is among of the top 10 areas that are risk to earthquakes and risk to earthquake-induced landslides.

This is posted on the Geophysical Risk Maps posted on the website of Jesuit-ran Manila Observatory.

Also, in one newspaper report, Ferdinand Taglucop, Phivolcs analyst, said that Philippine fault zone runs from Northern Luzon down to Pujada Bay in Mati, Davao Oriental.

Should the government officials and concerned line agencies ignore these facts, a disaster is waiting to happen once the mining operation starts.

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